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G8 Summit

During his rather charmingly self-depreciative luncheon conversation with President Bush at St. Petersburg about Syria and sweaters, did the Prime Minister—after he had switched off the microphone—make any attempt to explain to the President that one of the root causes of the spread of chaos in the middle east has been the failure, over 40 years, of successive American Administrations to persuade Israel to accept United Nations resolution 242, which requires it to return to its legal frontiers of 1967? That failure has caused an inevitable degree of bitterness, which has led to the creation and sustaining of various guerrilla militias which are now increasingly regarded as part of an Islamic jihad.