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- WORLD, Page 41World NotesTERRORISTSUndiplomatic Illness
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- The zone of quiet around the posh Henry-Dunant hospital in
- Paris was fractured by a political thunderclap last week with
- the arrival of George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for
- the Liberation of Palestine. His organization has carried out
- airliner hijackings and bloody terrorist attacks in France,
- Israel and elsewhere since the late 1960s, including the 1976
- hijacking of an Air France plane to Uganda that was liberated
- by Israeli troops. Yet Habash, 65, was routinely admitted to the
- country and the hospital for treatment of a stroke he suffered
- in Tunis.
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- Israel was outraged, and so were many leading French
- politicians. When President Francois Mitterrand, on a visit to
- Oman, heard what had happened, he demanded and got the
- resignations of the three senior civil servants who were
- involved in admitting Habash. The head of the French Red Cross,
- who acted as liaison in moving Habash, resigned as an adviser
- to Mitterrand.
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- Unless Habash is very ill, said the President, "his stay
- will be extremely brief." And so it was. After doctors said the
- guerrilla leader was unable to talk, a magistrate who had
- ordered police to hold him for questioning rescinded the order.
- At that, Habash decided to skip further treatment. He hurried
- to Orly airport on Saturday and flew back to his home in Tunis.
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