JERUSALEM Europe is boring thank God, for you and for us, my interlocutor told me.

No one can keep himself ensconced in high office subject only to death or his own boredom.

Since 1984, 10 years ago, this Committee, faced with the defiant refusal of the United States to comply with its agreements and recommendations, has begun to evince a certain weariness.

Sometimes nations, like individuals, grow tired and long for their idealized youth a recurrent phenomenon that historians call declinism.

Concepts and words that are widely employed in relation to developing countries by States Members and specialized agencies of the United Nations suggest a certain weariness with discussion, failure in practice and exhaustion of ideas.

A key question is whether the Palestinian masses, fed up with their leadership's bickering, corruption, and incompetence, could make their wishes known to find an end to a conflict that has cost them so much.

JERUSALEM Europe is boring thank God, for you and for us, my interlocutor told me.

Many identify the African continent with idyllic postcards of safaris on its great prairies or with the much repeated images of the ills afflicting that continent, as if nothing else was worth mentioning and as if its men and women did not exist.

My grandparents subscriptions to Newsweek and Time meant that a stack of those weekly news magazines were always sitting in the living room, so when I d tire of rolling around in the grass or thumbing through my latest library loan, I d pick up a copy, plop down on the davenport, and get my fill of 1990s political intrigue.