OBSERVER Hillary's stance
To be more Catholic than the pope is not the appropriate metaphor but Senator Hillary Clinton managed yesterday to upstage Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, in being tough on Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian president.
Not too surprising perhaps, as both were in the capital to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential Jewish lobby group. Clinton has her New York seat to defend next year, even before thinking of a shot for the presidency in 2008.
She won standing ovations for an uncompromising speech that could have been written by the White House or Sharon's Likud party.
Sharon was rather more measured in his remarks directed at Abbas, who meets President Bush tomorrow. Sharon even had the indignity of being heckled by two Jewish protesters who were frog-marched out of the hall for denouncing his plan to withdraw a few small settlements from the West Bank.