Arrest is huge coup for Washington

The arrest of Abu Abbas in Baghdad is a coup for Washington by any standards - and a boost for President Bush in his "war against terrorism". It proves, too, that Saddam Hussein was continuing to harbour international terrorists, even if they were heading for their sell-by dates. A few months ago another notorious Palestinian terror boss, Abu Nidal, was murdered in the Iraqi capital.

Abu Abbas was once thought to be the mastermind of mainstream terror tactics - or "asymmetric warfare" as strategists now call it. The seizure of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro by a Palestinian commando at first seemed a brilliant master stroke. By 1985 preventive measures had made aircraft hijackings increasingly difficult to carry out and often very damaging to the perpetrators.

Nothing like the seizure of the liner had been attempted in the Mediterranean area in recent times. Abbas won the attention of world news media and some sympathy in Left-wing quarters. Then, in a moment of pique and madness, the hijackers blew everything with the vicious murder of a wheelchair-bound passenger. Leon Klinghoffer was a Jewish pensioner with an indomitable spirit. When he answered the hijackers back, Abbas had him and his wheelchair tipped overboard. It was an act of childish viciousness which showed the hijackers to be not so much freedom fighters as small-minded playground bullies.

The hijack was doomed from that moment. Abbas succeeded in getting away, thanks to a somewhat murky amnesty brokered by the Italians - much to the rage of the Americans. As we now know, he became the pensioner of Saddam Hussein. In Baghdad he continued to plot and machinate.

Now it will be interesting to see in what court and under what jurisdiction the trial will be heard, and if Abbas is convicted under what authority the sentence will be carried out. After the Taliban and Camp X-Ray controversy, it might mean America rejoining the mainstream of international criminal process. It is unlikely, however, to mark a change of heart in Washington about signing up to the International Criminal Court.

As important, perhaps, as the judicial process must be the interrogation of Abbas about the methods and extent of Saddam's support for international terrorism, including his backing for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers against Israel.

His terrorism, however, pre-dates the present generation of Islamic fanatics. In 1985, the year of the liner hijack, the first intifada against Israel had not begun. Hamas was a few years old, as was Iran-backed Hezbollah - which has put Syria and Iran at the top of the Rumsfeld-Cheney "axis of evil". In 1985 the Russians were still in Afghanistan and Bin Laden was just stirring as a philanthropist about to help the Mujahideen fighters there.

Abbas's Palestinian Liberation Front, ostensibly secular, owed its outlook to Marxist ideas of national liberation more than an Islamic notion of jihad. Recently, however, the US and its allies have been making significant inroads into the most notorious jihadist group, Bin Laden's al Qaeda. Arrests in Pakistan and on the Afghanistan borders are yielding vital information and substantial parts of al Qaeda have been interdicted and dismantled. Last month the US and Pakistan authorities arrested the financier and mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and they are reported to be co-operating with interrogators.

They might seem to come from a different world from Abu Abbas. However, Saddam and his secret services are unlikely to have allowed Abbas to sit on his pension. He would have had to work for it, and now he can provide information on how the old and new terrorist groups of the Middle East and Central Asia evolve and work together. His arrest could turn out to be one of the biggest early successes of the US campaign in Iraq.