Mind-boggling incompetency" is how one American diplomatic source characterized Belgium's laggard cooperation with U.S. efforts to catch terrorists. Since Belgian police arrested two men two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, American officials have pleaded for hard information (phone numbers, addresses, travel itineraries) on one of the men, Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian citizen suspected to have been the designated suicide bomber for a planned attack on the American embassy in Paris. Belgian officials say the U.S. did not properly request the Trabelsi dossier until Sept. 27. It took weeks after that, they say, to scan the documents, which were "the thickness...
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