He goes by a variety of names: Abul Abbas, Mohammed Abbas, Mohammed Abul Abbas Zaidan, Abu Khaled. He has been an ally and enemy of Syria's, a colleague and critic--simultaneously--of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat's. Until a few weeks ago he was one of the more obscure leaders within the fragmented P.L.O., a member of its ten-man executive committee but directly in charge of only a splinter of a splinter, with perhaps fewer than 100 hard-core followers. His supposed allies openly deride Washington's characterization of him as a terrorist mastermind. Says one P.L.O. official in Tunis: "Abbas is a would-be...
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