'Bin Laden' Offers Europe Truce. So ran the BBC headline yesterday. To be honest I've been waiting for this, and it half amused me that Beeb correspondent Bridget Kendall thought that 'the timing of the tape's release - if it is Osama Bin Laden - is significant, emerging shortly after US President George W Bush gave a major news conference defending US policies on Iraq and met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington.' She's possibly right there, although this message was clearly aimed at Europe, not the arab world or the US, and she was raising, in a way, stereotypical views of Al Qaeda's understanding of our psyche. Personally I was thinking more about the acute issues raised by hostage taking in Iraq, or the symbolism in the fact that Mo Mowlam has recently been about the first significant British political figure to raise the question of negotiating with Al Qaeda, a coincidence which either says something about the scheming London-connected Islamists, or the scheming Ms Mowlam, or the perverseness of life generally. Nice for Mo though (you go girl!)- to be back in the limelight after her years in poor-health induced political purdah.