JABIR'S PROPOSAL

AP Wire Service Exclusive.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 18, 2002 4:22 PM PST

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CAN MUSLIM SCHOLAR'S PROPOSAL
END VIOLENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

Santa Cruz, CA--In an apparent attempt to upstage Doctor Nick Herbert's
bid for the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, Nick's shady Arab alter ego Doctor Jabir
'abd al-Khaliq has announced what he tactlessly insists on calling "Jabir's
Final Solution" to the Israeli-Palestinean Problem. Doctor Jabir claims that
all it takes is "a single gesture by the world's most powerful man" to resolve
this half-century-old conflict in such a way that both sides will benefit--the elusive
win-win solution to the problem of Middle-Eastern terrorism.

Doctor Jabir plans to make his solution public on February 25, 2002, almost
a full month before Herbert's projected launch date of March 22 for his
purported "new upgrade of the Golden Rule". Insiders say that Herbert's
moral upgrade will be free but Jabir's Solution apparently comes with a
steep sticker price.

"I'm asking one billion US dollars from the Bush administration if Jabir's Solution
or any of its variants is initiated within the next ten years," said the confident Arab
speaking at his lawyer's beachfront home in Santa Cruz.

"We Arabs invented arithmatic and gave it away for free. To appreciate the value of
this gift, try doing physics with Roman numerals. We Arabs invented algebra--which
NASA uses every day--and we gave that away too."

Doctor 'abd al-Khaliq requested that his billion dollars be awarded as an unrestricted research grant to the Institute of Frontier Science in Oakland headed by Doctor Beverly Rubik, Jabir's sometime colleague in alternative methods of healing.

"Jabir's Solution, by eliminating the main cause of World War Three, will materially delay man's wholesale destruction of all life on Earth. A billion dollars is small change for saving the world, don't you think?" the affable Arab remarked between puffs on his hookah.

Offering cakes, tea, and what appeared to be black Afghani hashish, to reporters from a dozen newspapers, the canny Muslim evaded direct questions about the nature of his solution, repeating over and over, almost as a mantra, the sing-song phrase, "A single dramatic gesture by the world's most powerful man...a single dramatic gesture will save the world." Another question left unresolved after the Arab scholar's two-hour press conference was whether John Brockman, Nick Herbert's literary agent, will be responsible for also negotiating the intellectual property rights of one of Doctor Herbert's alternate personalities.

END