Coffee, confidences, and lessons in a kind of history from the 'jackal'

Requests from the press to Iraq's information ministry drew predictable and instant answers on the eve of the last Gulf war, in winter 1990. An interview with Saddam (one had to ask)? "Don't be an idiot." Football match? "Definitely."

But asking for access to Abu Abbas - the wandering jackal of the Palestinian revolution, for the moment sheltered by Saddam - was different: "Complicated. Let's see." Two days later the reply came back: Abbas - leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front - wanted to meet.

A colleague from Reuters and I were accordingly driven a long distance (along a more or less circular route) to the secretive home of the homeless one, a pebbledash bungalow in a leafy suburb of Baghdad.

If Saddam was the current - and equivocal - warden of the man who had hijacked the Achille Lauro, his more immediate lifeguard was a posse of loyal and lightly armed Palestinians on the front lawn as we pulled up in our old Lada.

In those days, Abbas was Yasser Afafat's troublesome priest, leader of an itinerant Palestinian splinter group still propelled by revolutionary Marxism and distrustful of the kind of diplomacy Mr Arafat was getting himself into.

The month before we met, thousands of Abbas's fighters had even been expelled by a nervous Colonel Gadafy of Libya.

And earlier that year, Abbas's PLF had mounted a spectacular "operation" - as he called it - to wreck talks between the United States and Mr Arafat's PLO: a seaborne attack by a dinghy on a Tel Aviv beach resort.

A framed photograph of the crew brandishing their Kalashnikovs decorated Abbas's desk, as we were led through the crowded hallway into his front room. The blinds were drawn, diagonal spears of sunlight piercing Abbas's comfortably furnished "office".

The obvious thing to talk about was the reason why Abbas was wanted in Italy and the US, and why he will now probably be tried: the hijacking of the cruise ship and murder of an American Jewish passenger.

But Abbas himself seemed more interesting than his exploits. He sat us down as though about to embark on a social occasion between people who do not know each other well. Strong, sweet coffee was served. Abbas asked most of those present to leave the room (including our Iraqi minders).

"The Israelis occupy a land I have never even seen," Abbas said of the Palestine he had devoted his life to liberating.

His family came from Tira, near Haifa, and was "ethnically cleansed" - as we would now say - in 1948, to Syria, where Abbas was born in one of the first Palestinian refugee camps.

He rose with ease through the Syrian education system, became a graduate in literature and joined the newly established PLF in 1964. Since then, he has been both guerrilla leader and strategist, and little else, living "in most Arab countries".

He invoked the campaigns of the IRA or Basque Eta with knowledge of contemporary detail, and drew constantly on that by the Algerian FLN, which expelled France just as Abbas dreamed in vain of driving out Israel.

We ended with what in retrospect was an ironic forecast. Terrible consequences would follow for the UN, he said, if it dared attack Iraq, then occupier of Kuwait. Abbas declined to discuss Saddam beyond saying: "My enemy's enemy is my friend."

The conversation - set by a determined Iraqi ministry for 30 minutes - lasted more than three hours. Confession: I liked Abu Abbas; he was a straight talker (albeit probably a straight shooter, too) with little or none of that usual amour propre.

As we left, we were showered with gifts: fired-earth plates, woollen placemats in the colours of the Palestinian flag. And a carved, painted piece of wood featuring a map of the Palestine that will never be. Abu Abbas, the jackal, came to the front gate to wave us off.