In the wake of the presidential clemency awarded 11 Puerto Rican activists, imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard is asking President Bill Clinton to apply the “same standards in my case” and release him.
“I can only hope that the president will see that by commuting my sentence, he would be underscoring his administration’s commitment to due process and fair play,” Pollard told The Jewish Week in a phone interview from the federal prison in Butner, N.C.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s Mideast trip, scheduled for next week, isn’t shaping up the way administration officials had hoped. And the rumbles of discontent in Washington, along with the implied threat that she could cancel the visit entirely, may have played a part in this week’s sudden flurry of Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy.
The State Department is making it clear that despite Palestinian demands for more direct U.S. intervention, Albright will be mostly assessing the status of Israeli-Palestinian talks, not serving as an intermediary.