"I have to trust my players because they have done it so many times. We have that character in the team."In United's favour while Milan's Andrei Shevchenko remains on the injured list, Ferguson can field Ruud van Nistelrooy, the competition's leading scorer this season.The Dutchman is not yet match sharp, but he said last night he was in better shape than when he returned from an earlier injury against Lyon in the autumn and scored twice to inspire yet another United comeback."Ruud is ready in terms of fitness," added Ferguson "He has no problems with endurance or the mental side What he needs is games. Nevertheless, Ferguson hoped his players would draw inspiration from that victory tonight, and Milan would be worried by it."Turin reminds everyone it is possible for us to do these things," he said. However it remains a dictatorship.Palestinian AuthorityThe post-Arafat era has begun.
Palestinians voted for a new president in January?s free elections and a parliamentary poll is set for July. New leader Mahmoud Abbas is raising hopes of peace but it is still unclear whether he will be able to exert control over militant groups and negotiate a territorial deal with Israel.LebanonAssassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri acted as a catalyst for change. The winds of changeLibyaNo sign yet of democracy arriving in the Great Socialist People?s Libyan Arab Jamiriyah. Although once regarded by the West as a pariah state, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi?s decision to take responsibility for the Lockerbie bombings and renounce WMD brought it back into the fold.
One was the futile insurrection by Iraqi Kurds and Shias against Saddam Hussein. Some see the spectre of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war and this time, they predict Syria could be thrown into bloody chaos.Success in Iraq, too, is anything but assured and there is the wild card of Iran, locked in dispute with the European Union and the United States over its suspected nuclear ambitions, and with huge mischief-making potential in both Iraq and Lebanon.The moves by Saudi Arabia and Egypt may yet be tactical, a controlled release of steam before the lid is screwed down once more. The result was a brutal civil war in which more than 100,000 died.When push has come to shove in the Middle East before, the US has invariably sided with the devil it knows, true to the philosophy: "He may be a sonofabitch, but at least he's our sonofabitch." Will this President Bush be as good as his soaring words on that icy morning in January? Lebanon may provide the first test. Then in Algeria, the US and the West sat silent as the military regime, faced with the victory of the Islamist FIS movement in elections, simply cancelled them. There is no guarantee that the Islamic Brotherhood, the most powerful opposition party, will be allowed to take part in the Egyptian vote.Then there is the law of unintended consequences.