*** "THE TERRITORIES are the largest detention camp in the world, in which 3.5 million people live."

(British Ambassador to Israel, Sherard Cowper-Coles, calling Palestinian areas the world's largest jail rife with harassment and humiliation)

*** "THERE IS NO NEED to ask if our blood is O negative or positive, it is Saddam Hussain."

(Unnamed Iraqi poet summing up the general feeling of the people celebrating results of referendum which unanimously gave Saddam Hussain to rule Iraq for another 7 years)

*** "$ 87 billion"

(French defence budget to modernize its military during 2003-2008)

*** "DOES HE REALLY hate the Army?"

(Unnamed US Army officer commenting on the growing gulf between Defence Secretray Donald Rumsfeld and Pentagon)

*** "IS THIS new information? Or did they know it 20 years ago when they equipped Iraq to attack Iran?"

(Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi questioning whether US' concern about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction is genuine)

*** "MY CONCEPT of human rights has grown to include not only the rights to live in peace, but also to adequate health care, shelter, food, and to economic opportunity. I hope this award reflects a universal acceptance and even embrace of this broader-based concept of human rights."

(Statement posted on the website of former US President Jimmy Carter, the latest winner of Nobel Peace Prize)

*** "THE FOREIGN ASSISTANCE failed to play a vital role in the country's economy that could be of welfare to the people. Rather it acted as a medium of economic and political criminalisation through accumulation of money in the hands of the vested quarters."

(Dhaka University professor Abul Barkat saying that since independence in 1971, 75 per cent of the total $ 36.33 billion foreign aid received by the country was plundered by the politicians, bureaucrats, commission agents and contractors)

*** "SPEAKING ON BEHALF of so many African American citizens, I have found Colin Powell to be a tragic failure."

(US singer-activist Harry Belafonte saying that his criticism of Secretary of State Colin Powell as 'house slave' was not personal)

*** "YOU CAN be certain that I will squander it all. With an amount like this it will take a while, but I will quite definitely spend it all."

(Hungary's Nobel Literature Prize winner Imre Kertesz announcing to go on a spending spree with $ 1 million prize money)

*** "WE WILL be victorious over the occupation."

(Marwan Barghouti, head of Yasser Arafat's Fatah Faction, defiantly predicting freedom from occupation at an Israeli court where he is being tried for subversion)

*** "WE DON'T like to call it politics. It's human rights, it's basic rights, it's not politics."

(Hong Kong' second top ranking Catholic priest, Bishop Joseph Zen, refuting critics who say that clerics should stay out of politics)

*** "THIS IS a great strike, with extraordinary turnout in all rallies. We have shown that the majority in this country are not resigned to suffer a misguided industry policy, to watch the decline of the nation."

(Secretary General of Italy's biggest trade union CGIL, Guglielmo Epifani, hailing the successful strike to bring the country to a halt protesting Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's economic policies and employment reforms. Some 10 million people responded to the strike call)

*** "THE CIA estimates that there are currently some eight million Saddam look-alikes in Iraq. They are kept in the basement of the presidential palaces."

(US satirical novelist lampooning the reports of Iraqi strongman having a number of identical doubles)

*** "IT IS ESSENTIAL that the credibility of the United Nations be established not only in the case of Iraq but also in other instances... such as in Jammu & Kashmir."

(Pakistan's Ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, calling for peaceful resolution of all Security Council mandates)