The world must stop this madman

The trap is sprung. The name of the game is containment. Contain the wild man, the leader with the messianic and relentless glint who is scaring the world. Surround him, throw Lilliputian nets on him, tie him up with a lot of United Nations inspection demands, humour him long enough to stop him from using his weapons and blowing up the Middle East.

But this time, the object of the containment strategy is not Saddam Hussein, but George Bush, the president with real bombs, not the predator with plans to make them.

America's European and Arab allies now act more nervously about the cowboy in the Oval Office who likes to brag of America as "the greatest nation on the face of the Earth" than the thug in the Baghdad bunker.

"We don't want another war in this region," says an adviser to the Saudi royal family. "When Afghanistan is bombed, they just hit rocks. When there's bombing in our neighbourhood, they hit oil fields."