American Notes UNITED NATIONS

When the U.S. Government used a new antiterrorism law to attempt to shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization's United Nations observer mission last December, the U.N. was outraged. In a rare show of unity, the members, Israel excepted, voted that the U.S. action violated the headquarters agreement signed when the world body moved to New York City in 1947.

Last week a federal judge in Manhattan dismissed the Justice Department lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Edmund Palmieri, citing cases back to 1804, ruled that the headquarters agreement is a valid treaty that cannot be superseded by the 1987 U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act. U.N. officials and the P.L.O. observers cheered the decision, but the Justice Department prevailed on one point: its ouster of the P.L.O.'s Washington office was deemed legal.