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Sat 11 Nov 2002Brilliant scholar who became a founding father of IsraelThe Israeli statesman Abba Eban, who died last weekend aged 87, used words, with fluency and accuracy, as his most potent weapons. It was Eban who, in 1978, said of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's Yasser Arafat that he "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity".Eban first came to global attention three decades earlier, when he rose to address the General Assembly of the United Nations on May 5th, 1949. His widely reported two-hour appeal for the provisional government of the new state of Israel to be recognised by the UN, and accepted as a member, was given major coverage, and his delivery had journalists and commentators reaching for superlatives. In the United States he became a world figure overnight, and during subsequent years it was in that country that he continued to evoke the greatest admiration.