21.   What looks like a modem card with an aerial slots into a lap-top computer and a fractured-motion video conference begins.

22.   Yet days before the conference began, unlaid bricks were scattered about and some of the top floors of the center itself were nothing but bare cement.

23.   Palestinian leader visits Madrid five years after landmark Mideast peace conference began here.

24.   A White House conference begins Tuesday.

25.   Attempting to mediate, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel met separately with both of them just before the conference began Wednesday.

26.   But the two-member Vatican delegation, which switched from participant to observer status before the conference began, sat mute.

27.   Conference begins Thursday.

28.   Entrance to the hotel was blocked before the conference could begin.

29.   Good diplomatic conferences begin when war ends, when the military situation has been clarified and the winner controls the territory.

30.   He then left for Durban, South Africa, where the U.N. conference on racism began Friday.