Laura Bush heckled by protesters

PROTESTERS besieged Laura Bush during her visit yesterday to two of Jerusalem's holiest sites, with Israeli police locking arms to restrain the crowd and Secret Service agents packed tightly around America's first lady.

Mrs Bush, who is on a tour intended partly to help defuse anti-American sentiment in the region, placed a note in the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine. She wrote the note on the flight yesterday from Jordan to Israel, but wanted to keep the contents private, a spokeswoman said.

Dozens of protesters stood nearby, shouting, "Free Pollard now." Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who is serving life sentence in a US prison for spying for Israel, was a civilian intelligence analyst for the US Navy.