TEARS TO JEERS: BUSH ACCUSED OF PLAYING `TERRORIST' POLITICS 

Daniel Cohen, a writer of children's books from Port Jervis, N.Y., remembers his daughter, Theodora, as always being ``the shortest kid in the class'' and unwilling to walk away from a fight. Once, she grabbed a long stick with a rusty nail and scared off a group of menacing boys.

 ``I told her that was wrong, that she could have put out somebody's eyes,'' Cohen, himself a short man with a shock of brilliant white hair, recalled Wednesday. ``But,'' he added with a sigh, ``I was proud of her.''

 That pride did not end in December 1988 when Theodora, 20, a drama student at Syracuse University, died after a terrorist bomb blew apart Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone aboard the 747 and others on the ground.

 Wednesday, in what Cohen said later was a tribute to his daughter's pugnacious spirit, he and several other parents who lost their children to terrorism put up ``about $300'' including ``$25 for the microphone'' to rent a small meeting room at the National Press Club for an hour. By the time Cohen announced, ``I think we have run out of rent here,'' the parents had angrily criticized the Bush administration, accusing the president of cozying up to the leaders of terrorist nations for short-term political advantage.

 In the years since the explosion, Cohen has emerged as one of the leaders of the Pan Am 103 families, and Wednesday's news conference was a display of his determination to keep the issue of terrorism alive in Washington. He charged that as far as the Bush administration is concerned, terrorism is no longer ``on the front burner; it's off the stove.'' Cohen said Bush is so intent on having a Middle East peace conference that he has embraced leaders of terrorist nations, including ``one of the worst,'' Syrian President Hafez Assad.

 In addition to the Pan Am 103 families, participants included the parents of Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, a Waldorf, Md., native who was killed in the 1985 Trans World Airline hijacking. Stethem was stationed at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Norfolk.

 The Stethems agreed that the administration should place terrorism on the agenda of any Middle East conference and demand the arrests of terrorists living in the region.

 ``There's no better time to put it on the table,'' Patricia Stethem said.