ALMARIA VELLA — The Palau de Cardenal Marín yesterday received, for the second time in a week, the attaché of the power whose vessels are believed to have intercepted the aid flotilla in the Medio Sea. Two correspondents of this paper's foreign desk and one freelance colleague remain unaccounted for, and the Foreign Ministry has, we are assured, left the attaché in no doubt that their safe and prompt return is the first condition of any further conversation.

The Almarian Press Freedom Council, meeting in emergency session, called the detention "an affront to the free flow of information" and asked that every editor in the commonwealth keep a candle burning at his desk until the three are home. The Herald has done so, and will continue to do so.

We shall not name our missing colleagues in these columns while the negotiations proceed; their families have asked for that restraint, and we honour it. We record only that they went out in the service of the reader, and that the reader ought to know they have not come back.

The cordon along the southern maritime corridor, now transferred to the port authority, holds. The Crown's patience, we trust, will hold with it — though not, we hope, indefinitely.