Why asci-only symbols?

[Peter Hansen]

Mike Meyer wrote:
> Out of random curiosity, is there a PEP/thread/? that explains why
> Python symbols are restricted to 7-bit ascii?

And of equally random curiosity :-), what alternative(s) can you suggest 
would have been appropriate?  (I note that Unicode, for example, dates 
from around the time Python was first released.  And I can't really 
imagine a non-ugly alternative, which probably reveals something bad 
about my imagination.)

-Peter