US wades into Colombia's dirty war

Clinton's drive against cocaine trade will worsen violence, human rights groups say

In the first trip to the country by a US president in a decade, Mr Clinton will throw his weight behind Plan Colombia, an ambitious strategy which the Colombian government hopes will put an end to the drugs trade and bring peace after nearly 40 years of fighting.

Visiting the capital, Bogotá, was deemed too risky, so Mr Clinton will meet the Colombian president, Andres Pastrana, in the resort of Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, guarded by 5,000 Colombian troops and 350 US agents.

"Colombia's success is profoundly in the interest of the United States a peaceful, democratic and economically prosperous Colombia will help promote democracy and stability throughout the hemisphere," Mr Clinton said earlier this month.

Acknowledging both Colombia's strategic importance and its growing instability, Mr Clinton has supported Plan Colombia from its inception, and pledged $1.3bn (£867m) towards the scheme. But critics of the aid package fear the money will only cause the fighting to escalate, and may even spread political and drug-related violence throughout the region.

While some US aid will go to development programmes and an overhaul of Colombia's legal system, most will be spent on equipment and training for security forces, despite persistent concerns over the military's human rights record.

Monitoring groups regularly accuse the Colombian army of standing by while rightwing paramilitaries massacre unarmed civilians they accuse of helping leftist rebels.

Last week Mr Clinton waived strict human rights conditions imposed by Congress and authorised the aid package, arguing that Colombia's situation was a matter of US national security. But a White House memorandum justifying the decision acknowledged that "there remain disturbing, credible allegations that individual Colombian military officers continue to collaborate with paramilitaries".

The waiver provoked criticism from human rights groups. "It gives a clear message that from the US point of view, human rights are not important. What matters for them is the war on drugs," said Jorge Rojas of the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement, a Bogotá-based monitoring group.

There are signs that US aid has already led to an escalation of Colombia's civil war. In March, the country's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) said it would step up kidnappings for ransom in order to raise funds equal to the US military aid.

The guerrillas have also increased their attacks against isolated police stations, part of a long-term strategy to strengthen their control of rural Colombia. Although they have been involved in peace talks since last year, no ceasefire has been signed and, since January, the rebels have attacked 50 such stations. Sixty officers and dozens of civilians have been killed.

"Farc is accelerating its plans for territorial control, but the guerrillas are not the only ones getting stronger. State forces are improving, as are the paramilitaries. Inevitably there will be an escalation," said defence analyst Alfredo Rangel.

In early August, 83 US Green Berets arrived in the country to train the second of three counter-narcotics battalions contemplated in Plan Colombia. These units will lead a campaign into the rebel-dominated southern jungles of Colombia, where most of the world's cocaine is made.

"Our aid is strictly limited to anti-narcotics activities. It is not directed towards supporting counter-insurgent operations," Mr Clinton told the Colombian magazine Cambio this week. But Colombian military commanders recognise that a push in the region will inevitably bring troops into combat with several thousand Farc guerrillas who protect drug installations in return for "war taxes".

"We will attack anyone in the drugs trade - Farc, paramilitaries or whoever," said General Mario Montoya, commander of the army's southern task force.

It is still unclear how a military strike against drug plantations will tally with the second component of Plan Colombia: a package of social development to help wean locals from growing drug crops.

According to Mr Pastrana, investment in education, infrastructure and services will play a key part in establishing the rule of law in the southern regions of Putumayo and Caqueta. Traditionally, Colombian governments have paid little attention to these remote Amazon regions, allowing both rebel columns and drug plantations to grow unchecked.

In the past, Colombia has focused on spending "to prevent drugs reaching the streets of the US, instead of investing in education, sewage systems, housing", said Mr Pastrana. "We want to work hand in hand with the communities, instead of concentrating on the policing aspect".

But funding for social development programmes remains in doubt. At a conference in Madrid last month, European countries failed to pledge the $1bn (£667m) Mr Pastrana had hoped for.

Meanwhile, Farc is reported to be giving weapons training to peasants in Putumayo, and refugee groups fear that up to 200,000 people will flee their homes if widespread fighting breaks out.

Neighbouring countries have expressed concern that the plan may cause Colombia's civil war to spill across its borders. Ecuador and Brazil have reinforced security along their jungle frontiers. Peru's president, Alberto Fujimori, said last week that an anti-narcotics drive could threaten the stability of the entire region.

"How can you strengthen democracy in the midst of a war?" said Mr Rojas. His organisation and 36 more Colombian human rights, Indian and development groups have said they will not participate in projects funded under the plan.

Farc chiefs say Mr Clinton's approval of Plan Colombia was timed to coincide with the US election campaign. Speaking from a stronghold in southern Colombia, Commander Andres Paris said: "They want to spill Colombian blood to help their presidential candidates."

50 years of Conflict

948 Assassination of popular liberal politician leads to rural unrest which claims 300,000 lives over next decade

1953-57 Military seize power, before returning it to coalition rule by liberal and conservative parties

1964 Colombian military launch US-backed Operation Laso, to destroy leftist guerrillas. It fails and marks foundation of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), a communist guerrilla movement

1966 Creation of rival, smaller guerrilla group, Army of National Liberation (ELN)

1980s Emergence of right-wing narco-paramilitaries who target guerrilla groups and their supporters. Farc's political wing loses 4,000 people killed by drug-traffickers

1990 US president George Bush announces war on drugs

1992 US says it will stop aid to Colombian army amid claims that the army used the cash to fight Marxist rebels

1993 Medellin drug baron Pablo Escobar is shot dead by Colombian police after a US-backed search

1994 Allegations that Colombian president-elect Ernesto Samper's election campaign was funded by $6m from a Cali drug cartel lead to him losing his US travel visa.

1997 First US civilian pilot, working under a state department contract, is killed on a drug crop fumigation flight in south-east Colombia

1998 Farc is granted a 15,000 square mile demilitarised zone to encourage peace talks

June 2000 US Senate gives final approval to record $1.3bn package of military aid to help fight drugs and Marxist guerrillas

Why Sierra Leone's war is far from won

The rebels may be in retreat, but renegades pose new threat

Study a map of Sierra Leone and you might find it difficult to imagine that the Revolutionary United Front is losing its war.

Four months ago, the government's authority barely extended beyond the capital and the last means of escape, the international airport disturbingly far across the Sierra river. Beyond that, RUF rebels were largely in charge except in a few city enclaves vulnerable to attack.

The rebels are no longer such a threat. Freetown is more secure than at any time for years, and the RUF's hopes of seizing power have been dashed. Their founder, Foday Sankoh, is in prison and his force is increasingly factionalised. The diamond mines that have funded its war will not be such an asset if an international agreement to permit only the sale of government-certified gems works, as it should.

But that does not mean the government's remit has been extended much further than Freetown and the other enclaves. Territory newly liberated by the British-backed Sierra Leone army has not so much fallen under government control as fallen into a new form of chaos where groups such as the West Side Boys, who abducted 11 British soldiers on Friday, are free to rob, rape and kill.

This was not part of the British plan to galvanise the government, its army and the UN into confronting the RUF instead of backing down in the face of its attacks and breaches of last year's peace accords.

The original intent was to build a single force using experienced troops from the old Sierra Leone military, militias such as the West Side Boys, and thousands of soldiers newly trained by the British.

This new army was to be thrown into battle against the RUF while a strengthened UN peacekeeping force secured the captured territory and freed up Sierra Leone's army to continue advancing. The strategy had the added advantage of bringing the West Side Boys and other groups of young fighters, often high on drugs or drunk, under government command.

To some extent, it has worked. The army is beginning to look like a credible force and has won several important battles against the rebels. The RUF is generally in retreat and its attacks in the west are not as frequent or sustained. Some of its soldiers have surrendered, others show a reluctance to keep up the fight. Above all, there is no real prospect of the rebels seizing power as there was in May when Britain sent more than 1,000 troops to defend Freetown.

But neither the government nor the UN can offer even a reasonable guarantee of security more than about 30 miles beyond Freetown, even on the long, looping main road to the airport on which the West Side Boys seized the British troops.

And while the West Side Boys are a relatively small and desperate militia, another private army is a much greater threat to security in what is claimed to be government territory. The civil defence force, more popularly known as the Kamajors, are a major force in southern cities such as Kenema and Bo where some residents describe them as imposing a reign of terror. They control large parts of the major highways south where young fighters regularly extort bribes, rape and sometimes murder those on the road.

Like the West Side Boys, the Kamajors rely on copious amounts of alcohol and drugs to fight, and they believe that charms and mirrors ward off bullets. And like the West Side Boys, the Kamajors are supposed to have fallen under government command but remain a renegade force.

Their leader, Sam Hinga Norman, who is also Sierra Leone's deputy defence minister, flew to Kenema a fortnight ago to tell his men to end their lawlessness. They took little notice.

The situation will not be helped by the impact of diamond certification, as Kamajors, rebels and others mining the valuable gems try to unload their wares for fear of not being able to sell them in future.

Part of the problem lies with the UN. While its peacekeepers are more willing to fight the RUF to defend certain towns, they remain essentially passive when it comes to ensuring the security of liberated areas. UN soldiers do not touch the Kamajors' roadblocks and do little to help the victims who are caught at them.

One UN official said the abduction of the 11 British soldiers by the West Side Boys clearly demonstrated that "it is a jungle out there and the idea that we can control things is completely wrong."

That is a vacuum the RUF might just galvanise itself to step back into. To counter the threat, the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan, wants to boost the peacekeeping force to 20,500 men. He told the Security Council on Friday that the RUF still poses a threat that "should not be underestimated".

"The RUF is believed to have a strength of several thousand fighters. It is relatively well-equipped and, in spite of divisions between some groups, maintains a relatively well established system of command and control," he said.

Bungled UN aid operation slows East Timor's recovery

A year ago today its people voted for independence from Indonesia, but the fledgling democracy faces a hard future

The growing mountain of freshly-made pupils' desks and teachers' tables stacked haphazardly outside Joao Evangelino's rudimentary carpentry workshop in the town of Maliana neatly encapsulates the current state of East Timor, one year after it voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia.

It is undeniable evidence that reconstruction in this United Nations-run territory, which was systematically destroyed by the Indonesian army and its local militias following the referendum last August 30, is at last gathering momentum and allowing the East Timorese the chance to participate in their own nation-building. But the fact that it is there at all, starting to gather dust, is undeniable evidence that there is still a long way to go before this former Portuguese colony can claim to have completed its phoenix-like rise from the ashes of last year's devastation. Just last night, UN troops and militias exchanged gunfire near Maliana.

"The UN says it has nowhere to put it," said Mr Evangelino, gesturing towards the furniture. "They haven't decided which schools are going to reopen, let alone rebuilt them. And the school holiday ends next month."

That Mr Evangelino endured a tortuous ordeal to see his workshop become a reality is a further microcosm of the nation's acute growing pains.

"I put in my proposal on January 1 and got the money on May 30th," said the mini-entrepreneur who, like thousands of East Timorese, spent weeks hiding from the militia until the UN established a presence in October. "I was told little except that the process takes a long time and that I had to be patient."

UN officials accept that reconstruction has been slow but blame the delays on factors beyond their control. "The situation in East Timor was exceptional," explained the UN's transitional administrator, Sergio Vieria de Mello. "Unlike when we arrived in Kosovo, there was nothing here. Everything had either been destroyed or stolen. We had to start from scratch."

That was undoubtedly the case, but the army of foreign administrators, donors and developers went about reconstruction in the wrong way. The most prominent first signs of change visible on the streets of the capital Dili were a fleet of thousands of brand-new four-wheel-drive vehicles, a 500-room floating hotel shipped in from Singapore for the international staff, and the growing number of cafes catering to their cappuccino craving.

These visible manifestations of the new neo-colonialism might not have been so bad if there had been decent interaction with the locals, many of whom had lost literally everything. But, for the most part, the foreigners were taught practically nothing about East Timor before arriving and when they landed they received little guidance from their superiors.

"I did not arrive in East Timor with a full knowledge of the situation here or the psychology of the East Timorese," Mr Vieira de Mello admitted. "It took me six months to understand."

As if afraid to learn or take any initiative, many UN staff drove round from meeting to meeting with their windows up, appearing not to acknowledge the destitution and suffering around them. "After work people would not go out and speak to the East Timorese, to find out what they wanted," one UN staffer said. "They went and checked their email."

Compounding the problems were the over-optimistic expectations of the East Timorese. "There was a widespread feeling that we were going to come in and solve their problems overnight," said Gianni Deligia, the UN district administrator in Maliana. "The reality is that we are more a like a supermarket. We have this and that on offer and they have to choose."

Crisis point came at the end of April. Demonstrations outside the headquarters of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (Untaet) were a daily part of life in Dili. To the East Timorese it seemed as if there was lots of show but little substance. Not atypical, according to one aid worker, was an education project where "only 18% of the budget went on pens, paper and stuff for the kids. There was so much bureaucratic waste."

Local leaders are more blunt. "There was a sense of frustration, a lack of faith in Untaet," said Jose Ramos Horta, a vice president of the East Timorese political umbrella group, the National Council of East Timorese Resistance (CNRT), and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. "[This was] because of their inability to involve the East Timorese, their inability to come forward with a roadmap, a plan. We saw time going by and no Timorese administration, no civil servants being recruited, no jobs being created."

So in May Mr Horta and the CNRT president, Jose Alexandre "Xanana" Gusmao, "did a lot of shock therapy with the UN", Mr Horta says, and within days a difference was noticeable. In June four of the eight cabinet posts in the transitional administration were given to East Timorese and the size of the local consultation council was doubled. "Now we are in a much more cordial, fruitful partnership between the UN and CNRT," Mr Horta said. "There are less demonstrations, people are getting jobs and also enough to eat."

There is also a roadmap of the path towards transition to full independence. The CNRT is currently holding its first proper congress where the goal is to empower the constituent political parties, both those that existed before Jakarta invaded in 1975 and the new ones. The first general election is timetabled for the second half of next year.

Of much greater concern are the faltering processes of reconstruction and developing a sustainable economy. The World Bank, in charge of stimulating small and medium-sized enterprises, "has never worked quicker in its existence since the second world war than it has here," according to its spokesman in Dili, Malcolm Ehrenpries. But, he adds, there are numerous hurdles still to overcome before a proper development strategy can be implemented. "We do not even know how many people live in East Timor."

The population was about 800,000 before the vote. But a proportion of these were Indonesians who left and more than 250,000 people fled or were forced into West Timor by the militias. Well over 100,000 are thought still to be in virtual imprisonment in refugee camps there.

Coffee is the only current significant foreign currency earner - to the tune of about £12m last year - although East Timor and Australia are exploring the sea between them for oil and natural gas. No one knows for certain how big a windfall might come East Timor's way; people are hoping for billions but the most realistic estimates are in the range of tens of millions of dollars a year.

The lack of income-generating opportunities is reflected in the national budget which, for the sake of not wanting to create a massive debt burden, has been limited to a paltry $60m.

"We can't yet see if the economy will ever be really sustainable," said Arsenio Barno, the executive director of the East Timor Non-Governmental Organisation Forum. "We're concentrating on developing the capacity of our human resources but our worry is that we will end up like Cambodia. Seven years after the UN went in the country is still very dependent on foreign aid."

The struggle to create a functioning judicial system is typical of East Timor's human resources crisis, according to Mr Vieira de Mello. "What we had here were Timorese students with law degrees from Indonesian universities, none of whom had the slightest court experience," he said. "Well, we appointed them, we trained them and if you visit the Dili court you will see that we now have a credible, independent Timorese judiciary."

What Mr Vieira de Mello did not say was that while the system might be functioning it is unable to cope with the flood of work and, like all facets of the embryonic administration, will take years to develop enough strength in depth.

With the future not looking exactly rosy, most people are putting their faith in Mr Gusmao. This former resistance leader who spent seven years in Indonesian jails is by far the most popular man in the territory and is widely expected to become the first president of independent East Timor.

"I don't see any serious alternative candidate to Xanana becoming president," Mr Horta says. "Just like with Mandela, he is an exceptional individual that everybody just follows."

But Mr Gusmao is not exactly brimming with confidence about East Timor's prospects. "It's difficult to rebuild this country," he said. "We're building anew and need a new mentality to go with it. I can't tell you my priority because everything is still a priority."

Fishermen find man's head in belly of a cod

Patrick Barkham in Sydney and Owen Bowcott
Wednesday August 30, 2000
The Guardian

A huge cod caught off Australia's Great Barrier Reef revealed a grisly secret after it was landed in Queensland at the weekend.

Weighing more than 44kg (97lb) and measuring 5ft 9ins long, the fish - a flowery cod with distinctive blotchy skin - was triumphantly lowered by trawlermen into the ship's hold.

The trawler docked in Cairns and the cod was delivered to the Fine Kettle O' Fish filleting factory. But when staff cut open its stomach yesterday a man's head rolled out.

A co-owner of the factory, Peter Monson, said the head was whole and not badly disfigured. "There was disbelief. You would never dream of it," he said.

Detective Sergeant David Miles of Cairns police added: "The fish was fairly big and the head appeared to be fairly much intact inside it."

Police removed the fish and the grisly find for forensic examination. They suspect that the head may be that of a local fisherman, Michael Edwards, 39, who disappeared on Sunday after falling from his trawler east of Slashers Reef.

Trawlermen were puzzled about how the head could have found its way into the fish's stomach so quickly. Flowery cod, also known as morgan cod, normally suck in their prey and do not have sharp teeth.

Cod are voracious migratory fish which normally feed on other fish and invertebrates. The flowery cod is often described as a shy fish, preferring coral reefs close to shore, but frequently descending to well below 30 metres (100ft). It is found in the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and off Australia's Pacific coast.

The Fishing Cairns' website describes the variety of cod species on offer to visiting anglers: "Humans find a great deal of affection for these seemingly gentle giants, with the game boat skippers and dive boat operators making an event of hand feeding their 'pet' while on charter. The fishes' huge mouths will engulf substantial offerings."

Top QC bows out

Libel legend: George Carman, the master of courtroom cross-examination, retires

Clare Dyer, legal correspondent
Wednesday August 30, 2000
The Guardian

The legal world was stunned yesterday when Britain's most famous lawyer, George Carman QC, announced that he was retiring to undergo medical treatment for an unspecified "little local difficulty".

Mr Carman caused consternation when he pulled out of all the cases he was booked to appear in, including the big libel setpiece of the forthcoming legal session. With another silk, James Price, he was due to represent the Sunday Times at the retrial of former Irish president Albert Reynolds' libel action, scheduled to start in just over a month.

The announcement shocked solicitors who regularly briefed the 70-year-old QC, who was insisting only a few months ago that he would never retire. They said nobody else at the libel bar had his skill in cross-examination.

Mr Carman said: "It's all very sad but these things happen and you face them with such fortitude as you can command." He planned to write a book about his experiences.

Mr Carman, a longtime smoker, refused to give details of his illness.

He was a successful but largely unknown QC when his defence of the former Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, on charges of conspiracy to kill and incitement to murder brought him into the limelight. He became a sought-after criminal silk, defending the Coronation Street actor Peter Adamson on indecency charges, the comedian Ken Dodd for alleged tax evasion, the paediatrician Leonard Arthur for attempted murder in agreeing with parents' wishes to allow a Down's syndrome baby to die, and the actress Maria Aitken on drug importation charges.

In the 1990s his mastery of cross-examination, honed in the criminal courts, made him the advocate of choice for libel cases. A leading QC, Anthony Scrivener, described him as "simply the best cross-examiner in the business".

Jani Allan, the South African journalist who sued the People over an article suggesting she had had an affair with the neo-Nazi leader Eugene Terre Blanche, told him from the witness box: "Whatever the award for libel, being cross-examined by you would not make it enough money."

Mr Carman summed up his role in a libel case: "You have the privilege and the responsibility of pulling the curtain back a little on the private and personal lives of people in the public eye. You learn that we are all mortal, we all have personal problems, personal strengths and weaknesses."

He had a string of successes representing the media against celebrities including Gillian Taylforth, the East Enders actress who sued over allegations that she had oral sex with her boyfriend in a layby.

He enjoyed his last high-profile victory last December, defending the Harrods owner Mohamed al Fayed in a libel action brought by the former Tory MP Neil Hamilton, over allegations that he took cash for parliamentary questions.

Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, said Mr Carman had "destroyed" Mr Hamilton in the witness box. "Instead of playing to the other lawyers or the judge, he played straight to the jury. What he was brilliant at was making the case accessible to the jury." Last year he represented the Guardian in the ill-fated lawsuit by Jonathan Aitken which led to the former Tory minister's jailing for perjury and perverting the course of justice. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: "George Carman was every editor's dream barrister, quick-witted, down to earth, funny and fearless.

"Being cross-examined by George was like facing Courtney Walsh on an uneven pitch in fading light. It was not a comfortable experience. He will be badly missed."

Schools hit by teacher recruitment crisis

Schools hit by teacher jobs crisis

Rebecca Smithers, education correspondent
Wednesday August 30, 2000
The Guardian

Teaching unions yesterday warned of the worst recruitment crisis ever to grip British classrooms, with thousands of pupils due to return to understaffed schools next week with no permanent teacher.

In London, where the problem is particularly acute, the government yesterday acknowledged the worsening situation by announcing measures to attract more trainees to inner city schools, including a doubling of the number of places for prospective teachers to train "on the job" and financial help with housing.

The Department for Education and Employment said new figures to be published next month will reveal 1,020 teacher vacancies in London in January this year - the highest on record. The vacancy rate for London is 1.9%, compared with 0.6% for the rest of England.

Teachers' leaders warned of the educational damage to children of a constant stream of supply teachers - often from abroad - as a growing number of London boroughs are forced to recruit staff from around the world. Tomorrow more than 20 teachers from Australia will be given a mayoral welcome in Croydon, south London, before starting work in 21 of the borough's primary and secondary schools next week. Other London boroughs such as Greenwich and Hackney are seeking recruits from New Zealand, Canada and Dubai, in order to attract more ethnic minority staff.

John Dunford, the general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said: "The recruitment crisis is the worst we have seen. We are no longer talking about just London, but also Birmingham, Nottingham, Hull and Manchester.

"Hundreds of head teachers are facing the new term with large levels of vacancies, particularly at secondary school in the shortage subjects of maths and modern languages. Questions must be asked about what this does for continuity of education for youngsters, particularly those about to take important exams."

Yesterday, announcing an extra £4m grant to double the number of places for teachers to train on the job in London without going back to college, the education and employment secretary David Blunkett said: "We are determined to help schools in the capital fill their vacancies. The package I'm announcing today will make teaching in London a more financially viable propo sition and make more newly-qualified teachers available to teach in the capital". A returners scheme will also aim to persuade qualified teachers to return to the profession, perhaps after having a family, while teaching staff are to be included in the new £250m Starter Homes Initiative providing housing help for key public service workers.

Ralph Tabberer, chief executive of the teacher training agency, said: "We're clear that there is a problem in London, but we have a buoyant economy which makes graduate recruitment tough. The new £6,000 training 'salaries' for students starting postgraduate courses in September have led to a huge increase in applications for these courses."

But David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, com mented: "It is an absolute scandal that in the year 2000, an advanced industrial country like England should have to go to the old colonies to recruit teachers that we simply can't find from within our own resources because we don't give the profession the recognition it deserves.

"The national picture is worse, London is dire and the south-east is extremely difficult. The market for good graduates is so competitive that unless the government is far more radical with its ideas, it is always going to be outmanoeuvred by other professions which are recruiting the graduates we need in teaching".

Nigel de Gruchy, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers, added: "The government is simply propping up a shaky building with these measures."

Camelot wins legal review

Lottery operator will have its day in court, but is denied injunction halting Branson talks

John Cassy
Wednesday August 30, 2000
The Guardian

Camelot yesterday won the first round of its legal battle to hold on to the National Lottery against regulators who have ruled it out of the running for the next licence to operate the game.

A high court judge granted Camelot permission to seek a judicial review of the lottery commission's decision to negotiate solely with Sir Richard Branson's People's Lottery and allow him time to improve his pitch even though both bidders had failed to meet regulators' requirements.

However, Camelot was denied an injunction to halt its rival's talks until after the review. The judge also warned that even if the courts found that the decision to exclude Camelot from talks was unfair, the commission had already decided that Sir Richard's bid was "more favourable" and Camelot should not expect "significant relief".

A hearing for the judicial review has been scheduled for September 15.

Both sides claimed victory from the court proceedings.

"We're absolutely thrilled," said Camelot's chief executive designate, Dianne Thompson. "The decision to seek judicial review was taken with the full support of shareholders and Camelot's 800 staff who strongly believe the national lottery commission's decision to be unfair."

Camelot underlined its determination to hold on to its contract by offering to buy the UK arm of US lottery operator GTech and install its own management. Concerns about the propriety of GTech's software was one of the key concerns cited by regulators in explaining their decision to reject Camelot's application to run the lottery for seven years from October 2001.

Both the People's Lottery and the lottery commission said they expected Camelot's court bid to fail.

"We remain confident we followed the correct procedures and came to the correct decision," a commission spokesman said.

A People's Lottery spokesman said they were delighted the court had not upheld Camelot's application for an injunction. "We can now concentrate on working with the commission to resolve the outstanding issues over the next month."

Judge Justice Elias said there were clearly arguable points which Camelot was entitled to bring to the court at a full hearing. However, regulators had found the rival bid "more favourable than that from Camelot in the sense that it would provide more money for public activities and so forth".

"It seems to me that goes to the question of whether judicial review is really appropriate at all in this case and whether Camelot can expect any substantial relief even if they were to win at the substantive hearing," he said.

Ms Thompson said Camelot had agreed with G-Tech to purchase its lottery software and take over its UK operation and staff, giving Camelot independence from the US firm.

GTech, whose shares have slumped by 16% this month, said yesterday that it was taking several steps to revitalise the company. The Rhode Island based company will fire around 175 staff, about 4% of its workforce, and spend around $45m (£30.6m) revamping its operations, said the chairman, Bruce Turner, who was brought in recently following the resignations of GTech's chairman and chief executive, William O'Connor, and chief operating officer, Steven Nowick.

They quit shortly after it emerged that GTech had kept secret from Camelot a software glitch that resulted in thousands of winners in Britain being over or underpaid.

Despair grips Russia as disaster becomes a drab, daily affair

Ian Traynor in Moscow
Tuesday August 29, 2000
The Guardian

Two days into the towering inferno that blanked out Moscow television screens and deprived 10m Muscovites of their daily soap opera fix, the pinnacle of Europe's tallest structure was wobbling last night - a cruel symbol of how Russia's once soaring ambitions are tumbling into hubris and humiliation.

The Ostankino television tower, rising 540 metres (1,771ft) to dominate the capital's skyline, was until Sunday a monument to Russian power, prestige and hi-tech can-do, just as - until two weeks ago - the Kursk nuclear submarine was seen as a measure of Russia's military prowess.

Gutted by fire and in danger of collapsing into a mangled heap of steel, cable and ferro-concrete, the TV tower yesterday made yet another eloquent mockery of President Vladimir Putin's pledges to make Russia great again.

In contrast to his aloof, delayed reaction to the Kursk disaster, however, Mr Putin was quick yesterday to label the TV tower blaze a metaphor for the state of the nation.

"This emergency highlights the condition of our vital facilities as well as of the entire nation," he declared. "Only economic development will enable us to prevent such calamities in the future."

Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, said at first there was no risk of the tower collapsing, before changing tack and warning of "a large danger". The wobbling spire of the secular cathedral was not a problem, argued Anvar Shamuzafarov, chief of the national construction committee, as 300 firefighters finally extinguished the blaze last night. "All deviations are within the norm," he said.

But a Moscow city surveyor said the tip of the tower was tilting 6ft off centre. The main fear was that the 149 steel cables holding up the slender 33-year-old concrete structure could buckle and send at least parts of it crashing.

"The cables are weakened, but not broken," said Vyacheslav Mulishkin, deputy head of the Russian fire department.

There are few prouder symbols in Moscow of once-hailed Soviet supremacy than the Ostankino tower. Erected in 1967 at the height of the arms and space race with the US and to mark the Russian revolution's birthday, the north Moscow monument, with its revolving Seventh Heaven restaurant commanding panoramic views of the city, instantly overtook New York's Empire State Building as the world's tallest structure.

That was then. Ten years of post-Soviet meltdown, retreat from empire, mass impoverishment and colossal corruption have turned Russia into a vast accident waiting to happen.

The heyday of the Soviet space effort has given way to a crisis where the Mir space station is on its last legs, forever being patched up, and open to commercial offers from abroad. Latest estimates suggest it needs hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent it falling from its orbit and crashing to earth.

August is habitually Russia's cruellest month and this year illustrates the rule - a bomb in the heart of Moscow, the sinking of the Kursk, the towering inferno. Last August brought more bombs in the city and the start of the Chechen war. The previous August brought the financial crash. And so on.

But while the submarine sinking convulses Russia with grief and hijacks the world's emotions, and the dramatic pictures of the tower fire dominate the global TV screen, the sad fact of contemporary Russia is that disaster has become a drab and daily fixture. Yesterday alone, in addition to the Ostankino blaze, there were two booby-trap bombs in Grozny, the Chechen capital, a methane gas explosion at a mine in the Urals, and the bodies of two young conscripts were found north of Moscow. They had just shot themselves after going awol from their units.

For the professional catastrophists employed by the government's ministry of emergencies come the predictions that endemic bungling, combined with lack of money, will lead to radiation and toxic alerts in the years ahead, as well as air crashes, pipeline ruptures and building collapses.

Last week the Izvestiya newspaper reported that more than 1,000 servicemen die every year in peacetime accidents. The military prosecutor's office puts the toll from training mishaps, exploding ordnance and vehicle crashes at 1,100, though activist mothers campaigning for better conditions for their conscript sons put the figure at triple that. "Natural wastage," the Russian military calls it.

The daily litany of misfortune generates alarmist, populist politics playing on paranoia, conspiracy theories and fear.

In the wake of the Kursk disaster, a "red-brown" group of nationalist and communist politicians, writers and editors issued a manifesto for "national salvation" to combat Russia's "spiritual paralysis and despair. In these days of mourning, we are very clearly aware of the scale of the trouble into which Russia has been plunged," they proclaimed. "Our people have been waging a great war for a decade, losing one million of our population every year, and leaving burning cities, blown-up apartment buildings, crashed airplanes, sunken ships, and devastated, depopulated regions, as well as countless graves of our compatriots behind on the battlefield."

Russia was at "war for the right to call itself Russia, to control the territory between three oceans, to speak its native language, to worship its holy things, and to honour its heroes and forebears... trying with its last strength to put ships out to sea and squadrons in the air, to pump oil and natural gas, to heat the houses, educate the children, nurse the orphans, and to keep faith in its sovereignty and inviolability, and in the inevitable Russian Victory".

Rather than victory, the current mood is one of demoralised defeatism. Even in the holiday season dozens of people are committing suicide; picking and eating poison mushrooms or bingeing on vodka and then drowning themselves in Moscow's rivers and lakes.

President Putin's appeal to Russians is that he represents to them the best option for fashioning order from this chaos, stability from mayhem. But while he promises a restoration of greatness, he also told the grieving relatives of the Kursk crewmen last week that Russia had to learn to live within its means. And while the 118 were entombed in the submarine at the bottom of the Barents sea, the president debated Russia's brain-drain with prominent scientists and told them that only one in 20 businesses in the country were using modern equipment.

And if navy manpower and equipment were not up to mounting an effective rescue for the 118 seamen on the Kursk, so the 300 firefighters in northern Moscow yesterday were struggling to reach at least two people trapped in a lift about 1,000ft up the tower. As many as four people may have died in the gutted structure.

All the evidence yesterday suggested that the conflagration had been sparked by negligence and refusals to heed warnings. The fire department said that even when first built, the tower had failed to satisfy the safety regulations. An inspection in May resulted in it being denied the required safety paperwork since its power supply system was 30% overloaded, making the kind of short circuit that occurred on Sunday afternoon virtually inevitable.

Europe fails to stem rising drug tide

Traffickers are defeating overstretched police, US says

Ewen MacAskill and Rob Evans
Tuesday August 29, 2000
The Guardian

Europe is losing the war against drugs, according to intelligence reports from the US Drug Enforcement Administration obtained by the Guardian.

The reports reveal dramatic increases in drug production - from poppy crops used to make heroin in Afghanistan, to the manufacture of ecstasy in the Netherlands - and police forces stretched thin while trying to cope with Europe's porous borders.

The drug traffickers have been so successful that they have compiled huge hidden stockpiles throughout western and eastern Europe to ensure an uninterrupted supply.

An increase in drug seizures throughout Europe and Asia is interpreted not as effective policing, but as a sign of increasing volumes.

The DEA is especially critical of the policies of the Netherlands government, expressing scepticism about the effectiveness of its liberal approach. It describes the Netherlands as "perhaps the most important drug trafficking and transiting area in Europe". Trends in the drug trade, it says, undermine the Dutch government's policy of discriminating between "soft" and "hard" drugs.

DEA reports on 10 countries, from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Albania, Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Netherlands, were obtained by the Guardian during the past six months through the US Freedom of Information Act. They provide the most up-to-date information on the changing supply routes from the golden crescent countries - Afghanistan and Pakistan - to Europe.

The traditional route through the Balkans was disrupted by conflict throughout the 1990s, particularly the war in Kosovo last year. While variations on the route, using Croatia and Macedonia, have been adopted, much of that trade has shifted to the north.

Routes that emerged after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 are now witnessing the biggest volume of drug trafficking, especially through the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.

The DEA emphasises that the lifting of border restrictions within the European Union under the Schengen agreement, which Britain opted out of, has made life easier for drug traffickers.

"Although this agreement is advantageous for trade, it is also attractive to drug traffickers," the report says.

In one especially pessimistic passage, the DEA concludes that drug traffickers have built up stockpiles that allow them to ensure smooth supplies. "In the last few years, heroin has been increasingly stockpiled in some western and eastern European locations, enabling west European travellers to take delivery of the drug closer to home," it says.

"Turkish heroin trafficking organisations work in collusion with nationals from eastern Europe who have established heroin depots to store large quantities of heroin and release it on demand.

"These storage facilities ensure a steady, uninterrupted drug supply to west European consumers."

A report on the Netherlands, prepared by the intelligence division of the DEA and dated June 2000, says that Amsterdam is "rather unique in that every type of drug-smuggling and distribution organisation is represented for strategic and logistical purposes. It is an organisational centre, a central brokerage point and a safe haven."

Among the 100 groups which are active in drug trafficking in Amsterdam are Turks, Colombians, Kurds, Chinese, Nigerians, Israelis, Moroccans, British and Irish.

The Netherlands is the world's biggest producer of ecstasy, a "designer drug" that is a mixture of amphetamine and mescaline. The DEA says: "The United States is increasingly a target of MDMA [ecstasy] traffickers. Quantities of ecstasy tablets are routinely smuggled to the US by air courier or in postal or express-mail packages.

The DEA's Hague office recorded the seizure of more than 3.5m ecstasy tablets between January and October 1999 destined for the US market (seized in both the United States and Europe).

The Netherlands is also the main source in Europe for amphetamines, with virtually all shipments going to Britain, Germany or Scandinavia.

The DEA also estimates that 75% of the heroin arriving in the Netherlands is for onward shipment throughout Europe and north America.

In contrast with the official approach of the Netherlands government, which differentiates between hard and soft drug traffickers, the DEA notes: "Dutch hashish traffickers are increasingly distributing heroin, cocaine and amphetamine to other countries. This 'poly-drug' activity is being encountered more and more frequently."

Smuggling is carried out by rail, air and post, but mainly by road in private cars, commercial buses and - the most popular method - in large container trucks.

The heroin trail begins in Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium. Although a reduction in the amount of land being cultivated for poppies is predicted for this year, the trend in the volume of opium production has been steadily upwards. Production has risen by 33% in the past three years, according to US estimates, and 80% of illegal opiate products in Europe come from Afghanistan.

The traditional route for heroin trafficking was through Pakistan and Iran, but the lat ter has become more problematic. The Iranian government has sent its troops into bloody battles with increasingly sophisticated drug traffickers from Afghanistan, so the traffickers have moved their routes north.

The DEA says: "Reports of heroin shipments north from Afghanistan through the central Asian states to Russia have increased. Tajikistan is reported to be a favourite destination for both opium and heroin shipments."

Russia acts as both a consumer and transit point.

The usual destination for shipments from the central Asian states is Turkey, which "plays a significant role in the conversion of opiates from source countries in south-west Asia and the trans-shipment of heroin to the worldwide market, particularly Europe".

It is estimated that four to six metric tonnes of heroin is either processed or transits through Turkey each month.

Relatives try to cash in on Bokassa's palace may join tourist trail

Former African emperor's impoverished offspring attempt to open home to tourists

Lucy Jones in Berengo
Tuesday August 29, 2000
The Guardian

The crumbling palace of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the cannibalistic self-styled emperor of the Central African Republic, has seen better days.

Summer rains flood the secret underground quarters of the "imperial court", located in a palm-tree grove 50 miles from the country's decrepit capital, Bangui.

Madame Bokassa's Italian bathroom tiles are chipped and the kitchen where chefs allegedly cooked the emperor's political rivals, often serving them to visiting foreign dignitaries, is alive with rats.

The bedroom in which Bokassa slept, supposedly surrounded by piles of gold and diamonds, still bears the bullet holes of the French, who stormed the palace when they ousted him in 1979. A huge building resembling a ship, which was home to the president's spies, stands empty.

But all this may change. The 62 children of Emperor Bokassa I, who were once the elite of this impoverished country but who now live in rags in the palace grounds, want to turn the building into a tourist attraction.

"We are very poor. The palace is all we've got left," said Jean Mboma, a grandson of Bokassa.

The Central African Republic attracts few tourists - only 4,000 last year. Even the hardiest of backpackers are deterred by the prevalence of banditry and the lack of anything interesting to see or do .

But relatives of Bokassa, who died in 1996, and some government officials believe it is not only foreign visitors who can benefit from visiting Bokassa "attractions". Central Africans need to know their history too, they say.

"He is an important character in the development of our country. We need to preserve that history, whether it's good or bad," said Albertine Dounia, head of the national museum in Bangui.

Expatriates recall Bokassa's ruinous 13-year reign with fondness. "Things worked under Bokassa. The roads were good and the country was safe. The Central African Republic at that time was Africa's best kept secret," said one diplomat. Indeed, the former French president Giscard d'Estaing enjoyed hunting trips with Bokassa.

Central Africans often cite the university, sports stadium and sparse network of roads as achievements of the Bokassa era. But not everybody remembers with nostalgia the ruler who clubbed to death several children and who spent the equivalent of his country's annual GNP on an extravagant coronation.

Residents of Kolongo, the location of one of Bokassa's villas, said that living next to the dictator was terrifying. "My brother, who was a teacher, was walking home one night past the palace grounds. He was taken inside. We never saw him again. It was a frightening time," said Sima Fugaston, who makes a living selling the tall grasses which grow in the derelict den of the lions the president once kept.

"He used to scoop up beggars in his plane and drop them into the river," recalled a university professor.

Exhibitions on Bokassa are outlawed in the country and his belongings, such as his gold-plated bed, are in the national museum's basement.

"This is a sensitive subject," said Pierre N'Dickini, director general of tourism. "Any exhibition or restoration of Bokassa's properties needs to be done properly. This will take time."

Bokassa's family want to open the palace straight away. They have written to international tourist bodies to request assistance and are petitioning the government.

Constantin Ballangha, the president's younger brother and former security chief, said that money was not the only issue. "Central Africans need to judge Bokassa themselves. For too long we've been manipulated by the French. Opening the palace to the public is a start in allowing us to do this," he said.

Campaign to scrap selective schools revives

Rebecca Smithers, education correspondent
Tuesday August 29, 2000
The Guardian

The campaign against grammar schools is to be relaunched this week, after the government bowed to presure to make it easier for parents to abolish the surviving 165 selective schools.

Campaigners in Kent, which has the largest number of grammar schools, 33, will on Friday reactivate the petitioning process they were forced to abandon this year. The government is to relax some of the technical regulations to make it easier for campaigners to collect the signatures they need to force a vote among parents.

But the education secretary, David Blunkett, is expected to face fierce criticism of Labour's policy on grammar schools at a fringe meeting at the party conference at the end of next month. It has been accused of "sitting on the fence" by letting parents decide the schools' fate.

Speakers on the highly sensitive issue will include Lord Hattersley, a former Labour deputy leader, who is still outraged over Mr Blunkett's claim this year that his "read my lips" comment about being opposed to selection was a joke.

The campaign in Kent was suspended at the end of March because of "political confusion" over the issue, the complexity of the rules governing petitions and ballots, and a tight deadline. Campaigners needed to get 46,000 signatures of eligible parents for a vote to take place but are understood to have secured fewer than 7,000.

Their decision came hard on the heels of a vote in Ripon, North Yorkshire, where a two-thirds majority voted to retain their grammar school - the oldest in England - in the first ballot under legislation introduced by Labour.

Ballots are triggered by support from 20% of eligible parents. In Ripon it took campaigners six months to obtain the 1,800 signatures needed.

In Kent the parents of all children at the 600 primary schools are eligible to vote. The Stop the 11-plus (Step) campaign will on Friday ask the Electoral Reform Society for a threshold figure for the number of signatures they need in 2000/2001.

A Step spokesman, Martin Frey, said it had been told not to reprint the old petition forms, suggesting that changes were likely. A spokesman for the Department for Education and Employment confirmed technical changes such as allowing space to include up to 10 names on a petition form, rather than only three.

He said Mr Blunkett, in a Commons debate in June, had recognised the need for some practical changes, but there would be no amendments to the ballot system as enshrined in primary legislation.

Mr Frey said: "We are hoping for some meaningful changes that will make our Herculean task a little easier. Anything less than this and there will be hell for Mr Blunkett at the party conference."

The selective structure in Kent was damaging standards, not raising them, he added. "As the GCSE results showed last week, there are some comprehensives that are doing magnificently well, despite having some of the best pupils creamed off to the grammars."

He pointed to little-known changes that meant the "loss" of around 500 places from Kent grammar schools next year.

In addition, the 11-plus test is being changed, with a pass/fail-on-the-day format being introduced and consultation due to take place to bring it forward from January to September, when nearly all children would be only 10.

Big Brother could lead to fatal copycats, rivals claim

Matt Wells, media correspondent
Tuesday August 29, 2000
The Guardian

A BBC executive and a prominent psychologist have criticised the Channel 4 TV show Big Brother as a "freak show" that could spawn dangerous and even fatal copycat versions.

Phil Harding, head of editorial policy at the BBC, said the race to replicate the successful format would "mess up" participants' lives as rival shows tried to outperform each other.

And Raj Persaud, a psychologist and media commentator, said Big Brother's premise - filming a group for 24 hours a day and ejecting one each week - was based on exploiting ordinary people's lives.

Both were speaking at the Guardian Edinburgh international television festival, in a debate about the surveillance-TV format that is increasing in popularity around the world.

Peter Bazalgette, head of Bazal, the company that makes Big Brother for Channel 4, denied that any of the participants would be harmed. All had applied to take part in the show, and had been told of what to expect.

He also categorically denied that Nick Bateman, a contestant who was evicted for cheating, was a "plant" designed to spice up the show. While the programme was never intended to be a social experiment, he said: "It's riveting, it's revealing, and it's entertaining."

Mr Harding said while Channel 4 had taken responsible steps to care for the contestants, other producers might not be so scrupulous. Warning against the inevitable rash of copycat shows that will follow Big Brother, he said: "At the top of the curve, there will be dozens of shows. They will push it and push it, and it won't be a responsible company like Bazal, there will be a real plant, and it will really mess with people's lives. A killer application will become a real killer application."

Dr Persaud said the current series had already taken advantage of its contestants in a damaging way. "These people have been stereotyped. They have been turned into freaks."

Sada Walkington, the first contestant to be "evicted" in the process by which the 10 contestants are gradually eliminated, said the editing of the show was designed to cast certain people in defined roles, and did not show the flaws of others. "We weren't told that we would be manipulated as characters," she said. "I was typecast as the dippy hippy southern posh blonde. They were putting us up to be people we weren't."

She was critical of the programme's website, which contains written summaries of the activities in the house. "I find some of the stuff they wrote was really cutting, quite destructive of my personality."

Ms Walkington said the show's editors had promised not to broadcast scenes of participants in the shower unless there was a good reason to do so. Recently, she claimed, several had been shown showering for no reason other than to titillate the audience.

Ruth Wrigley, the show's executive producer, said after the debate that there were always "editorial reasons" for showing someone in the shower, such as to demonstrate that they had just got up. "I just got bored with exactly the same getting-up sequence," she said.

At an earlier session, David Liddiment, ITV's director of programmes, revealed that he had turned down Big Brother because he thought it would be boring. "Everyone has their turning down the Beatles story," he said.

In brief

Tuesday August 29, 2000
The Guardian

Well-wishers jammed phone lines to the Norfolk and Norwich hospital after hearing that Reggie Kray, the former East End gangster freed from jail on compassionate grounds last week, was too ill to go home. Kray, 66, who was serving life, has bladder cancer. The hospital is installing a separate line to take the calls.

The MoD's defence evaluation and research agency is studying the feasibility of a European space weather service to track hazards such as magnetic storms and man-made debris which threaten power grids and satellites. The Rutherford Appleton lab in Oxfordshire is leading the study.

Detectives hunting the killer of Heather Tell, 17, a dance student found asphyxiated on Saturday in a Tamworth park, yesterday interviewed her friends while continuing house inquiries and forensic tests.

Flooding on the East Coast line at Granthouse, Berwickshire, caused delays and diversions for southbound trains from Scotland. Passengers could use their GNER tickets for Virgin's west coast trains but were warned seats were scarse because of the bank holiday.

Ra, a 30ft solar-powered boat, is offering tourists "silent" cruises on the Norfolk Broads as an alternative to the environmentally damaging diesel craft.

Hauliers cut France's fuel lifeline

Jon Henley in Paris

Petrol stations around France ran dry yesterday as a countrywide blockade of refineries and fuel depots by road hauliers choked off supplies.

Drivers queued bumper-to-bumper at the dwindling number of stations still open by late afternoon, on the second day of the blockade, or drove miles looking for top-ups. In many regions, the authorities imposed a £15 limit per vehicle, or ordered attendants to serve only doctors, firefighters and the emergency services.

"It's mayhem and it's been like it all day," said Christophe Dupuis, a weary pump attendant at a supermarket petrol station in Stains, in the northern suburbs of Paris.

"Usually people spend about £15, now its £30 or £40. We're already out of unleaded. We've sold 12,000 litres since lunchtime, when the normal average would be 3,000."

As the beleaguered transport minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot, headed into late afternoon talks in Paris with the haulage firms, who are demanding a backdated 20% cut in fuel taxes to offset soaring world prices, oil company Total said that 70% of its 6,000 petrol stations were dry and the figure could reach 90% by the end of the evening.

The blockade is supported in many areas by taxi drivers, farmers, ambulance firms, driving schools and removal companies. "This is my fourth attempt to fill up," said Eric Bouchet, a plumber, queuing at the Stains station. "The others had run out of diesel. No fuel means no work."

Mr Gayssot had earlier said that the EU and the European central bank should signal to oil producers their discontent at prices that have hit a 10-year high of more than $30 a barrel.

"Europe as a bloc - and the ECB as well, because I'd like to hear it on this issue and not just on plans to raise interest rates - should show its determination to discuss the matter, including with the Opec countries," he said. "Things cannot carry on as they are."

The blockade of some 80 depots and refineries was inspired by the success of a fishermen's blockade of most French ports that stranded thousands of British tourists last week. That ended when the government agreed to generous compensation for fishermen, including cutting social security charges.

The lorry owners dismissed out of hand an offer of a 10% cut in state fuel taxes, made late on Monday night. "We can keep going for at least a week," said René Petit, head of the National Federation of Road Hauliers. "Hundreds of firms will go out of business before the year end unless their fuel bills fall."

The oil industry federation said the protesters, who needed only to park a couple of articulated lorries and a tractor or two outside a fuel depot's gates to cut off supplies, had blocked off all sources of wholesale fuel.

The blockade hit regional airports too, with officials at Nice and Mulhouse-Basel saying they had only enough aviation fuel left for one more day. Orly and Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airports in Paris were not affected as they are supplied by pipeline.

The hauliers say France's heavy fuel taxes, second only to Britain's in the EU, and high world prices mean they cannot compete internationally.

Science and the soul rendezvous at the Vatican

Philip Willan in Rome
Wednesday September 6, 2000
The Guardian

Having marked the turn of the millennium by apologising to many of its historic enemies, the Roman Catholic church has begun this week building bridges with one of the most obdurate: the world of rational thought and science.

Thousands of scientists will attempt to plumb the depths of the human soul and the mysteries of outer space in the quest for an amicable meeting of mind and matter.

The week-long Jubilee of the Universities reaches its climax on Saturday, when the Pope will meet the delegates.

Neuroscientists will have a chance to delve into the organic seat of the immortal soul when a three-day conference begins in the Vatican this morning.

Entitled Architectures of the Mind, Architectures of the Brain, the gathering will be addressed by luminaries such as Professor Richard Frackowiak of the Institute of Neurology in London and Professor Steven Pinker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Those hoping for a final solution in the battle between Hobbesian materialists, who recognise the soul only as an epiphenomenon of organised matter, and the Idealists, who deny the existence of the material world except as a creation of the knowing mind, may be disappointed.

"Studies of the soul are still in a pioneering stage," said Gabriele Miceli, a professor of neurology at the Catholic University in Rome, the organiser of the conference.

"These topics don't lend themselves to an experimental approach. We will be dealing with much more modest matters, such as the mechanisms and transformations of the brain and where they occur. We are a long way from understanding the soul or higher, philosophical thought."

Researchers attending a conference in Bologna - Science and Knowledge: Towards What Rationality? - will go even more boldly to the edges of the universe. The meeting will be addressed tomorrow by Professor Duccio Macchetto, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, on the possibility of finding life outside our planet.

Prof Macchetto, who is responsible for the Hubble space telescope programme, said a powerful enough telescope would eventually give scientists the chance to travel into the past and probe for the "Big Bang" origins of the universe.

A sufficiently potent instrument 2,000 light years away would be able to record the birth of Christ, he told the Rome daily La Repubblica.

"I'm afraid though you would need a lens as large as the solar system to get a good image of the child Jesus."

'Jerusalem should be a unified world capital'

Top Palestinian calls for special status if no deal is struck

Suzanne Goldenberg in Jerusalem
Wednesday September 6, 2000
The Guardian

On the eve of a last attempt by President Clinton to untangle the most vexing problem in the Middle East - the status of Jerusalem - one of Yasser Arafat's most trusted lieutenants said yesterday the Palestinians would be willing to make bold compromises on their claims to the holy city.

In a speech to the European parliament in Strasbourg, Ahmed Qureia said the Palestinians would support internationalising all of Jerusalem - including Arab East Jerusalem, occupied illegally by Israel since 1967 - should the two sides fail to reach a final settlement in the crucial weeks ahead.

"Unless we can reach an agreement on Jerusalem, I have to declare that both parts of Jerusalem east and west should be a unified international Jerusalem ... not just the capital of Israel or Palestine, but a capital of the world," said Mr Qureia, who is speaker of the Palestinian parliament.

The proposal revives a formula put forward by the UN in 1947 and since repeatedly rejected by Israel, and opposed by the Palestinians, though it still remains part of European foreign policy.

President Clinton is to begin talks today with Israel's prime minister, Ehud Barak, and Mr Arafat, meeting each separately on the sidelines of the millennium summit in New York.

The meetings at the Waldorf Astoria have caused some to hope that during the hubbub of the three-day summit of 150 world leaders, Mr Clinton will somehow produce the miracle that eluded him in two weeks of concentrated negotiations at Camp David last July.

Mr Clinton has likened the experience of those talks to having teeth extracted without painkillers, and strongly criticised Mr Arafat for his unwillingness to match Israeli compromises on Jerusalem.

Some Palestinians hope that yesterday's proposal from such a senior figure as Mr Qureia, popularly known as Abu Ala and seen as a possible successor to the ailing Mr Arafat - could relieve some of the pressure on the Palestinian leader during his New York talks.

"He said it to try to throw forward an idea that would be acceptable among Europeans and internationally," said Nabil Khatib, director of the media centre of Bir Zeit University in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

"The Palestinians have a feeling that Israel is trying to give the impression that they [the Israelis] are the only ones who are making concessions. Abu Ala is trying to show that the Palestinian people are also ready for concessions, but not one-sided, and not concessions to Israel. The concession is to have a new kind of solution."

Accepting current Israeli proposals on Jerusalem, which would restrict Palestinian sovereignty to a few outer neighbourhoods of the city, would be impossible for Mr Arafat to justify to his people.

"Mr Barak wants everyone to comply with his version of how things should be: occupiers' law," said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian legislative council. "But the issue is not just the holy sites, the issue is Jerusalem as a city." Real solutions were needed, not just symbolic ones.

Mr Clinton is to use the meetings with Mr Arafat and Mr Barak to see whether to hold a second summit, possibly in October. But American officials say they first need to see signs of further progress since July's Camp David talks. "Unless there is forward progress, unless we see a decisive way forward from this week ... this [reaching a deal] gets more and more difficult," the US national security adviser, Sandy Berger told reporters.

So far signs of progress do not appear forthcoming. Israeli and Palestinian officials have tried to dampen expectations of a breakthrough before September 13, the latest deadline for a final settlement.

Israeli officials say it is up to Mr Arafat to react to proposals since Camp David which blur the issue of sovereignty over the holy places in the old walled city of Jerusalem. "Arafat's moment of truth has come and the Palestinian leader must make political decisions rather than turn the negotiations into a bickering match," the Israeli foreign ministry said on Monday.

Instead, they are trying to press Mr Arafat to accept a dispensation for Jerusalem, offered since Camp David, that would dodge the question of ownership over the sanctified ground in the old walled city by declaring God the sovereign of holy places.

The US version of these proposals would have Israel controlling the Wailing Wall, the holiest shrine of Judaism, and the Palestinians in control of the Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam, with God the sovereign of the passage between them.

Mr Arafat has come under mounting pressure from the US and Israel to accept the proposals, which are endorsed by Egypt and Jordan. After the last Camp David talks ended without agreement, Mr Arafat went to more than two dozen countries looking for support but found himself being urged to hold off on declaring a Palestinian state on September 13. On that, Mr Arafat appears to have yielded, and a meeting of Palestinian legislators in Gaza at the weekend is likely to support postponing such a declaration until later in the year. "September 13 is not a sacred date," said Faruq Qaddumi, a senior Palestinian official.

But time is working against a settlement. The US presidential election campaign is expected to occupy much of Mr Clinton's energy from now until the vote in November, and Mr Barak is barely hanging on to power. Stripped of a parliamentary majority, his government is surviving thanks to the summer recess in the Israeli knesset.

If Mr Barak fails to reach a deal with Mr Arafat, he may resort to a new coalition with the rightwing Likud party, which opposes the compromises he offered at Camp David. Yesterday Mr Barak was hedging his bets, telephoning the Likud party leader, Ariel Sharon, from New York even as he awaited today's meeting with Mr Clinton.

Clinton backs reform of UN peacekeeping role

Wednesday September 6, 2000
The Guardian

President Bill Clinton will give his backing today to a proposal to reform the UN's peacekeeping activities after their disastrous failures in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Sierra Leone.

In the opening speech of the three-day UN millennium summit he will tell the leaders of more than 150 countries that the US endorses the establishment of a permanent peacekeeping high command to replace the present slow, ad hoc arrangement.

But wrangling over who will meet the peacekeeping bill continued behind the scenes. The changes will run into millions of pounds and the US is desperately trying to reduce its share of peacekeeping costs.

The US endorsement virtually guarantees acceptance of the peacekeeping reforms, published last month, drawn up by a UN panel headed by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister.

In Srebrenica, the UN was humiliated when its peacekeepers stood by while more than 7,000 men and boys were massacred by Serbs. A more catastrophic failure occurred in Rwanda, where up to a million were massacred.

In Sierra Leone this year, 500 UN peacekeepers were taken hostage by a rebel force.

As well as a permanent high command, the reform includes giving peacekeepers clearer-cut mandates and "robust" rules of engagement. Such changes might have helped in the Balkans, where UN peacekeepers found themselves unable to intervene because they did not have a mandate.

But the UN reforms are in danger of being overshadowed by a series of meetings Mr Clinton is holding on the sidelines to try to revive the Middle East peace talks. Today he will have separate meetings with the Palestinian authority president, Yasser Arafat, and the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak.

Sporadic demonstrations were held on the eve of the summit. Four Iranians were arrested for throwing yellow paint and another for disorderly conduct outside the hotel of the Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami.

The city has given permits for 91 demonstrations during the summit, but there has been no sign of a repeat of the protests by anti-globalisation activists which caused mayhem in Seattle last year and in Washington earlier this year.

Many of the leaders of the trade unions and environmental groups involved in those clashes have laid down their banners and teargas masks for the weekand are talking to representatives of big business and government at an alternative conference being staged in the city.

More than 1,000 representatives from round the world gathered at the New York Hilton, about a mile from the UN headquarters, yesterday for the opening of the State of the World Forum.

It is a diverse gathering, bringing together politicians, academics, soldiers, New Age spiritualists, representatives of multinational companies, as well as the trade union leaders and the environmental lobby.

Jim Garrison, its organiser, said the Seattle protests had been beneficial in bursting the euphoria about globalisation.

Mr Garrison, 49, an American academic and veteran campaigner against the nuclear arms race, said the forum was about channelling the protests which had been useful in focusing attention on the problems of globalisation.

He added: "We have to move from protest to engagement."

The opening day of the forum brought together figures such as John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO trade union organisation, George Soros, the financier, and Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president.

Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister, who will speak at the UN millennium summit, made the trip across Manhattan to address the alternative forum.

Other leaders scheduled to attend include Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, and Olusegun Obsanjo, the Nigerian president.

Mr Garrison said globalisation was ruthless, and questions such as the unequal distribution of wealth and the impact on the environment had to be discussed. He added that talks did not mean that future protests were ruled out.

 North Korea announced yesterday that it had pulled out of the UN summit after a confrontation between its delegation and US security officials while they were passing though Frankfurt airport.

The deputy foreign minister, Choe Su-hon, said the delegation decided to return home after "rude and provocative" treatment by US security staff, whom he accused of strip-searching members of the presidential entourage.

Gestures not enough to teach the world

The right to education
Larry Elliott and Victoria Brittain
Friday September 8, 2000
The Guardian

We have been here before. The high-level conferences, the firm commitments, the hand-wringing, the international agreements that promise the earth and deliver next to nothing - all have been part of the backdrop to the campaign for debt relief. Now there is a threat that the campaign for universal primary education could go the same way.

Today is international literacy day and there is plenty for the world community to do. Out of a global population of 6bn, 880m adults are illiterate, two thirds of them women, most of them in south Asia. The next generation of people that will be unable to read and write has already been born unless action is taken speedily to turn fine words into action.

It is four months since the UN conference in Dakar that promised that every child would be inside a classroom by 2015 and the signs are not promising. In theory, the conference was a step forward, committing every country in the developing world to produce an action plan for education and pledging governments in the developed world to ensure that the plans would not go unimplemented for lack of cash - around $8bn (£5.6bn) a year.

The World Bank is now trying to put together a global initiative, but as is the way with global initiatives, this is taking time. And time for a child out of school in sub-Saharan Africa is a commodity that quickly loses its value.

One of the reasons it is taking time is because of the attitude of some western governments, including Britain. The aid agency Oxfam called for a dedicated global action fund to ensure that the Dakar declaration did not go the way of the Jontien declaration of 1990, which called for universal education by 2000 but failed to marshal the necessary resources to turn the vision into reality.

Britain's Clare Short is a strong opponent of earmarking special funds for education, arguing that the problem for developing countries is not a lack of finance but a lack of the proper policies. She believes calls for a fund are simply "gesture politics".

Tony Blair, who has pledged that the government's "education, education, education" manifesto should apply to the whole world, failed to move the subject up the agenda of the Group of 7 at its meeting in Okinawa in July. Instead the G7 focussed on closing the digital divide between North and South: the gap in access to new technology between rich and poor countries.

This is a worthwhile objective. One third of the world's population live in countries which have fewer telephone lines in total than Italy. Around 90% of telecommunications traffic takes place between rich countries, while 50% of the world's population have never made a phone call. As the knowledge economy takes root in the coming years, this lack of access will take a heavy toll and widen the divide still further.

Bringing telephone lines and computers to poor countries sounds like an excellent idea - particularly to those hi-tech companies lobbying for wider access for their products - but it is putting the cart before the horse. A computer is not much use to a child who cannot read.

Without determined international action these children, their families and their countries will be marginalised in poverty, probably irrevocably, and Fortress Europe will increasingly find it impossible to keep the most desperate individuals out.

And all these figures underestimate the full extent of the literacy problem, perhaps by as much as half. They are based on school attendance figures, and ignore the problem of the numbers of children who leave school functionally illiterate. In Africa, where increasing numbers of children will be out of school unless there is emergency action by western institutions, a new generation of adult illiterates is set to create a dangerously marginalised section of society and fire the wars of deprivation like Sierra Leone's.

Even in the industrialised world illiteracy is a problem, with almost a quarter of young adults in the US having difficulty reading all but the simplest of texts. In the developed as in the undeveloped world low literacy invariably means poverty and the spiralling problems of drugs, violence and insecurity which go with it.

French chaos as fuel tax blockades spread

Jon Henley in Paris
Friday September 8, 2000
The Guardian

France's fuel tax standoff escalated further yesterday as serious fissures began to appear in the ruling coalition and the European commission threatened legal action to maintain the free movement of goods.

With some 80 % of the country's petrol stations either empty, under tight rationing or reserved for the emergency services, taxi drivers became the latest group to join the campaign for fuel tax cuts, causing traffic chaos in more than a dozen cities with massed "go-slow" protests.

Farmers declared there was no prospect of them withdrawing from the barricades they are helping road hauliers to man outside 125 oil refineries and fuel depots around France.

Dodging riot police, several hundred farmers succeeded in blocking the entrance to the Channel tunnel at Calais late yesterday afternoon, leading to angry confrontations with motorists. The blockade was later temporarily lifted to allow furious British holidaymakers on to the shuttle.

Other farmers drove tractors and trailers on to train tracks outside Strasbourg and Bordeaux, bringing high-speed TGVs in the east and west to a standstill for most of the day.

Nantes, Nice and Rennes airports reported they had all but run out of aviation fuel, school meals went undelivered in the Vosges, emergency-only petrol stations went dry in Brittany, and police were called in to guard requisitioned pumps in Lyons.

For the first time in the four-day blockade, the French capital began to feel the pinch. While surrounding fuel depots were largely kept open by armed riot police, Paris petrol stations began to run out of fuel, particularly diesel, in increasing numbers.

Furious at the fuel tax cuts already offered to the road hauliers, the Green party, a minority member of the Socialist-led coalition, warned the prime minister, Lionel Jospin, that it would react "forcefully" if any more concessions were made to road users.

"I back the cabinet that I am a member of, but I want to remind everyone that I joined it on the understanding that we would work for clean air and for moving away from road to rail transport," said the environment minister, Dominique Voynet.

She had demanded an urgent meeting with Mr Jospin and said the Greens "were not in this government in order to do the exact opposite of what we were elected to do".

Mr Jospin said on Wednesday night there would be no further negotiations with the hauliers and the government's offer was final.

In Brussels, the European commission sent a formal request to Paris "concerning a possible obstacle to the free movement of goods", spokesman Jonathan Todd said. France would be violating EU law if it did not ensure its frontiers and main routes were kept open to goods traffic, he said.

How Opec came back to haunt the west

Record demand and tighter supply have sent oil prices soaring but, unlike in the 70s, the producers may back down

Brian Whitaker and Larry Elliott
Friday September 8, 2000
The Guardian

Bill Clinton's message to crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was brief and to the point when they met yesterday. Unless the world's biggest oil producer shook some sense into the militant members of the Opec cartel, there was a risk of plunging the world economy into recession.

This week's Millennium Summit in New York has been the ideal time for some diplomatic arm-twisting, and the outgoing US president has taken full opportunity of the presence of 189 world leaders to spell out to the Saudis the consequences of turning up the heat on the big industrialised economies.

With rising energy costs casting a shadow over Al Gore's election hopes, halting the relentless rise in the oil price to its highest level in 10 years has become a key policy objective in Washington. Nor did Mr Clinton need to look very far for a world leader to support him. Jacques Chirac was also at the United Nations summit to give a first-hand account of how France is grinding to a halt as a result of the protests at rising petrol prices.

After years in the doldrums, Opec has now grabbed centre-stage once more. It is 27 years since the 11-nation cartel first came to public notice when its response to Israeli victories in the Yom Kippur war was to increase oil prices fivefold, triggering a period of stagflation - rising prices and lengthening dole queues - in the west.

Over the past 18 months it has again been flexing its muscles, agreeing to curb production as world demand for oil rises. As motorists have found to their cost, the result has been a sharp increase in petrol prices at the pump.

Prince Abdullah probably did not take much persuading at his meeting with Mr Clinton. The Saudis are well aware that a downturn in the west could cause a collapse in the oil price. Even so, they are likely to get some flak from other Opec members at the cartel's meeting in Vienna on Sunday, who say that the oil producers are being unfairly criticised for a problem caused by higher fuel taxes and refinery bottlenecks in the west.

A chart on its website headed "The rip-off race" cheekily compares the prices of a barrel of oil, a barrel of Coca Cola and a barrel of Perrier water. Needless to say, it shows that oil is a bargain, though perhaps less thirst-quenching.

Today, Opec has more muscle than ever before - at least in theory. Its share of worldwide production has increased from 36% to 41% over the last 10 years, and its share of proven reserves has increased from 67% to 78%. This trend, in the view of some analysts, is likely to continue.

But Opec's ability to use this muscle is limited because its members - Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela - have divergent interests and its decisions have to be based on consensus.

Oil-producing countries range from those which can barely produce enough for their own needs to those which are almost totally dependent on oil for their foreign exchange earnings.

The most dependent countries benefit from high prices but also need price stability. Drastic changes, up or down, hamper longer-term development and can mean re-drafting the national budget at short notice. Besides the Opec countries, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Oman and Mexico fall into this category.

Julian Lee, analyst at the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies, said yesterday that Sunday's discussions will not be about whether a production increase is needed, but by how much.

"It is all but certain that the situation will trigger an increase of 500,000 barrels a day, which will be fairly generally accepted," he said. "But Saudi Arabia will push for a bigger increase - because it sees this as being in its own long-term interests and those of Opec generally."

The Saudis are well-placed to do this because they hold about two-thirds of Opec's spare capacity which is estimated at 3m barrels a day. The Saudis would to some extent be shielded from a fall in oil prices by revenue from their extra production.

But other Opec countries - Algeria, Iran, Libya, Nigeria and Venezuela - would lose money as a result of lower prices because they have little spare capacity.

Venezuela, which currently holds the presidency of Opec, is at the forefront of the reluctant faction. At 3.1m barrels a day it is Latin America's largest producer - but almost totally dependent on oil. Each $1 drop in oil prices costs it about $1bn (£665m) a year.

Its charismatic president, Hugo Chavez, has called an Opec summit in Caracas for later this month, and argues that the real issue is not high prices, but fair prices.

"We understand that they [consumers] start to feel uneasy when crude oil prices reach $30 a barrel, but they can imagine how it must have been for us when it fell to $8," he said recently.

Coming at a critical moment in the Middle East peace process and in the midst of an American presidential election campaign, the argument over oil prices has acquired a political dimension.

The Americans have been shouting more loudly than usual, and the perception that this was motivated, at least in part, by the electoral needs of the Democrats caused some resentment.

Since then, the issue has been further complicated by American efforts to drum up support for its proposals on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. On the thorny question of Jerusalem, the Arab governments generally view the US as oversympathetic towards Israel. This is not a particularly good moment for Arab governments to be seen kow-towing to the Americans.

Any decision to increase production will also have a built-in assumption that existing supplies will continue unabated. But with low stockpiles around the world, consumers have no real cushion against disruption of supplies from less dependable sources such as Iraq, Nigeria, Colombia and Angola.

Clinton wins oil pledge

Saudis to raise production as revolt on prices brings France to a halt

Larry Elliott, Charlotte Denny and Jon Henley in Paris
Friday September 8, 2000
The Guardian

Bill Clinton last night won a pledge from the world's biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, to halt the relentless rise in the price of crude which yesterday brought France to a halt and prompted fears of a global recession.

As UK petrol firms responded to the 10-year-high in oil prices by putting up fuel prices by 2p a litre, crown prince Abdullah said Saudi Arabia would raise production by 700,000 barrels a day in an effort to ease pressure on the west.

However, oil experts said the 3% increase in output would not be enough to bring crude oil prices to below $30 a barrel and motoring organisations warned that British drivers could soon expect to pay £4 for a gallon of petrol.

Speaking at the UN millennium summit in New York, President Clinton said he had put pressure on Saudi Arabia to take action ahead of Sunday's meeting of Opec - the 11-member oil producers' cartel.

"I told him I was very concerned that the price of oil is too high, not just for America but for the world," said Mr Clinton after his meeting with the crown prince. "If it was to cause a recession in any part of the world that would hurt the oil producing countries."

Large parts of France ran out of fuel yesterday as hauliers and farmers, more determined than ever to win big fuel tax cuts from the government, continued their four-day blockade of oil refineries and depots.

Angry farmers, already active on most of the 120 blockades up and down the country, successfully blocked the entrance to the Channel tunnel with their tractors, triggering scuffles with British tourists.

Around 50 British holidaymakers mounted a counter-blockade by blocking a lane being used by the authorities to allow French cars to trickle past the barricades, and threatened to cut off the main A16 motorway if they were not allowed to get through the blockade and go home. Under police escort, a convoy of British cars and coaches was eventually allowed through in the late afternoon.

A British police sergeant, who was part of the convoy but asked not to be named, said: "It seems we managed to outmanoeuvre them with a bit of British courage and some cunning. We played them at their own game and it worked. In the end it was quite a fun victory for all."

Another convoy member, Frank Davidson, 49, said: "This was as sweet a victory as Wellington over Napoleon at Waterloo. They didn't like it when we put up a fight."

While talks resumed late in the afternoon between the French transport minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot, and the two main hauliers' federations, the government reiterated that it would go no further than the 15% tax cut, worth £100m, it offered on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the European commission threatened legal action if the free movement of goods within the EU was disrupted.

As the protest spread, the hauliers, farmers, ambulance drivers and coach firms were joined by thousands of taxi drivers in massed "go-slow" processions that brought traffic to a halt in a dozen cities and caused motorway tailbacks.

At least three regional airports reported they would be out of aviation fuel by this morning. Wholesalers at the main Rungis market outside Paris said supplies of fresh fruit and vegetable were beginning to be affected and 80% of the country's petrol stations were either dry, subject to rationing of £15 per vehicle, or had been requisitioned for emergency service use only.

In the financial markets yesterday, the price of a barrel of crude oil eased back from a peak of $34.50 to $33.91. However, dealers said that most of the Saudi production increase had been anticipated by the markets and that prices were not likely to fall markedly.

They said Saudi Arabia was the key player in the crisis because it was the only Opec nation with the spare capacity to pump the extra oil needed to bring prices under control. But it can expect opposition from other Opec members who are enjoying extra revenues from the price surge from under $10 a barrel at the start of last year.

Lawrence Eagles, oil analyst at the City firm GNI Securities, said a harsh winter could boost demand by an extra 500,000 barrels a day, pushing prices still higher."You can't rule out $40 a barrel if Opec aren't prepared to act," he said.