PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Right to roam An agreement was signed on Good Friday at the multi-party talks on Northern Ireland held at Stormont under the chair- manship of Senator George Mitchell. Pres- ident Clinton of the United States inter- vened at the last moment to allay Unionist fears that the Irish Republican Army and its supporters were not being required to disarm. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, 'I hope that the burden of history can at long last start to be lifted from our shoulders.' The agreement provides for a Northern Ireland Assembly of 108 mem- bers, six being elected by proportional rep- resentation from each constituency that sends an MP to Westminster. There are to be a First Minister and Deputy First Minis- ter (likely to be Mr David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionist party, and Mr John Hume, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party). In addition there will be a North-South ministerial council and a British-Irish council. Among other provisions is the release of terrorists by 2000; these include Patrick Magee, imprisoned for conspiring to murder Mrs Thatcher in the bombing of the Grand Hotel, Brighton. A copy of the agreement is to be sent to every household in North- ern Ireland before a referendum on it, both there and in the Republic, on 22 May. Mr Blair flew off to Saudi Arabia, via Cor- doba in Spain, where he and his wife stayed with Paco Peha, the guitarist. In Arabia he hoped to secure the release of two imprisoned British nurses. There were the worst floods for more than a century in the Welsh Marches and English Midlands. Mr Robin Cook married Mrs Gaynor Regan at Tunbridge Wells register office ten days before the date set for their wed- ding. Dorothy Squires, the singer, died, aged 83. Ian MacGregor, the chairman of the National Coal Board during the min- ers' strike of 1984-85, died, aged 85. The price of goods produced by British manu- facturers was found to have risen by only 0.3 per cent over the year to March, the lowest annual increase since July 1967. Mr John Birt, the director-general of the BBC, said he would stand down in the year 2000. Mr David Yeomans resigned as chief exec- utive of Milk Marque, the dairy farmers' co-operative; the average income of milk- producers has fallen by more than a third in the past year. More eggs were found to be infected with salmonella than before the health scare instigated by Mrs Edwina Currie, when millions of chickens were slaughtered.
MR SERGEI Kiriyenko failed to receive enough votes in the lower house of parlia- ment to confirm him as prime minister of Russia, but Mr Boris Yeltsin immediately renominated him. Mr Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb president, began to negotiate terms for his surrender to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The former president of Smith Africa, P.W. Botha, went on trial for refus- ing to appear before the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. Solidarity ended a ten-day strike at the Rudna copper mine, the largest in Poland, which produces 3.5 per cent of the world's copper output; the new private owners want to move 3,000 miners to more poorly paid jobs. In the United States NationsBank and Bank- America announced they would merge to form the biggest bank in the country. In Saudi Arabia more than 100 pilgrims died in a stampede during the haj to Mecca. Brunei was covered with choking haze from forest fires; 9,800 acres in Brunei and 571,800 acres in the neighbouring Indone- sian forests on Borneo have been burnt this year. A German camper died after he tried to light a cigarette at a campside lavatory and was blown up by methane seeping from a septic tank. Popular beach- es in Hong Kong were closed because of red tides of swarming algae that have already killed half the farmed fish in the former colony.
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