PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, after having resigned as the leader of the Conservative Party, was challenged by Mr John Redwood, after he had resigned as the Secretary of State for Wales. Mr Nor- man Lamont, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, came out in favour of him. Lady Thatcher, a former Prime Minister, said: 'Both are sound Conservatives.' Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that Mr Redwood's poli- cies could keep the Tories out of office 'for a thousand years'. Mr Matthew Parris, the political commentator, reiterated his joke that Mr Redwood is a Vulcan, an inhabi- tant of the same planet as Mr Spock from Star Trek; Mr Redwood referred to this joke at a press conference. Mr Michael Portillo, the Secretary of State for Employ- ment, and Mr Michael Heseltine, who likes to call himself the President of the Board of Trade, are both expected to stand if a sec- ond round of voting takes place. Mean- while they declared their wholehearted sup- port for John Major. Mr Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, who had already announced that he would depart from the Cabinet the next time a reshuffle is made by whoever is Prime Minister, said that he did not want to stand for Parliament at the next general election. Lord Goschen said that the Government was committed to pri-
vatising 51 per cent of passenger traffic on the railways by next April. The Govern- ment announced plans for a voucher system for nursery education for four-year-olds. A White Paper proposed extending the right to buy to tenants of housing associations. A prisoner at Whitemoor prison threw a pan of hot chip-fat over a warder and seriously burnt him. Sainsbury and Tesco began a war to dominate the profit from large gro- cer's shops in Northern Ireland. England beat the West Indies at Lord's in a Test match for the first time since 1957. Hugh Grant, an actor, apologised after he was arrested in Sunset Boulevard and charged with performing a lewd act in a public place.
GENERAL Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, said he thought the war in Bosnia would go on for a long time. President Jacques Chirac, speaking in Cannes at a meeting of European Commu- nity leaders, said that he thought the siege of Sarajevo could be lifted by diplomatic efforts. A mortar shell hit a television cen- tre in Sarajevo used by foreign journalists. Donna Maguire was sentenced by a Ger- man court to nine years in prison for her part in the bombing of the British Barracks at Osnabruck; she had spent six years in jail while defending charges of which she was
found innocent. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was shot at when he visited Addis Ababa and flew back home to Cairo. The foreign minister of Burundi fled his country for South Africa. Nigeria provided itself with a new constitution but did not free Chief Mashood Abiola, the man generally regarded as having won most votes in the last election, which was annulled by military rule. Haiti had elections of a sort. Sheikh • Khalifa ben Hamad al-Thani was over- thrown as Emir of Qatar by his son, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. A Chinese deputy foreign minister called for the with- drawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon. The United Nations excised a passage from a book about Tibet quoting the Dalai Lama, apparently lest it offend .China. A British ship bound for Cambodia bearing more than £1 million-worth of cigarettes was taken by pirates, who headed for waters off China. China re-imprisoned Chen Ziming, a dissident it had imprisoned for 13 years for favouring democracy and had then let out for medical treatment. Volkswagen said that China could not depend on motor-cars to move its masses unless it wanted to cause an ecological catastrophe. Japanese and United States negotiators failed to agree on motor-car exports. Japan sent some free rice to North Korea, which is short of food. CSH
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