PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
Farewell performance. In his resignation statement Mr Michael Mates, the former Northern Ireland Minis- ter, claimed that 'improper pressure' had been exercised by the Serious Fraud Office on the trial judge sitting on the Asil Nadir case. Mr Mates's statement, in an excited House of Commons, was interrupted nine times by the Speaker, invoking procedural rules on sub judice matters. He also claimed that the SFO had torpedoed Mr Nadir's defence by impounding privileged docu- ments. Mr Mates had felt obliged to resign because his involvement with Mr Nadir, the fugitive bankrupt, was causing the Govern- ment embarrassment. Sir John Wheeler took over from him. The Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, apologised for a little joke he made after 20 people were injured by a bomb in west Belfast: questioned by a reporter, Sir Patrick, on his way to see Lucia di Lammermoor, said, 'Well nobody is dead. At the end of this opera everybody's dead.' Local councillors will have less influence over police authori- ties under provisions outlined by the Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, in a White Paper; there will be more nominations by the Home Secretary himself. But there were no plans for an independent police authority for London, which remains under Home Office administration. Two Norfolk men imprisoned for five years for briefly kidnapping and threatening a suspected burglar had their sentences reduced to six months. Dixons, the electrical goods chain, said it was losing £20 million a year through shop-lifting. Devonport, not Rosyth, was chosen for the £5 billion Trident submarine contract. Mr Jacques Attali resigned from the London-based Bank for Reconstruction and Development; he admitted among his other failings that he had been reimbursed twice for a £7,000 air fare to Japan. Lord Young, the chairman of Cable and Wire- less, received a 77 per cent pay rise, bring- ing his salary to £863,410 last year. England picked five uncapped players for the third Test against Australia. The Appeal Court prohibited Thorncroft Vineyard in Surrey from calling one of its products `elderflower champagne'. Victor Maddern, the charac- ter actor, died, aged 67.
THE UNITED STATES attacked Iraq; 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles were despatched against the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad from the destroyer Peterson in the Red Sea and the cruiser Chancellorsville in the Gulf. Iraq said that eight civilians in nearby houses were killed in the attack. The United States said it was acting in retaliation for an attempted assassination of former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait this year. It also bombarded an anti-aircraft battery in the south of Iraq. The United States rejected claims by Arab countries that Iraq was being singled out while the Serbs in Bosnia went unpunished. Fighting in central Bosnia continued with Serbs, Croats and Muslims attacking each other. Talks in Geneva to carve up the country continued despite the absence of the Bosnian President, Alia Izetbegovic. The Bosnian Serb leader, Dr Radovan Karadzic, proposed the partition of Saraje- vo between Serbs and Muslims. An attempt to lift the arms embargo to help Bosnia failed in the United Nations security coun- cil. Thousands of white extreme right- wingers stormed multi-party peace talks in Johannesburg. At home Mr Clinton got his budget through Congress by one vote. The governor of China's central bank was dis- missed. The military rulers of Nigeria annulled the recent elections and disquali- fied the two main candidates from the promised new elections. In response unions called for strikes which President Ibrahim Babangada met with threats of state of emergency. Greece expelled more than 8,500 Albanians. The Bulgarian-born opera bass, Boris Christoff, died, aged 79.
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