PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
All dressed up and nowhere to go The IRA has announced 'an uncondi- tional and open-ended ceasefire' from mid- night on 31 August. Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, said, 'We need to be clear that this is a permanent renunciation of violence.' Mr Gerry Adams said that 'John Major and the leaders of Unionism should seize the moment.' Unionists were alarmed and angry at the prospect of the British Government negotiating with the IRA to weaken the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. Mr James Molyneaux, the official Unionist leader, held talks with Mr Major. There had been some interfer- ence by the United States, which gave a visa, at President Bill Clinton's insistence, to Mr Joe Cahill, who was formerly impor- tant in the IRA. Mr Peter Lilley, the Social Security Secretary, has plans to cut the amount of interest on mortgage loans that the state will pay for people on income sup- port. Mr Michael Howard, the Home Sec- retary, visited Colombia in an attempt to persuade it not to send so many drugs to Britain. British Rail said that it had run nearly half its services during a 48-hour strike by signalmen in their 12th week of intermittent inaction in pursuit of more pay. Members of Parliament are to receive a pay rise of 4.7 per cent. SmithKline Beecham, the British pharmaceutical corn- pany which makes Eno's, is to pay nearly £2 billion for Sterling Winthrop, the American company which makes Andrew's Liver Salts. David Wright, the poet and author of Deafness, died, aged 74. The British 800 metres runner, Diane Modahl, sent home from the Commonwealth Games in Canada after a drugs test, failed a second test; as a result, the British women's team may be withdrawn from the World Cup at Crystal Palace. The Labour Party declined the offer of a donation of £5 million from Dr Moosa Bin Shamsher, a Bangladeshi busi- nessman, described by a magazine called Image Nepal as having 'illuminating deep eyes, a spacious forehead, yellow complex- ion, architectured body, snow-white teeth and silken smile'.
BOSNIAN Serbs voted overwhelmingly to reject the peace plan proposed by the 'con- tact group' of the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany. Mr Andrei Kosyrev, the Russian foreign minister, accused the group of bureaucratic inflexi- bility and suggested that Serbia itself should be rewarded for blockading the Bosnian Serbs. Russian troops withdrew from bases in Germany which the Soviet Union had established at the end of the second world war. The mayor of Moscow announced a £100 million scheme to rebuild the Church of Christ the Saviour, demolished by the communist regime in 1931. Israeli and Palestinian representa- tives agreed to a limited degree of self-rule throughout the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem. A visit to Gaza by Miss Benazir Bhutto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, was cancelled after Israel protested at not being consulted; 'The lady from Pakistan must be taught some manners,' the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Yitzhak Rabin, said. United Nations workers said that space was run- ning out at refugee camps for Rwandans at Bakavu in Zaire. Thousands more Cubans attempted to reach the United States by raft. Sudan joined Saudi Arabia in a boy- cott of the United Nations conference on population which opens in Cairo next week. Dozens were killed in an explosion in the Philippines' biggest coalmine, on Min- danao. The trial for treason of Chief Mos- hood Abiola, the man thought to have won last year's elections in Nigeria, resumed, as oil-workers continued to strike. Shell said it had lost half its production capacity in the country. Lockheed, the aircraft makers, and Martin Marietta, the defence contractors, are to merge in a $10 billion deal. Unem- ployment in Japan rose to 1.9 million, some 3 per cent of the workforce. CSH
Previous page
