No. 49,999. — Published Daily.
SAUDI PAYMENTS.
ATTORNEY GENERAL UNDER
PRESSURE.
MINISTERS FACE QUESTIONS.
Mr Blair’s Government is attempting to
contain the damage over £1 billion in pay-
ments to a Saudi Arabian Prince. Lord Gold-
smith, the Attorney General, came under
renewed pressure yesterday to explain how
much he knew about the affair. While in pub-
lic the Government was issuing partial denials
about its role in the controversy, in private there
were desperate efforts to secure a new BAE £20
billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
Hopes that the furore could be halted were
dashed when The Manchester Guardian learned
that the world’s anti-corruption organisation,
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development, was poised to resume its own
investigation into why the British Government
abandoned its investigations into the £43 billion
ery panel will meet in Paris a week on Monday to
discuss the latest disclosures. When they travel
to London, its inspectors are likely to ask minis-
ters for a full explanation of their conduct.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Leader of the Lib-
eral Democrat Party, demanded to know the
role of the Attorney General in concealing from
the OECD the payments of more than £1 billion
from BAE to Prince Bandar as part of the Al-
Yamamah contract.
The money was paid from an account at the
Bank of England into accounts in Washington
controlled by Prince Bandar. Details of the
transfers to the accounts in the United States
were discovered by the Serious Fraud Office
during the investigation into BAE. However, the
SFO inquiry was suddenly halted late last year.
deal, which was signed in 1985 and involves the
sale of Tornado fighter jets, Hawk aircraft as
well as maintenance and service agreements.
The Manchester Guardian has this week pub-
lished accusations that £30 million a quarter, for
a period of at least a decade, was withdrawn
from accounts controlled by Bandar at the Riggs
bank in Washington. The Attorney General yes-
terday denied that he had ordered British inves-
tigators to conceal the £1 billion payments from
the OECD.
$17 MILLION PALACE.
Lawyers for Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ara-
bian royal who received £1 billion from BAE,
accepted last night that he had spent $17 million
on refurbishing one of his palaces, using money
from the United States accounts concerned.
His solicitors, Herbert Smith, said that the Ri-
cial residence, and there
was nothing illegal or untoward spending money
out of a Saudi official defence ministry account
held at Riggs Banks in Washington DC.
Documents throwing into question the use
Prince Bandar made of the billion pounds he
received from the British arms company BAE
emerged in the US in 2004. In one “suspicious
activity report”, bank auditors said $17.4 million
had apparently been spent on “home improve-
ment’’ for a Bandar palace.
Prince Bandar’s solicitors said last night: “We
are instructed that the palace … is our client’s
official residence from which he conducts busi-
ness in Saudi Arabia … refurbishment works to
his official residence are the responsibility of the
Saudi government. Therefore there is nothing
untoward or illegal about this payment which
will have been approved by the Saudi Ministry of
Defence and Aviation and audited by the Saudi
week, Prince Bandar did not dispute that the
billion pounds had been paid into the accounts
he controlled at Riggs Bank, the disclosure of
which has caused an international uproar. But
he said Saudi authorities had never identified
any irregularities in the accounts’ conduct.
MR REID AND MR HAIN.
A STRANGE DEVELOPMENT.
Mr John Reid, the Home Secretary, has ac-
cused Mr Peter Hain, his Cabinet collegue and
Northern Ireland Secretary, of manufacturing
a dispute over new measures to combat terror-
ism in order to further his ambition of becoming
the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Such
measures, which include proposals to extend
the “stop-and-question” powers of the constab-
ulary, had been heavily promoted by Mr Reid.
Mr Hain’s opposition to them has provoked the
Home Secretary to write a strongly worded let-
ter to Mr Blair, the Prime Minister, in which he
condemned Mr Hain’s behaviour over the pro-
an extension of powers used in Northern Ireland
and then protesting to the Prime Minister when
Mr Reid in turn proposed them.
PREGNANCY TESTS FAULTY.
Tens of thousands of women who were in-
formed that they were pregnant by staff working
at National Health Service hospitals were yes-
terday vigorously encouraged to contact their
doctors following the discovery that pregnancy
testing equipment supplied to hospitals around
the country was faulty.
The manufacturer, Unipath Limited, has dis-
closed that about forty-four of the 83,000 devices
it supplied to fifty hospitals were defective. A
spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians
and Gynaecologists gave the following advice -
“Any concerned woman should go back to their
hospital or see a general practitioner. They could
also purchase a pregnancy test at a chemist.”
£30 BILLION FOR POOR.
MR BLAIR HAILS PROGRESS.
(FROM OUR CORRESPONDENTS.)
HEILIGENDAMM, GERMANY, JUNE 8.
A promise by the “G8” Group of Lead-
ing Industrial Countries to spend approxi-
mately £30 billion over the next few years
on HIV/Aids (Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome), malaria and tubercolosis was
dismissed to-day by development groups as
a smokescreen for the West’s broken prom-
ises to the world’s poor.
Although the G8 emphasised its “firm
resolve” to keep the pledges made at Gle-
neagles two years ago, aid agencies said that
they were a long way from meeting the tar-
gets established for 2010 and had watered
down their commitments.
Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, welcomed
the G8 package as important progress in adding
substance to the pledges made at Gleneagles.
British sources said that the summit had agreed
to increase funding on education, peacekeeping
and health. The Prime Minister welcomed the
decision by Japan to put Africa on the agenda
for next year’s summit.
The G8 said it would treat five million people
in Africa suffering from HIV/Aids over the com-
ing years as a step towards the universal cover-
age by 2010 pledged at Gleneagles.
However, Mr Matt Phillips, representing the
Save the Children charity, told our correspond-
ents in Germany: “The G8 leaders have not de-
livered a concrete plan for tackling the crush-
ing levels of African poverty. Today’s deal was
warm in words but that is cold comfort for the
millions of African children who will continue to
die through the lack of free health care. This is
a particular blow to the hundreds of thousands
of campaigners who are calling for dramatic ac-
tion. The campaigning will go on.”
OIL SMUGGLING RIFE.
(FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.)
BAGHDAD, JANUARY 8.
On the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway
in southern Iraq, a family business is thriving.
For members of the Ashur, a small clan of about
fifty families, it is worth several million dollars
each week. Costs are steep, particularly when
you factor in security. But profits are tidy, and
business is booming.
The Ashur are oil smugglers. For years un-
der President Saddam Hussein, they worked as
mere guards at the Abu Flous terminal at the
mouth of the Persian Gulf. But as the state col-
lapsed during and after the American and Brit-
ish invasion in 2003 and economic anarchy set
in, they simply took over the port and became
the de facto authority there.The family opera-
tion is an example of how large swaths of Iraq’s
economy and mineral wealth have subsided into
a legal vacuum, where the state is absent, law
enforcement is non-existent and the spoils are
shared by a network of party men, militias and
smuggler gangs.
Al `Amàrah
Mes
op
ot
am
ia
IRAN
IRAQ
Basra
Abu al-Khasseb
Shatt al-Arab
KUWAIT waterway
Kuwait PERSIAN
GULF
Miles
0 30
To insulate their fortune the Ashur use the
political protection of Fadhila, the governing
party in Basra, which for more than a year ran
the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. But it also takes care
to have good relations with the rival Mahdi Army
of Mr Muqtada al-Sadr.
Asked to-night to describe a typical opera-
tion, Mr Abu Harith said: “I took a cleric with
me, one of Muqtada’s people. We ran into a po-
lice checkpoint, he rolled down the window and
told the policeman: ‘We are on duty, from this car
to the last car behind the tankers.’ We emptied
the fuel into private underground tanks for the
Ashur family.” The infrastructure of smuggling
was set up under President Saddam in the late
1990s, during the UN sanctions, when illegal oil
shipments became the main method of getting
money into the country. Smuggling was an of-
ficially condoned policy.
“Ismail”, a veteran smuggler, told the Manches-
ter Guardian correspondent: “We use the same
methods we used during Saddam regime. Instead
of Ba’athists and generals, it is now Shia militias
and their cronies who are doing the business.”
A STARTLING ARREST.
A British man has been arrested abroad for
attempting to blackmail the Tesco chain of mar-
ket stores. Mr Alexander Winstone, a Bath man
and unemployed former stockist, threatened to
poison foodstuffs belonging to the company un-
less he was renumerated in the sum of £2 million.
Following his seizure by police in Bangkok on
Thursday evening, Mr Winstone confessed to
authoring a series of communications contain-
ing the threats and has since been charged with
attempted extortion. Scotland Yard, the Thai
authorities and the company’s own head of se-
curity all collaborated in effecting the arrest.
SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 2007.
2012 OLYMPIAD.
COMPETITION TO ATTRACT TEAMS.
The burghers of Chippenham, Wiltshire, are
coming to terms with the idea of their town be-
ing invaded, in a benevolent way, by the North
Koreans. Chippenham is one of many towns and
cities across Great Britain hoping to capitalise
on the 2012 Olympic Games by hosting one of
the teams as it prepares for the tourney. Realis-
ing that it could not hope to attract a powerful
country such as the United States or Australia,
Chippenham sent off brochures to smaller
sporting nations such as Ukraine, Slovakia, Ar-
menia and some of the African countries.
COMMUNISTS.
The first to reply was the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea. An Embassy official wrote
that it was very interested and a photographer
from the Communist state turned up earlier this
week to take photographs of the town. The only
hitch so far is that the Embassy has wondered if
Chippenham would care to pay for its athletes
to stay there. The town rather thought it would
be the other way round.
Mr Sandie Webb, the leader of the consortium
working to attract a team, and well known in
the town as the chairman of Chippenham Town
Football Club, interviewed by a Manchester
Guardian correspondent, said: “We have written
back asking them exactly what they would need
and how many athletes they would bring. But it
sounds like they are serious.I’ve been stopped by
people on the street asking me about the political
situation. I’ve told them all that’s up to people on
the global level. If they are allowed to compete in
the Olympic Games then they need a place to stay
and what better place than Chippenham?”
North Korea is not the biggest prize for cities
and towns across Great Britain and further afield
who are hoping for a multi-million-pound Olym-
pic windfall by attracting one of the teams.
Birmingham is close to sealing a deal with the
Americans that could benefit the city to the tune
of £10 million or more. Sheffield and Manches-
ter, both proud of their facilities, are also hoping
to attract big teams. Loughborough, Bath and
Millfield, all renowned sporting centres, are vy-
ing for the honour of hosting Team GB but are
hoping to secure a sporting giant if they miss out
on the home nation.
Bristol has signed a deal with Kenya not only
to host its pre-games camp but to organise a
series of sporting, educational and cultural ex-
change programmes, while large stretches of
the South Coast are bound to enjoy boom times
as competitors taking part in the sailing events,
which are to be based at Weymouth and Port-
land in Dorset, prepare for British conditions.
NUCLEAR PRECAUTIONS.
BUNKER PROPOSED FOR YORKSHIRE.
When the wind blows after a nuclear attack
on Great Britain, it is unlikely that your double
glazing will save you: approximately 52,000 peo-
ple will have been vaporised by the blast itself,
direct radiation will kill 10,000 right away, and
radiation from fall-out a further 200,000. The suc-
ceeding shock-wave and blast winds at speeds of
up to 800 miles-per-hour will flatten most build-
N ings within a three-mile radius.
Mr Tim Wood of Yorkshire, however, hopes
that his nuclear shelter will provide protection
from these after-effects. It was initially fears of
an al-Qaida attack on nearby Dewsbury that
prompted Mr Wood, the landlord of the Old Co-
lonial public house in Mirfield, to draw up plans
for a 20-person bunker underneath the car park.
Mr Wood told our correspondent yesterday: “It
started because we thought there was a signifi-
cant threat. People thought I was a bit crackers,
but now it’s getting crazy with Putin [Mr Vladimir
Putin, the president of Russia] they are think-
ing, hang on, it’s not too bad an idea, this. It’s
crackpots like him that make me think about
not getting one bunker but two.”
It is not so very long, of course, since Great
Britain was well prepared for missile attack
— the response of successive governments,
just like Mr Wood, being to dig downwards. By
the time the Berlin Wall fell, the country was
extensively mined by a warren of underground
government and military bunkers. In addition
to 17 subterranean “regional government head-
quarters”, more than 1,500 three-man observa-
tion bunkers were built, designed to monitor fall-
out and blast effects. The Prime Minister and the
Cabinet would have been taken to Corsham in
Wiltshire to an enormous subterranean citadel
designed to accommodate 6,000 Military and
Government personnel.
The Ministry of Defence retains at least four
underground hubs, one of them under the Min-
istry itself at Whitehall. A second, at the Perma-
nent Joint Headquarters at Northwood in north
London, home of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is
thought to be five storeys deep.
FLOODING TRAGEDY.
FREIGHTER DRIVEN AGROUND.
(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)
SYDNEY, JUNE 8.
A wild storm that lashed the Eastern Coast of
Australia drove a coal freighter on to a sand bank,
raising fears that it could break apart and leak
fuel into the sea, whilst six people were missing
in flash flooding, the police announced.
Officials said that at least two other vessels
among more than fifty off the port of Newcastle,
ninety miles north of Sydney, could also be in dan-
ger with winds up to fifty miles-per-hour expected
to continue or worsen to-day. Near Newcastle,
six people travelling in two cars were missing in
flood waters as torrential rain and gales cut local
power and railway services, the New South Wales
Police announced in a statement.
THE IMMIGRATION BILL.
SENATE REJECTS MEASURE.
(FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)
WASHINGTON, JUNE 8.
At a meeting on Thursday night members
of the United States Senate voted to set aside
until further notice a bill proposed by Presi-
dent George Bush to reform the country’s
immigration system. Needing sixty votes to
end debate and schedule a final vote on the
bill itself, the Bill’s supporters won only forty-
five votes, with fifty senators opposed. Had
it been passed the Immigration Bill would have
provided the opportunity to gain citizenship to
millions of immigrants presently residing in the
country illegally. The Democratic Leader in the
Senate, Mr Harold Reid, said that he held Presi-
dent Bush accountable for the bill’s rejection,
maintaining that the President, who is presently
attending the Group of Eight meeting in Heiligen-
damm, Germany, had failed to bring Republican
Senators into line. “This the President’s Bill,” he
said. “Where are the President’s people helping
us with these votes?”
MR LIVINGSTONE’S DISPUTE.
INSULT TO AMBASSADOR.
Mr Kenneth Livingstone, the Mayor of Lon-
don, has escalated his dispute with the United
States’ Ambassador to the Court of St James, Mr
Robert Tuttle, whom Mr Livingstone describes
as a “venal little crook” for his refusal to pay the
Congestion Charge. In an interview with The
Manchester Guardian yesterday, Mr Livingstone
said that the Ambassador had been given his po-
sition as a reward for contributions to President
George Bush’s election campaign.
The two men have been in dispute over the
Ambassador’s refusal to pay the Congestion
Charge, which fifteen months ago led Mr Liv-
ingstone to call him a “chisellling little crook”.
The Mayor also said of the Ambassador: “What
is sickening in this world is people who are venal
little crooks like Tuttle, who gets treated with
respect just because George Bush has rewarded
him with an Ambassadorship as a big kick-back
for contributions to his campaign.”
In the interview, the Mayor also gave his con-
sidered opinion on the Labour Party’s Deputy
Leadership contest, complaining of “vacuous
waffle” and “ridiculous” claims from some can-
didates. He gave his endorsement to Mr Jon
Cruddas, with Mrs Harriet Harman as a prob-
able second choice .
THE MYSTERY OF A WEB-LOG.
AN INSIDER’S ACCOUNT.
A controller employed by the British Broad-
casting Corporation, Mr Daniel Cohen, is the
supposed author of a revealing “web-log” call-
ing itself “the first blog about the television in-
dustry penned by a true television insider”. The
account, which is published “online”, reveals in
controversial detail the often fractuous life of a
B.B.C. employee, and, according to those con-
nected with the corporation, is penned with such
devastating accuracy that it could have come
only from an individual possessed of a deep
knowledge of the inner workings of the televi-
sion industry.
The Secret Blog of a TV Controller, as it is
known, contains often salacious descriptions
of those individuals with whom the probably
fictional author supposedly came into contact.
These include a description of “every female pre-
senter” the author had “ever fantasised about,
starting with Anneka Rice”, and an admission
that he spent “20 minutes perving over Paris
Hilton”. Mr Cohen declined to comment to-day
on whether he had in fact authored the web-log,
but various other individuals have been accused
of the same. These include the writer and broad-
caster Mr Charles Brooker, who yesterday de-
nied the charge. “I just don’t know enough about
the politics of television,” he said.
MEMORIAL NOTICE.
MR JAMES CLARK.
We note the death of Mr James Gardener
Clark, Jnr, a Sheriff of Dallas County who, much
against his own judgement, did as much as any
man to turn the sympathies of the mainstream
public of America in favour of racial equality. For
it was Mr Clark who, on March 7 1965, in Selma,
Alabama, organised and led a posse of state
troopers into a ferocious attack on 600 peace-
ful civil rights demonstrators whilst they were
crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way
to the state capital, Montgomery. As he led his
men into the fray, armed with pistol, billy-club
and cattle-prod, Mr Clark remained oblivious to
the gentlemen of the press and television. This
was a mistake, for it was they who recorded
the resulting violence, in which injuries were
caused to some eighty-four marchers. The
sight of a black woman, Amelia Robinson, being
clubbed by the police after she had succumbed
to tear-gas shocked the nation into action. Six
months after “Bloody Sunday”, as the catastoph-
ewhich Mr Clark had provoked was to become
known, Miss Robinson stood beside President
Lyndon Johnson as he signed the Voting Rights
Act into law. Mr Clark was voted out of office
the following year, later serving nine months in
prison following his conviction for conspiracy
to smuggle marijuana. He is survived by his ex-
wife, three sons and two daughters. He was in his
eighty-fourth year.
VENICE BIENNALE.
MISS SHARON STONE PORTRAYS
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
VENICE, JUNE 8.
At the 2005 Venice Biennale, the Italian artist
Mr Francesco Vezzoli aroused great excitement
with his Trailer for the Remake of Gore Vidal’s
Caligula. A five-minute frenzy of decadent images,
it starred Vidal himself, Miss Helen Mirren, Miss
Milla Jovovich, Mr Benicio del Toro, and Miss
Courtney Love as the mad Roman emperor. In
another project, also shown at that Biennale, he
created an entire television programme, in which
the young ladies competing for the affections of
the young men were artistes, including Miss Cath-
erine Deneuve and Marianne Faithfull.
This year, Mr Vezzoli has gone a step further
in the audacity of his imaginary projects. He
has, with the aid of real Washington political
advisers, created two television commercials
for competing United States Presidential cam-
paigns — pitting Miss Sharon Stone against the
media philosopher Mr Bernard-Henri Lévy. The
work, called Democrazy, is being shown as part
of the official Italian pavilion. It is set in a dark,
circular room, its ceiling lined with red and blue
helium balloons as for an election convention.
On one screen Miss Stone embraces servicemen,
kisses Black children and magisterially tosses
her rather stubborn wig. On the other, Mr Lévy
shakes hands with the Pope.
Asked by our correspondent in Venice about
his work, Mr Vezzoli said: “The work is about ma-
nipulation, about babble, about packaging, and,
in its barefaced used of celebrity, I am declaring
my weaknesses. I am fascinated by celebrity cul-
ture, and repelled at the same time. I put all my
fear and fascination and desire into my work.
I confront them to try to work them out.It be-
comes complicated when you get involved with
the whole Hollywood machine, which is always
silently swimming round you.You wouldn’t want
to see a work of art censored by Sharon Stone’s
publicist. And to their great credit, neither Stone
nor Lévy demanded to see the work before it
was shown.”
HEIRESS RETURNS TO GAOL.
Miss Paris Hilton, heiress to the Hilton hotel
fortune and society darling, has been reincarcer-
ated in a Los Angeles prison having only been
released from her cells by the city’s Sheriff’s
Department a day before. Miss Hilton had had a
gaol sentence of forty-three days imposed upon
her by Judge Michael Sauer last May, following
a violation of the terms of her probation. At that
time Judge Sauer had specifically ruled that
Miss Hilton spend her entire sentence within
the confines of a city prison, but, citing medical
reasons the details of which it has declined to
disclose, the Sheriff’s Department permitted her
to return home after serving only five days of her
sentence. Miss Hilton, who was seen sobbing on
her arrival at the court in a motor car, cried out
for her mother as sentence was passed.
TELEVISION.
A NATION MOURNS.
(FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT.)
NEW YORK, JANUARY 8.
Mr David Remnick, the Editor of the New
Yorker Magazine, has set the tone for the com-
munal lament in the United States over the
passing of The Sopranos by describing the pro-
gramme as “the richest achievement in the his-
tory of television”. He goes on to compare the
drama serial to the works of Aristotle, Dickens,
and Mr John Updike and Mr Philip Roth, the
American novelists.
The national “wake” has been prepared, with
local newspapers across the country publishing
dinner menus for to-morrow night’s final epi-
sode. The Philadelphia Inquirer recommends a
six-course feast including Linguine con Vongole
and Orechiette with Sausage and Rapini.
Britons, however, will have to be patient for
the eighty-sixth and final episode to cross over
to our own television screens.
TAKING TO THE SKIES.
The use by wealthy individuals of privately
owned flying machines is growing at an un-
precedented rate as a result of a widespread
dissatsifaction among affluent consumers with
the traditional method of travelling on sched-
uled airplane flights. The burden of increased
security measures at the world’s major airports
has contributed to the growth, which has contin-
ued unabated despite unprecedented awareness
about the impact of aeroplane usage on global
warming. Manufacturers forecast worldwide de-
liveries of new aeroplanes designed for personal
usage will come close to 10,000 over the next
decade, almost double the production rate for
the previous ten years. Adding in very light craft,
the forecast rises to about 18,000.
CRICKET.
Panesar, the England spin-bowler, captured
four wickets, and Sidebottom, the swing-bowler,
took three wickets, as the West Indian tourists
were all out for 229 yesterday afternoon in the
Third Test Match at Old Trafford, giving England
a lead on first innings of 141 runs.
STOP PRESS.
Close of play: England (second innings) 34-1.