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Monday 01.01.07
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guardian.co.uk
How Saddam died on the gallows
Leaked film reveals chaotic end • Taunts and insults hurled • Sectarian backlash fear
Saddam Hussein hanging from a noose after execution in Baghdad early on Saturday, in a photograph seemingly taken by camera phone and obtained from an Arab-language website Photograph: AP
Ewen MacAskill
Michael Howard
Camera footage of the final minutes of
Saddam Hussein released yesterday
shows him being taunted by Shia hang-
men and witnesses, a scene that risks
increasing sectarian tension in Iraq.
As he stood at the gallows, he was tor-
mented by the hooded executioners or
witnesses shouting at him to “Go to hell”
and chanting the name “Moqtada”, the
radical Shia Muslim cleric and leader of
the Mahdi army militia, Moqtada al-Sadr,
and his family.
The grainy images, which appeared to
have been taken on a mobile phone, dis-
close exchanges between Saddam and his
tormentors, the moment when his body
drops through the trapdoor, and his body
National
Storms sweep away Two killed by
Hogmanay revels bombs in Bangkok
London’s new year fireworks, centred on
the Millennium Wheel, went with a bang
last night, but Hogmanay celebrations for
more than 100,000 people in Edinburgh
were cancelled after high winds, thunder
and torrential rain battered revellers
preparing to welcome in 2007. Glasgow,
too, was forced to cancel its open air
event, which was expected to attract
25,000 partygoers. Firework displays in
Liverpool and Newcastle upon Tyne were
called off due to safety concerns, as was
an outdoor pop concert for
10,000 people in Belfast. One
6≥
man is feared drowned after he was swept
into the sea off the Cornish coast.
US death toll
reaches 3,000
President George Bush received a
harsh reminder last night of the
pressing need for change to his Iraq
policy with reports that the American
military death toll in the country had
reached 3,000 since the invasion. The
figure, tallied by Associated Press and
the icasualties.org website, but dis-
puted by the Pentagon, came a day
after the execution of Saddam Hus-
sein. Mr Bush has been consulting with
his advisers at his ranch in Crawford,
Texas, over the holiday period and is
expected to announce a modified US
policy on Iraq on January 10.
International
A string of nine bombs across Bangkok
killed two people and left at least 34 in-
jured last night, including two Britons. Six
bombs went off in the early evening, fol-
lowed by three on the stroke of midnight
near a mall popular with foreigners. No-
body claimed responsibility for the blasts,
which forced the cancellation of new year
celebrations. The capital has rarely expe-
rienced deadly bombings, although sev-
eral small explosives were set off in the
run-up to a bloodless coup that ousted
prime minister Thaksin Shina-
watra in September. Violence
16 ≥
occurs almost daily in southern Thailand,
the target of Muslim insurgents.
swinging, eyes partly open and neck bent
out of shape. In what Sunni Muslims will
perceive as a further insult, the
executioners released the trapdoor while
the former dictator was in the middle of
his prayers.
Sunni Muslims, who were dominant
under Saddam, but are now the victims of
sectarian death squads, will see the sham-
bolic nature of the execution as further
evidence of the bias of the Shia-led gov-
ernment. They have repeatedly claimed
that the Iraqi government, helped by the
US and British, conducted a show trial,
based on revenge rather than justice.
Saddam’s team of defence lawyers
claimed that the hanging had been simply
“victors’ justice”.
The unruly scenes will also dismay the
US and British governments, that are also
privately alarmed at the sectarian bias of
Financial
Belarus deal averts
Gazprom switch-off
Belarus last night struck an eleventh-hour
accord with Russia’s state-controlled
energy supplier, Gazprom, which averted
the prospect of the former Soviet republic
facing a chilly new year. Moscow had said
it would stop gas to Belarus today if Minsk
did not agree to pay a much higher price.
The move threatened to disrupt supplies
to Europe and further undermine Russia’s
reputation as a reliable energy supplier.
The dispute echoed one with Ukraine a
year ago when Gazprom cut supplies for
several days. The gas operator
is trying to bring prices closer
18 ≥
to world market levels. Europe imports a
quarter of its gas from Russia.
the government, led by the prime minis-
ter, Nouri al-Maliki. The US and Britain
believe at least some members of the Iraqi
government are complicit in sectarian
killings, particularly by members of the
police force.
The Iraqi government last night denied
the execution had been sectarian or
designed for revenge. Hiwa Osman, an
adviser to the Iraqi president, Jalal Tala-
bani, told the BBC: “This whole execution
is about justice.”
As Saddam was buried in this home
village, Ouja, outside Tikrit, yesterday
morning, the leaked footage appeared on
the internet and on Arabic television sta-
tions. While Saddam was professing
Muhammad as God’s prophet, he was
interrupted by shouts. One of the people
observing the execution chants “Moq-
tada, Moqtada, Moqtada”. Saddam dis-
Sport
missively repeats the name Moqtada. The
noose around his neck, he appears to
smile and shoots back: “Do you consider
this bravery?”
Another voice shouts at him to “Go to
hell”. Saddam, seemingly accusing his
enemies of destroying the country he
once led, replies: “The hell that is Iraq?"
A Shia shouts “Long live Mohammed
Baqir al-Sadr,” a member of Moqtada’s
family thought to have been assassinated
by Saddam’s security services. Another
onlooker pleads for dignity: “Please don't,
the man is facing execution. Please don't.
I beg you, no!”
As Saddam continues
with his prayers, saying “I
3-5 ≥
profess that there is no God but God and
that Muhammad …”, the executioners
Continued on page 2 ≥
Mourinho’s harsh
words – for Chelsea
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has given
a brutal assessment of the club after the
2–2 draw with Fulham on Saturday, cast-
ing doubt on his managerial qualities, crit-
icising players and intimating that it may
not have been his choice to sell William
Gallas and Robert Huth. The remarks risk
damaging his relationship with his squad
and directors. After complaining about
having no centre-half strong in the air
without the injured John Terry, Mourinho
was asked why Huth and Gallas were sold.
“Good question,” he
said. Asked what a good
Sport, 1 ≥
answer was, he replied: “There is no an-
swer. They are not here any more.”
2
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119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER.
Telephone: 020-7278 2332 Best daily newspaper on the world wide web
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How Saddam fined to Sunni regions. In the Kurdish

Monday 01.01.07 died on the

region, there was also criticism. “This
execution should have been for all of Sad-
dam’s victims, and instead they have
hijacked it and turned it into a sectarian

gallows event,” said Anwar Abdullah, a student at

In this section
Today on Guardian Unlimited
The unselfish gene
The human paradox is that it may
have been our propensity to
murderous violence that caused
us to evolve altruism, writes
Andrew Brown
guardian.co.uk/commentisfree
Travel
Simon Hoggart joins Guardian
cartoonist Steve Bell for an
audio tour of their favourite
haunts in Brighton
guardian.co.uk/travel/
audio
The final countdown
From Berlin to Baghdad, Bird flu
to Boy George, we give you the
year in numbers Page 7 ≥
Ground war
In a fightback against the global
spread of the frappuccino and
other imitators, Italy has certified
what it considers the classic
cappuccino Page 17 ≥
Comment
The obituarists will not have the
last word on Saddam, any more
than they did on Stalin, writes
Peter Preston Page 21 ≥
Newsblog
Simon Jeffery samples the
reactions of Arab bloggers to the
execution of Saddam Hussein
blogs.guardian.co.uk/news
Miaow
Remember this (or trying to forget
it)? Test your memory of the
year in and around politics
with our quiz
guardian.co.uk/politics
In g2
First person special
How was 2006 for you? For five
very different people – from a
pregnant teenager to a Kabul
doctor who escaped the Taliban –
it was the year when everything
changed Page 4 ≥
Reasons to be cheerful
The world is coming to an end.
But it’s not all bad news – there’s a
new vaccine for hay fever, Uganda
is back on the tourist trail, and
Charlotte Church has put her
singing career on hold Page 29 ≥
≤ continued from page 1
release the trapdoor. There is a shout:
“The tyrant has fallen.”
Although many Sunni Muslims also
suffered under him and were glad to see
him go, the manner in which the execu-
tion was carried out will have created
some sympathy for Saddam. The fact that
the execution took place at the start of the
main Muslim religious holiday will further
inflame Sunni opinion.
The tit-for-tat killings between the
majority Shias, who suffered badly under
Saddam, and the previously dominant
Sunnis, has created a de facto civil war
that could break up the country. Sunni
insurgents, particularly a branch of al-
Qaida, have sought to fan the civil war by
carrying out a series of devastating car
bomb attacks on Shia population centres,
particularly Sadr City in Baghdad and
towns such as Hilla and Najaf.
The response among Sunnis to the
hanging and the video was to swear
revenge. A man from Mosul, a mixed city
in the north, told Reuters: “The Persians
have killed him. I can't believe it. By God,
we will take revenge.” He was referring
to Iraq's new leaders’ ties to Shia Iran, and
the Shia in general.
Accusations that the government had
mishandled the execution were not con-
Media is not published today. It will return next week
Index
National
Law
International
Eyewitness
Financial
Comment & Debate
Leader comment
Reply
the technical institute of Sulaymaniyah.
Rebwar Suliman, 21, whose uncle and
grandfather were killed by Saddam’s
secret police in Kurdistan in the 1980s,
said: “It does a dishonour to the Kurds.”
Saddam was buried in the dead of night,
prompting an outpouring of grief and
anger from fellow members of his tribe and
other Sunni Arabs. His body was flown by
US military helicopter to Tikrit and then
taken to the village where he was born.
Hundreds of mourners visited his tomb
inside a marble-floored hall built by Sad-
dam. Others attended the Great Saddam
Mosque in Tikrit.
The funeral came as it was reported that
the US death toll in Iraq since the invasion
had reached 3,000. The US military had
disclosed yesterday that an American
soldier had been killed by a roadside bomb
in Baghdad on Saturday, the 2,999th death
since the invasion in 2003. But the web-
site www.icasualties.org, yesterday also
listed the death of Specialist Dustin
Donica, 22, on December 28 as previously
unreported, bringing the total to 3,000.
George Bush is expected to face
renewed domestic political pressure fol-
lowing the latest milestone. Although the
3,000 figure is symbolically important for
Americans, Iraqis suffer that rate of casu-
alties on a monthly basis.
Tariq Ali, page 20≥
Peter Preston, page 21≥
Leader comment, page 22≥
guardian.co.uk/iraq≥
6 Obituaries 24-25
13 Weather & Crossword 27
16 Short cuts g2, 2-3
14-15 Last night’s TV g2, 19
18 Radio & Satellite g2, 20
20-21 Television g2, 22
22 Puzzles g2, 24
23 Quick Crossword g2, 24

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The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007 3

Saddam execution

A tomb in a mosque near Tikrit –

which will become a shrine for some
Body flown for private
burial in home town
Original plan was for
secret, unmarked grave
Ghazwan al-Jibouri Awja
Pledging revenge, hundreds of mourners
flocked to Saddam Hussein’s tomb in his
home village in northern Iraq on Sunday,
where the ousted leader was buried in
private after being hanged for crimes
against humanity.
In an outpouring of grief and anger
from Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs at the
Shia-led government that rushed through
the execution, mourners knelt and prayed
by the tomb in Awja over which the Iraqi
flag had been draped.
Sectarian passions that have pushed
Iraq toward civil war since US troops over-
threw Saddam in 2003 could be further in-
flamed by a video posted on the internet
showing Shia officials taunting him as he
stood on the gallows on Saturday.
“The Persians have killed him. I can’t
believe it. By God, we will take revenge,”
said a man from the northern city of
Mosul, using a term employed by some
Al-Iraqiya TV images of Saddam’s coffin
Sunnis to describe Shia Arabs, who share
their faith with non-Arab, Persian-
speaking Iran.
“All we can do now is take it out against
the Americans and the government,” said
another mourner who paused by the tomb
in a marble-floored mosque hall in Awja,
near the Tikrit. A portrait of a smiling
Saddam wearing his trademark fedora hat
was propped up on a chair.
Groups of several dozen mourners took
turns to pay their respects. Mint tea and
coffee were served in an adjacent room,
where Saddam was referred to by many as
a martyr against the US occupation.
A member of Saddam’s Albu Nasir tribe
said there were plans to found a religious
school and library at his burial site.
“We want to make this place an appro-
priate and suitable edifice. This will hon-
our Saddam Hussein,” said Muayed Al-
Hazaa, who described himself as a cousin
of Saddam. “We want to turn the place
into a religious school and a library.”
The government had initially indicated
that Saddam’s body might lie in a secret,
unmarked grave, fearing it could become
a pilgrimage site for Ba’athist rebels and
Sunni Arabs.
But after lobbying from Albu Nasir for
the ousted dictator to rest in Awja, a US
helicopter flew Saddam’s body by night to
Tikrit, where it was delivered in a coffin
to the governor of Salahaddin province,
Mohammed al-Qaisi, tribal chieftain Ali
al-Nida and other local officials.
Saddam’s body was later driven to Awja
in a police vehicle and buried in the
middle of the night, after it was washed
and covered in a white shroud. Saddam’s
two sons Uday and Qusay, killed by US
troops in 2003, lie in a family plot in Awja’s
cemetery.
The burial was attended by a small
group of people. Symbolic funerals were
held in other Sunni towns and cities in
Iraq, including the Baghdad insurgent
bastion of Amriya.
Around 100 of his supporters gathered
shouting Saddam-era slogans in Tikrit in a
demonstration that was broken up by Iraqi
army troops.
Ignoring hesitation among Sunni Arabs
and Kurdish members of his government,
the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, Gesture of defiance
rushed through the execution of his A masked man holds up a picture
former enemy in a move that boosted his of Saddam Hussein in Baiji,
authority among fellow Shia Muslims. But 112 miles north of Baghdad on
many fear it could further exacerbate hearing news that the former
sectarian passions among Sunnis. dictator had been buried early
Reuters yesterday following his execution
Photograph: Nuhad Hussin/Reuters
guardian.co.uk/iraq/saddam ≥

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As TV debated the morals of showing ex-
plicit images of what it trumpeted as the
Death of a Dictator, the video of Saddam
Hussein’s execution was already circulat-
ing on the internet.
“Awaiting first pictures of Saddam Hus-
sein execution” read the news flash on
CNN as an Iraqi government national se-
curity adviser who had witnessed the ex-
ecution told the channel that it would be
some time before a decision on whether
to release the footage would be made.
While CNN was running its Death of a
Dictator special, Fox News Channel, the
other leading purveyor of rolling news,
preferred Date with Death. But neither
to have been shot on a mobile phone.
Looking up at the scaffold, the jerky
viewfinder settles on the figure of the
former dictator. His mouth moves, but his
words cannot be heard in the video.
Saddam is seen through the red railings
of the scaffold, his face illuminated by a
light above him and the occasional flash
of a camera as the noose is placed around
his neck and he begins to recite a Muslim
verse: “There is no god but God, and
Muhammad is his prophet.”
His words are interrupted by the open-
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The shaky, hand-held footage appears
The execution captured on handset
around Saddam’s neck. “The truth is that
once the video is out there, everyone will
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4 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007

Saddam execution

Deadline looms as US toll reaches 3,000

All eyes on January 10
date for new course in Iraq
Disillusion with Shia
dominated government
Ewen MacAskill
Dan Glaister Los Angeles
As George Bush hacked down brushwood
and rode his bike at his Crawford ranch
this weekend, he gave the impression of
a US president little preoccupied by two
Iraq milestones that complicate his delib-
erations on a change of strategy.
The first, the hanging of Saddam Hus-
sein, found Mr Bush asleep, and accord-
ing to advisers he spent only a short time
discussing the execution. The second, the
reports of the 3,000th US fatality in Iraq,
evinced a only general remark.
“The most painful aspect of the presi-
dency is the fact that I know my decisions
have caused young men and women to
lose their lives,” Mr Bush said at an end-
of-year press conference in Texas. A White
House spokesman added simply that the
president “will ensure their sacrifice was
not made in vain”.
The 3,000 figure was arrived at by the
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an internet-
based monitoring group, and by the
Associated Press, which keeps its own
tally of US military deaths. The Pentagon
disputed the figures, saying that the total
of confirmed dead was 2,983. Nonethe-
less, the widespread reporting of the grim
milestone appeared set to offset whatever
boost Mr Bush will get from the news
about Saddam’s death.
The White House is due to announce a
new course for Baghdad on January 10.
Time is running out for the US and British
governments. The insurgents and those
engaged in the sectarian killing can afford
to wait. But domestic political pressures
put a question mark over American stay-
ing power.
As a former Texas governor who signed
a near-record number of death warrants,
Mr Bush will have had few qualms about
the execution. There was also a personal
element: he blamed Saddam for an assas-
sination attempt on his father during a
visit to Kuwait in 1993.
But far from marking the closure of an
era in Iraq, Saddam’s execution will
exacerbate sectarian tensions. The fears
of the minority Sunni Muslims will have
been increased by the comments of his
Shia executioners in support of the Shia
militia leader, Moqtada al-Sadr.
Mr Bush acknowledged the scale of the
Iraq crisis on Saturday in a short statement
on Saddam’s death. Abandoning the gung-
ho approach of past years, he cautioned
that Saddam’s demise would not halt the
violence. “Many difficult choices and fur-
ther sacrifices lie ahead,” he said.
A US adviser involved in the talks on a
new strategy said: “There is recognition
that the present strategy is not working.
But alternative options are limited.” The
source said there was a general disillu-
sionment in the US administration with
the Shia Muslim-dominated government
led by the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki,
which is increasingly viewed as condon-
ing — or at least failing to act against — sec-
tarian killing. “It would have been easier
to implement a new strategy in 2005. It
gets harder every day. We have painted
ourselves into a corner with this [Iraqi]
government,” the source said.
The debate within the administration
about what to do next is still to be
resolved. Dick Cheney, the vice-president,
is leading those in favour of the “surge”
approach: sending a further 20,000-
40,000 US troops to Baghdad to reinforce
the present US force of 140,000 in a final
attempt to subdue the Iraqi capital.
But the White House was given several
warnings yesterday from figures across
the political spectrum that any change of
Mr Bush this week. ‘Difficult choices lie ahead’ he said Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
course in Iraq should be conducted in con-
sultation with the new Congress. Richard
Lugar, the outgoing Republican chairman
of the Senate foreign relations committee,
told Fox News that should the adminis-
tration proceed with any move to increase
troop numbers without involving Con-
gress, Mr Bush could anticipate “a lot of
hearings, a lot of study, a lot of criticism”.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former na-
tional security adviser to President Jimmy
Carter argued that only a surge in troop
numbers, of 300,000-400,000 would
make a difference. Speaking on CNN, Mr
Brzezinski criticised the core group gath-
ered around Mr Bush to determine Iraq
policy. With the exception of the new de-
fence secretary, Robert Gates, he noted “a
narrow decision-making group embedded
in its own opinions … is now making the
decision about a change of course.”
Also feeding into the White House are
the views of the Pentagon, the state
department, the intelligence services and,
the catalyst for the rethink, the Iraq Study
Group report, published last month. The
debate is being conducted against a
domestic political background in which
opposition to the war is growing.
A senior US military source identified
the core of the problem as the US pursuit
of democratic government ahead of secu-
rity and economic reconstruction. What
Washington had ended up with was an
Iraqi government that shared different
objectives from America: establishing the
dominance of the Shia rather than foster-
ing reconciliation and unity. He said the
view of the US military in Iraq is that the
police force was so riddled with sectari-
anism that the only possible course was
to disband it and start again; it was also
rife in the Iraqi army, a trend encouraged
by the Iraqi government.
“We are still in charge. The Iraqi gov-
ernment is a facade,” the military source
said. “How can our strategy be to acceler-
ate the handover to this government and
the Iraq army. This is a rush to failure.”
The British government privately
shares the US administration’s disap-
pointment with Mr Maliki.
Saddam’s execution posed a special
problem for the British government, given
its opposition to the death penalty. The
Foreign Office said it had made repeated
approaches to the Iraqi government,
making clear its opposition to the execu-
tion. Officials had planned a last-minute
plea for clemency by the ambassador,
Dominic Asquith, to the Iraqi president,
Jalal Talabani, and Mr Maliki. But the plan
was abandoned. A Foreign Office source
confirmed yesterday that no final
approach to the Iraqi government was
made by a senior British diplomat.
Tony Blair, questioned about the
prospect of the death penalty in Novem-
ber, proved initially reluctant to denounce
it, but eventually did so. On Saturday, the
foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett,
reiterated Britain's opposition to the death
penalty but welcomed the fact that he had
been tried by an Iraqi court. “He has now
been held to account." she said.

Reaction

Dismay among Kurds that

genocide case unanswered
Michael Howard
Iraq’s Kurds expressed satisfaction yes-
terday at the death of Saddam Hussein,
but their joy was tempered with disap-
pointment that their greatest tormentor
would never face justice for what he had
done to them.
Saddam had been standing trial in a sec-
ond case on charges of genocide against
the Kurds during the Anfal campaign in
the late 1980s, during which more than
4,000 villages were destroyed and more
than 100,000 people killed in a series of
military sweeps in the Kurdistan region
that included the regular use of chemical
weapons.
The former dictator was also due to face
separate charges over the gas attack on
Halabja in March 1988 that killed 5,000
Kurds. Sources at the special tribunal try-
ing Saddam and six members of his for-
mer regime in the Anfal trial said yester-
day that proceedings would resume on
January 8. The remaining defendants are
Ali Hassan Majid, known as Chemical Ali,
a cousin of Saddam, described by Kurds
as the evil face of the Anfal campaign;
Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai, former
defence minister; Sabir Abdul Aziz Douri,
director of military intelligence; Hussein
Rashid Mohammed, a senior military
‘He’s quite officer; Taher Tawfiq Ani, former gover-
handy nor of Nineveh province; and Farhan Mut-
laq Jubouri, head of military intelligence
with his in northern Iraq.
arrers, but
he’s a
moody
bugger
and he
looks like
Bambi’
Sam
Wollaston
on Robin
Hood. g2,
page 19 Graves of victims at Halabja, Kurdistan
Under Iraqi law, all outstanding charges
against an executed person must be
dropped. Without the interest that would
be caused by the presence of the chief de-
fendant, Kurds fear that their past suffer-
ing will attract less attention from fellow
Iraqis and the international community.
A spokesman for the Kurdish president,
Massoud Barzani, said: “We hope that
Saddam’s execution will lead to a new
chapter among the Iraqi people, and to
ending innocent people’s sufferings.” But
he added: “We also wish that the execu-
tion not be used as an excuse to ignore the
documentation of the enormous crimes
committed against the Kurds.”
“How can I be sad that the tyrant is
gone? It is like a dream come true for the
survivors in my family,” said Herro Mah-
moud, a primary school teacher in Sulay-
maniyah who lost her father and uncle to
the Anfal (which means spoils of war).
“But I think they should have waited un-
til the other cases had been heard, and all
the scale of the other atrocities would be
known.”
Other Kurds said they felt cheated.
“Saddam was hanged for the murder of
148 people in Dujail. But why won’t he
face the court for killing hundreds of thou-
sands of Kurds? Do our dead and our trau-
matised people not deserve to be hon-
oured?” said Bijar Ahmed, an English stu-
dent at the university of Koi Sanjaq.
Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kur-
dish MP in Baghdad who survived several
assassination attempts by the former
regime, criticised the Iraqi government’s
apparent rush to carry out the death sen-
tence before the end of the Anfal trial.
“It was very important to keep him
alive so that we could know the full
details of what happened during all the
atrocities that were committed,” he said.
“We need to know how and why he did
what he did and who helped him, by pro-
viding political and material support to
his regime.”
Saddam had taken many secrets to his
grave, he said, including vital knowledge
about “the foreign companies and coun-
tries that supplied the parts and expertise
to make chemical weapons.”
Additional reporting by Alan Attoof in
Sulaymaniya
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
Reaction
Emotions in Arab
world range from
elation to outrage
Event underlines division
between Shias and Sunnis
Timing during holy month
is seen as significant
Brian Whitaker and agencies
The Arab world was divided over the
hanging of Saddam Hussein, with the
Middle East’s two leading satellite TV
channels reflecting the divisions between
Shia and Sunni Muslims.
On Qatari-owned al-Jazeera, a succes-
sion of commentators criticised the exe-
cution, while its main rival — Saudi-owned
al-Arabiyya — provided a platform for Iraq’s
Shia politicians to justify their action.
Whatever ordinary viewers thought, no
one disputed that it was a big moment in
TV history: the first televised execution
of an Arab leader.
“People are confused. This is the end of
a tyrant but also of a prisoner of war who
fought the west,” Khalaf Alharbi, editor
of the Saudi tabloid Shams, told Reuters.
Satisfaction at his death was strongest
among Shia Muslims. For one Iraqi Shia
cleric performing the hajj in Saudi Arabia,
the “stoning the devil” ceremony had
extra significance this year.
“We were also stoning Saddam,” Sayed
Hassan Moussawi told the Jeddah-based
daily, Arab News.
A group of Iranian pilgrims broke into
Mourning Palestinians hold pictures of
the late Yasser Arafat and Saddam
Ba’ath party
Battle for new
leader likely
Michael Howard
The execution of Saddam Hussein could
force the Ba’ath party to choose a new
leader, sparking an internal battle that
could weaken its activities just as it was
beginning to re-emerge as a serious force
in the Sunni insurgency, a senior Iraqi in-
telligence official predicted yesterday.
“With Saddam gone and the two lead-
ing figures fighting over control of Ba’ath
party funds, they may tear themselves
apart,” the official said in Baghdad.
Other Iraqi and western analysts
warned that the death of its leader would
push the organisation further into the
hands of Syria — where key figures in the
Iraqi Ba’athist leadership are thought to
be hiding — increasing the leverage the
Damascus government is able to wield
over Iraq’s internal affairs.
In what appeared to be the opening
shots of a leadership contest, a statement
signed by a previously unknown group
calling itself the Baghdad Citizens Gath-
ering and handed out at the party’s offices
in Amman and Damascus yesterday,
pledged loyalty to Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri,
a long-time Saddam confidant who es-
caped capture after the US-led invasion
and is believed to be in Syria.
But the Iraqi intelligence official said it
was likely al-Douri would face a challenge
from younger Ba’athist figures such as
Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, a former
Ba’ath party member accused of funding
and leading insurgency operations.
cheers on hearing news of Saddam’s exe-
cution, the paper reported.
Among Sunni pilgrims from Iraq, the
mood was more subdued and many re-
fused to talk about it to journalists. “We're
not here for politics, we're here to get
closer to God,” Sheikh Khatab Mustafa,
from the Baghdad district of Azamiyah,
told Arab News. “Saddam can come and
go, but God remains eternal.”
The official Saudi news agency, appar-
ently reflecting the government’s view,
said Saddam’s execution had drawn
strong disapproval from observers be-
cause it took place during the holy month
of Dhu al-Hijjah, and was on the first day
of Eid al-Adha, when Muslims slaughter
sheep to commemorate the prophet Abra-
ham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for
God.
Many saw the timing as symbolic,
though they interpreted it in different
ways. “This is the best Eid gift for hu-
manity,” said Saad bin Tifla al-Ajmi, for-
mer information minister of Kuwait, the
oil-rich state invaded by Saddam’s forces
in 1990. Others saw it as a mockery of their
religion. Pakistani pilgrim Manzar
Muhammad Baloch likened Saddam to a
sacrificial sheep. “This is a warning to all
the leaders in the third world,” he told
Arab News. “If America so chooses, this
will be your fate too.”
In the West Bank, hundreds of Pales-
tinians took to the streets to mourn
Saddam’s death. About 700 held a mock
funeral in Jenin and chanted “Death to
Bush”, “Death to al-Maliki” (the Iraqi
prime minister) and “Death to al-Sadr”
(the radical Iraqi Shia cleric).
In Jordan, demonstrators from the
Palestinian Fatah movement and mem-
bers of Jordanian Islamic and leftist par-
ties rallied at Baqaa refugee camp on the
outskirts of Amman. A statement de-
scribed Saddam as a “martyr who was
killed by the Americans and their allies in
the Iraqi government”.
A group of Ba’athists in Jordan calling
themselves Baghdad's Citizens Gathering
pledged allegiance to Saddam's fugitive
deputy, Izzat Ibrahim, and named him the
“legitimate president of Iraq”.
“We vow to liberate our country from
the heinous criminals, neo-Zionists and
the Persians in order to restore Iraq's
unity,” the group said in a statement.
How a
stomach
Great prices for a great New Year at
operation
changed
my life
g2, page 7
guardian.co.uk/readeroffers
Saddam’s family tree
Saddam flanked by his wife Sajiba and Hussein Kamel Hassan, husband of Saddam’s daughter Rana, with (behind left to right)
daughters Rana, Raghad and Hala, sons Uday and Qussay, and Raghad’s husband, Saddam Kamel Hassan Photograph: AFP
Father
Hussein al-Majid. Died either before or
shortly after Saddam was born.
Saddam Hussein
Half-brothers Wives
Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti Sajida (a first cousin) — believed
— presidential adviser, in US to be in Qatar, daughter of his
custody awaiting trial uncle Khairallah Tulfah
Watban Ibrahim Hassan According to news reports,
al-Tikriti — presidential adviser, Saddam married three other
in US custody awaiting trial women:
Samira Shabandar in 1982. The
Barzan Ibrahim Hassan couple have a son, Ali. She is
al-Tikriti — presidential adviser, thought to be living in Lebanon
former director of Mukhabarat under an assumed name.
intelligence service, in US Nidal Hamdani, probably mar-
custody, sentenced to hang. ried in 1990 and Iman Howeid,
in 2001
Dham Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti
— died in the 1980s
5
Mother
Sabha. After Saddam’s father died, she
remarried, to Hassan al-Ibrahim,
father of Saddam’s three half-brothers.
Died in 1982.
Sons Daughters
Uday — killed by US troops on Raghad, the eldest daughter,
July 22 2003 living in Jordan where she was
granted government sanctuary.
Qusay — Saddam’s heir appar- Rana, living in Jordan. Relations
ent, killed by US troops on July between Raghad and Rana and
22 2003 their father were strained after
the assassinations of their hus-
Ali (with Samira Shabandar) was bands, Hussein Kamel Hassan and
never a significant figure in the Saddam Kamel. Saddam was
regime, and was not officially accused of being responsible for
recognised by Saddam. Thought their deaths. They had called for
to be in Lebanon. a revolution.
Hala — his youngest daughter,
thought to be living in Qatar with
Sajida. Hala’s husband, Sultan al-
Tikriti, was deputy head of tribal
affairs under Saddam. He was
taken into custody in April 2003.
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6 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
National
New Year
Edinburgh’s Hogmanay party falls foul of
atrocious weather as 2007 enters with a blast
Glasgow, Liverpool and
Newcastle events hit
One killed, one missing
as weather takes its toll
Steven Morris
Gales, thunderstorms and driving rain
forced major new year celebrations
throughout the UK to be cancelled last
night as revellers endured a wet and
windy start to 2007.
Thousands braved a squally London
night for a firework spectacular on the
South Bank, but more than 100,000 peo-
ple in Edinburgh had to conjure up last-
minute alternatives after the official Hog-
manay party was called off because of
atrocious conditions.
Organisers and partygoers were
deflated, but few questioned the move
given the sideways rain and squally gusts
lashing the Scottish capital.
The Edinburgh event was to have fea-
tured the Pet Shop Boys and Paolo Nutini.
Andrew Holmes, the director of city
development, said: “It was clear we were
going to have bad weather, but we were
confident it would not deteriorate to the
extent that we would need to call it off. I
recognise the disappointment, particu-
larly to those who enjoyed other Hog-
manay events over the past two days."
It is the second time in the past four
years that the Hogmanay event had to be
cancelled in Edinburgh as a result of
stormy weather. And it was the same story
in Glasgow, where high winds and
showers forced organisers to call off the
event just hours before the first of the per-
formers were due on stage. Firework dis-
plays in Liverpool and Newcastle upon
Tyne also fell victim to the weather, while
an open air concert in Belfast was can-
celled as winds reached 70mph.
Severe winds wrought havoc to mo-
torists on the roads, and police said a num-
ber of traffic accidents had been caused in
Scotland due to trees felled by the winds.
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Security personnel clear Princes Street in Edinburgh last night after bad weather forced the cancellation of Hogmanay celebrations Photograph: David Cheskin/PA
A New Year's Day party in Brighton with
‘There are big black DJ Fatboy Slim, and London's New Year's
marks on my wall Day parade were set to go ahead.
The by now traditional display of spec-
where the lightning hit. tacular pyrotechnics at the London Eye
I was very lucky’ passed off with the usual oohs and aahs,
the 10-minute display this year featuring
boats launching fireworks from the
Thames itself.
The Met Office said a deep Atlantic low
was responsible for the savage weather.
Gusts of up to 80mph, which can cause
damage to buildings, were battering parts
of Scotland, northern England and north-
ern and west Wales yesterday evening.
Perhaps those who missed out because
of the weather were lucky. Research from
the Yorkshire Bank suggested that mil-
lions of people decided to stay at home on
New Year's Eve not because of the weather
but because of high prices charged at
pubs, clubs, restaurants and taxi drivers.
According to the survey, one in three
planned to stay at home and watch tele-
vision and one in five preferred to enter-
tain friends at home. One in eight said
they would be in bed before midnight.
Around the world
Lavish show in Sydney, first dawn from Mount Fuji
Jeevan Vasagar
A vast crowd gathered to watch fire-
works lighting up the sky over Sydney
harbour, while thousands in Japan
climbed mountains to greet the first
dawn of the new year.
Sydney was one of the first big cities to
celebrate, with a lavish firework display
marking the 75th anniversary of the
opening of one of the city’s most famous
landmarks, the Harbour Bridge. The
bridge, which opened in March 1932, was
• Excellent quality 3 and 4-star hotels
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mosques ever built shrines over the next three days as
• Services of an experienced tour manager
people offer prayers for peace, health
and prosperity. Many Japanese climbed
mountains, including Mount Fuji,
overnight so they could reach the top in
time for sunrise.
In New York, at least a million rev-
ellers were expected in Times Square for
performances by singers Christina Aguil-
era and Toni Braxton, while in Brazil,
more than 2 million people were ex-
Hangovers
Feeling rotten this morning? A break-
fast of toast and honey is the ideal
hangover cure, according to the
Royal Society of Chemistry. Honey —
or, if you prefer, golden syrup — pro-
vides the sodium, potassium and
fructose the body needs after a good
night out. The toast is merely some-
thing to put it on. Dr John Emsley
from the Society, said (the queasy
might care to look away here): “A
hangover comes from acetaldehyde
— the toxic chemical into which alco-
hol is converted by the body. It
causes a throbbing headache, nau-
sea, and maybe even vomiting." The
good news: “Generally, it will be gone
by midday,” according to Dr Emsley.
And the “hair of the dog” theory?
More bad news. “It only works if it
relieves alcohol withdrawal symp-
toms, which suggests you are becom-
ing addicted." Steven Morris
pected at the Copacabana and Ipanema
beaches to watch a firework show and
concerts by Brazilian and foreign musi-
cians, including the Black Eyed Peas.
In India, police arrested two suspected
Islamic militants at a busy railway station
Taipei’s 101 tower was used in display
National editor: Edward
Nick Hopkins
Pilkington
Telephone: 020-7239 9580
Fax: 020-7239 9787
Email: national@guardian.co.uk
One family who wished they could
have been tucked up in their own home
last night were the Wiltshires. Their house
in Elberton, Gloucestershire, was struck
by lightning early yesterday, passing
through the metal frame of 15-year-old
Sophie Wiltshire’s bed. She suffered
bruises and an asthma attack, but rubber
stops on the bedstead are thought to have
saved her from serious harm. She said:
“There are black marks on my wall. I just
remember falling asleep and the next
thing I knew I was outside the house. I was
very lucky, but it's all a bit strange."
Sophie's mother, Judy, 48, said: “It was
terrifying. It sounded as if a bomb had
gone off." The family were taken in by
neighbours last night.
The storms claimed a number of victims,
including Rebecca Smith, 18, who was
killed when a tree fell on a caravan in
Staffordshire. Two 19-year-old friends were
injured. In Cornwall, a young man was
feared drowned in Cornwall after he was
swept away from a beach near Padstow.
Eyewitness, pages 14-15 ≥
in Delhi. The pair were less than a mile
from the site of the Indian capital’s main
New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Chinese authorities deployed nearly a
quarter of a million police in Beijing to
prevent New Year fireworks accidents.
The government lifted a 12-year ban on
firecrackers in the inner city last year but
the ban remains in force around cultural
sites, stations, the airport and hospitals.
In the Philippines, the popularity of
firecrackers proved hazardous for nearly
300 people who were injured by fire-
works and celebratory gunfire in the two
weeks ahead of New Year’s Day, a 75%
increase on last year.
Across South-East Asia, stormy
weather and powerful waves in coastal
areas dampened festivities.
Romania and Bulgaria were celebrat-
ing joining the European Union from
today.
In Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, organ-
isers set up stages for a fireworks show
and an outdoor party that was expected
to draw 40,000 people. The blue and
gold EU flag fluttered across Bucharest,
the Romanian capital, and strobe lights
flashed through the sky.
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007 7

2006 in numbers

£91,000,000
Profit made by German football authorities from hosting the World Cup

£73,350,000
Amount Jackson Pollock's No 5, 1948, fetched in a private
sale, the most paid for a painting to date

£21,000,000
Approximate amount so far recovered following the £53m
heist at a security depot in Tonbridge

17,800,000
Number of British adults who would struggle to read the lyrics to Robbie Williams's
Angels because of poor literacy skills SOURCE: DFES

4,000,000
Number of ‘bomblets’ from cluster bombs fired by Israel into
Lebanon during the July/August conflict
62
The cost in pence each Briton has spent to support the Royal Family for the year

655,000
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimate of the
46
number of Iraqis killed as a result of 2003 invasion Number of articles in UK national newspapers mentioning video-sharing website Youtube in the first

6,928
half of 2006. 905 Number in the second half of 2006

45
Number of tickets sold for a Bob Geldof concert in Milan –
he pulled out of the performance at the 12,000 capacity venue

25
Baby boys named Jack this year

6,000
25
%
Number of people who died in the Java earthquake in July
Percentage of British office workers who hate their workmates SOURCE: PARTNERS STATIONERS

1,000
Approximate number of crew and passengers killed after an
20 20
%
Egyptian ferry sank in the Red Sea in February Percentage of British families who eat every evening meal

£821
while watching TV SOURCE: GREAT BRITISH CHICKEN SURVEY

17.8
17.8C (64.04F) Average night and day temperature for the UK
Average yearly income in pounds sterling for British children in July — the hottest month since such records began in 1914

14
through pocket money and financial gifts SOURCE: CARTOON NETWORK

RESEARCH: ALAN POWER

Number of British troops killed in the Nimrod MRS aircraft crash in

Afghanistan —the biggest single loss of life in conflict since the Falklands

5
Number of days Boy George spent sweeping New York streets
as part of a community service sentence

2.16
The exact time in the afternoon that people in Britain have
least amount of energy to carry out a task SOURCE: TYPHOO

1
Number of outbreaks of H5N1 avian flu in Britain (virus found
in a dead Whooper Swan in Cellardyke, Scotland)
8 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
National
Murder hunt after man, 83, is
beaten to death in break-in
Police check CCTV after
attack on London estate
Neighbours claim gang
has intimidated residents
Jeevan Vasagar
Police yesterday launched a murder in-
quiry after a pensioner was found beaten
to death on an east London estate where
neighbours claimed a gang of youths has
been intimidating residents.
Ferozur Rahman, 83, was found un-
conscious with head injuries on Friday
and died in hospital on Saturday night. Mr
Rahman, a father of seven, had lived on
the Toynbee estate in Bethnal Green for
20 years and knew the disgraced cabinet
minister John Profumo, who worked on
the estate after he quit his job in 1963.
Detectives visited local businesses yes-
terday to check for CCTV footage and ap-
pealed for witnesses. His attackers may
have been trying to burgle his ground-
floor flat but police said it was unclear
whether anything had been stolen.
Residents say they have campaigned
for better security measures. Dennis
Delderfield, who chairs the residents’
association, said: “Flats are constantly
burgled and a blind woman was attacked
here two years ago. It's a very scary place
to live and we always get abuse shouted
at us and spat on.”
Arthur Rumble, 79, said: “Normally
there are six or seven of the gang mem-
bers hanging around here. They cause
havoc. They drink, shout abuse and do
drugs. I have been here for five years and
the first night I came here I was mugged,
and I haven't been out after 3pm since.”
Mr Rahman’s son-in-law Abjal Hussain,
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43, said he was not aware of any recent
problems with antisocial behaviour.
“This happened a long time ago, as far
as I can remember, but not recently. There
was a problem in the area but not with him
particularly. Apart from that, I don't
know."
Describing Mr Rahman, he said: “He
was a good man who was likely to help
everyone. He was like a community
worker … When I think about what hap-
pened I am very shocked. We are not re-
ally taking it in."
Despite being invited to move in with
relatives, Mr Rahman had preferred to live
on his own after the death of his wife, Mr
Hussain said.
Detective Inspector Larry Smith, head-
ing the murder investigation, said: “Mr
Rahman was a frail, elderly man. He was
last seen alive at 9.30pm on Thursday and
unfortunately he was found by his 17-year-
old grandson on Friday at 2pm.
“There had been a forced entry into the
flat and he had suffered a head injury.” A
postmortem is to take place today.
Mr Smith said: “Someone must have
seen something. There would have been a
lot of noise and someone must have put
their head out the window and seen
someone running off. We are still in the
early stages of the investigation and can't
say if anything was taken from the flat or
what the motive may have been.
“This was a ghastly crime. Why would
you assault an 83-year-old when you
could just run away?"
The Toynbee Hall complex, which runs
social projects, is best- known as the place
where Mr Profumo worked after he re-
signed from the Macmillan government
over his affair with Christine Keeler.
Anyone with information should con-
tact the incident room on 020 8345 1585
or call Crimestoppers anonymously on
0800 555 111.
Fully escorted price includes
• Return flights to Rome from a choice of airports
• Bed and breakfast at excellent quality 4-star hotels
• Guided walking tour of Siena, one of Europe’s most
finely preserved medieval cities
• Guided walking tour of Florence, heart of the
Renaissance
• Visit to Assisi
• Guided tour of Rome
• Opportunity to visit the Uffizi gallery
• Services of an experienced tour manager
Call 0870 836 0840
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‘999 adverts’ to help young
tell on website paedophiles
Bobbie Johnson
Technology correspondent
Social networking sites such as MySpace
may be ordered to play adverts for the
emergency services — including the num-
ber 999 — on their pages under plans being
considered by the Home Office.
The tactic is one of a number of recom-
mendations being considered by minis-
ters in a document seen by the Guardian.
According to the document, officials be-
lieve that websites should be doing more
to safeguard children on the internet.
Draft guidelines for good practice
among internet companies suggest that
they should be working harder to prevent
images of nudity being placed online.
The Home Office believes that adver-
tising the 999 emergency number will en-
courage young surfers to report suspicious
encounters directly to the police.
Other options include more stringent
checks on age and identity, which would
help to deter older users from mas-
querading as children. Online groomers
often pretend to be a child to befriend po-
tential victims. Most social networks only
require an email address for membership.
The paper also suggests ways of pro-
viding better protection for young inter-
net users. Age restrictions could be used
to prevent them being contacted by older
users, or to prevent them from accessing
material deemed unsuitable for children.
“Young people on the whole use the in-
ternet positively, but sometimes in ways
that may place them at risk of harm,” says
the document, drawn up by a working
group of representatives from the govern-
ment, internet companies and child pro-
tection organisations. “Service providers
should, where possible, request and vali-
date personal information from users … to
minimise the risk of impersonation.”
Ferozur Rahman, and police officers The perceived danger of this has grown
at the Toynbee estate where he lived over the past year as social websites have
US navy names sailors who died
after being washed off deck of sub
The US navy yesterday named the two
sailors who died after being washed off
the deck of a nuclear submarine at
Plymouth.
British safety experts have begun an in-
vestigation into the deaths of the two
American sailors. Specialists from the
Marine Accident Investigation Branch
(MAIB) are to interview two other sailors
from the USS Minneapolis-St Paul who
survived the accident with minor injuries.
The submarine has continued on its
voyage but its skipper, Commander Edwin
Ruff, and his officers will be questioned
when it returns to port.
The US navy named the two victims as
Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas E Hig-
gins, 45, of Paducah, Kentucky, and Petty
Officer Second Class Michael J Holtz, 30,
of Lakewood, Ohio.
The Americans have also started an in-
quiry into the accident, which happened
as the crewmen were clearing the deck of
the submarine as it left Plymouth Sound
on Friday.
Lieutenant Chris Servello, of the US 6th
fleet headquarters in Naples, said: “The
cause of the accident remains under
investigation.”
The British inquiry is being conducted
jointly by the police and the MAIB, who
will also be interviewing the crews of two
British boats that helped in the rescue.
Transit van excavated as a relic
Martin Wainwright
‘Without
British archaeologists have found a new
my baby I relic of the past to dismantle: a 1991 Ford
know I Transit van. Three months of painstaking
research has seen the light van broken up
would into hundreds of ‘finds’ and archived.
still be Chosen to test techniques on “a com-
mon and characteristic part of contempo-
smoking rary life,” the vehicle was given to Bristol
20 a day university by the Ironbridge museum in
Shropshire. Everything from a Victorian
and binge threepenny bit, dropped down a crack in
drinking the floor of the van, to crude spot-welds
have been scrutinised and recorded.
on cherry “In many ways it has been like a con-
Lambrini’ ventional study in field archaeology,” said
Cassie Newland, a doctoral student at Bris-
g2, page 7 tol who organised the project as a trial of
grown rapidly. MySpace — the huge net-
working site owned by Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corporation — last month overtook
Yahoo to become the biggest site on the
internet. But such sites have also come
under fire for what some have claimed is
a lax approach to safety. In America My-
Space was accused of inaction after it
mistakenly allowed a number of regis-
tered paedophiles to use its services to
contact children. The site now has a fil-
tering system to exclude sex offenders.
It is not just MySpace which is targeted
in the government consultation, however.
The Home Office document also points to-
wards popular sites including Facebook,
Xanga, Piczo and Faceparty. Law enforce-
ment officials believe the inability to
prove people’s identity online is a barrier
to protecting younger users.
MySpace — the
internet’s biggest
site — was accused
of inaction after
mistakenly letting
paedophiles use
its services
“The problem is that identity as we un-
derstand it is changing,” said Jim Gamble,
chief executive of the Child Exploitation
and Online Protection Centre, which
tracks down abusers and focuses much of
its effort on the internet. “It used to be
that we took people’s names, date of birth,
and their address. Now people identify
themselves in a different way — their in-
ternet address, username, email.” This
has forced investigators to come up with
hi-tech information tracking techniques
to track down offenders who use the net.
Alex Hewitt, the founder of NetIDme,
which sells online age verification ser-
vices, said traceable identities would help
to prevent attacks.
guardian.co.uk/technology ≥
The American crewmen were hit by
breaking waves as the ship left the shelter
of the harbour and were exposed to the
full force of the sea and the wind.
They were on deck wearing lifelines,
which kept them attached to the ship af-
ter they were swept into the sea. They
were dragged behind the submarine as it
slowed and were rescued by British sailors
from a pilot boat and two launches that
were escorting the boat out of harbour.
They were taken to Derriford hospital
47
Speed of wind in
knots which the
submarine
encountered after
leaving the shelter
of Plymouth
harbour
in Plymouth, where two died and two oth-
ers were discharged to the sick bay at the
HMS Drake base in Plymouth.
Coastguards said there was a severe
gale force-nine at the time with winds
gusting to 47 knots, and the sea was very
rough.
The 6,000-tonne USS Minneapolis-St
Paul was launched in 1983 and has a top
speed of more than 25 knots. It is nuclear
powered and in 1992 became the first sub-
marine to fire a Tomahawk cruise missile.
archaeology’s potential to help in the
analysis of modern British society.
Three separate layers within the van
were then carefully excavated, yielding
lost pencils, dog hair and confetti from a
distant museum party.
Fingerprint dusting proved that the
Transit was one of Ford motor company’s
first British vehicles made by robots — “a
discovery reflecting a huge social change
in employment,” said Ms Newland.
All finds are to be reported in British Ar-
chaeology magazine and other data on the
Transit, one of only 191 surviving models
of its type and year, will be kept at Bristol
for future study. Ms Newland said:
“Archaeology concerns the interpretation
of material culture in pursuit of under-
standing. That material can be van just as
a prehistoric ditch or settlement.”
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
National
BNP ballerina defies rising clamour to sack her
I know I’m right, dancer
named by Guardian says
English National Ballet
faces calls for dismissal
Hugh Muir
Officials from the English National Ballet
faced calls to sack one of their leading
dancers yesterday after Simone Clarke
defied criticism and gave a detailed inter-
view defending her support for the British
National party.
Two weeks after she was named by the
Guardian as a card-carrying member of the
far right group, the ballerina hit out at her
critics, voicing her belief that the BNP
seemed to be the only party “willing to
take a stand” against immigration. She
claimed that her boyfriend Yat Sen-Chang,
who is also an acclaimed lead dancer,
encouraged her to join the BNP. Sen-
Chang is of Chinese-Cuban extraction.
Clarke, 36, who will take the lead in the
ENB’s production of Giselle at the London
Coliseum next week, said she had been
called a “racist and a fascist” since her
decision to join the BNP 18 months ago
became public.
One report claimed that following the
Guardian’s revelations, fellow dancers
confronted her before a matinee perfor-
mance of The Nutcracker.
But she said: “I’ve never been clearer in
my head that I’m moving in the right
direction and at the right time. I’ve had
nearly 300 emails supporting me from all
over the UK and from as far away as Aus-
tralia, America and New Zealand.”
She told the Mail on Sunday: “Every-
thing will be different now. I will be
known as the BNP Ballerina. I think that
will stick with me for life.”
But she added: “I don’t regret anything.
I will stay a member.”
The interview has caused fresh diffi-
culties for the ENB, which was able to
deflect criticism about Clarke’s BNP mem-
bership by insisting that her stance was an
entirely private one. The company, which
is publicly funded and is therefore obliged
by the Race Relations Act of 2000 to pro-
mote good race relations, will be asked to
explain how one of its highest profile em-
ployees was able to use her position as a
platform for the far right party.
Her views and policies espoused by the
BNP appear to conflict with equality poli-
cies that operate in the company itself and
those laid down by Arts Council England,
which subsidises the ENB to the tune of
£6m a year.
Its policy says funded organisations
“must be aware of how their work con-
tributes to race equality and promoting
good race relations”.
Prior to the interview, the ENB had said
it hoped to talk to its dancer before
deciding “what action to take”.
Lee Jasper, equalities director for the
mayor of London and chairman of the
National Assembly Against Racism, said:
“The ENB must seriously consider
whether having such a vociferous mem-
ber of an avowedly racist party in such a
prominent role is compatible with the
ethics of its organisation. I seriously doubt
Doctors claim study on patient choice suppressed
John Carvel
Social affairs editor
The Department of Health appears to have
removed a research report from its web-
site because the findings would have dis-
credited the government’s programme
aimed at giving NHS patients more choice,
doctors’ leaders claimed last night.
The research, commissioned by the
department, found that people did not
want to have to select a hospital while
they were seriously ill, preferring such de-
cisions to be made by a trusted GP.
It said there was no evidence that
greater choice would improve quality of
care, and good reason to fear it would ben-
efit only the wealthy and articulate.
The British Medical Association took
copies of a summary of the research that
appeared on the department’s website last
month under the department’s official
logo. It made them available to the Guard-
ian after the online version disappeared.
The study was commissioned in 2004
by the health department’s research arm,
the NHS service delivery and organisation
R&D programme. Its summary found that
patients wanted better information about
‘I don’t regret anything.’ Simone Clarke performing in Westminster Abbey in 2005 Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA
that it is and that should lead to her posi-
tion being immediately reviewed. I think
she should be sacked.” He called on fun-
ders and David Lammy, the arts mnister,
to intervene.
Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim
Council of Britain, said people had a right
to their private political views but added:
“This will taint the ENB in the eyes of
many minority communities. Questions
need to be asked about how someone in
that position can be allowed to abuse that
treatment options but thought they were
given too little information to be able to
exercise choice effectively.
But a department spokesman said:
“The views they came up with were not
those of the [department] and the logo
was used without our permission. We
raised the issue of the logo and asked for
it to be removed. We were not aware that
they would take the whole thing off.”
Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary,
Patricia Hewitt, the
health secretary,
insists patients
using NHS services
desire more choice
in how and where
they are treated
has insisted over the past year that
patients want more choice. By 2008,
patients needing non-emergency treat-
ment will be entitled to choose any NHS
hospital in England and any private hos-
pital that meets NHS standards.
But according to the commissioned
study, by researchers at Manchester and
Cardiff universities: “Most severely ill
patients face complex treatment options
position to promote the BNP.” Jon Crud-
das, Labour MP for Dagenham in east Lon-
don, where the BNP forms the official
opposition on the council, said: “We need
to know how these statements square
with the more laudable positions taken by
the ENB and other leading arts organisa-
tions. What she completely ignores is the
underbelly of the BNP in terms of the
violence, the physical attacks and the
criminality of many of its supporters.”
A spokeswoman for the Commission
and prefer decisions to be made on their
behalf by a well-informed and trusted
health professional. Evidence that pat-
ients want the opportunity to select a dis-
tant hospital for non-urgent surgery is lim-
ited to situations where [they] face a long
wait for a local hospital appointment and
where there is a history of poor service.”
Their summary said: “Wealthy and
educated populations will be the main
beneficiaries of a policy of extending pat-
ient choice, unless measures are intro-
duced to help disadvantaged groups.”
Hamish Meldrum, the BMA’s GP chair-
man, said: “The paper supports a lot of
what doctors knew instinctively about
patients and choice. At times when
patients’ needs are not particularly urgent
they may appreciate choice … in an emer-
gency, patients tend to want to go where
their doctor recommends.”
The department spokesman said a full
version of the research was published a
year ago. “The summary paper reflected
the personal view of the researcher and
did not present a balanced summary of
the actual research, which does not find
that offering choice is misguided.”
SocietyGuardian.co.uk/health ≥
9
for Racial Equality, which polices race re-
lations legislation, said it was monitoring
events. “We will be interested to see what
action the ENB takes given that it has a
member expressing such views in public.”
An ENB spokeswoman said the com-
pany was not yet in a position to com-
ment.
Clarke’s membership became public in
reports by Guardian reporter Ian Cobain,
who used a pseudonym to join the far
right party and was quickly selected to
become its central London organiser. Dur-
ing his seven months undercover, Clarke
told him that immigration “has really got
out of hand”.
She told the Mail on Sunday how she
travelled to London from her home in
Leeds aged 10 to begin her training at the
Royal Ballet School after winning one of
23 places sought by 4,500 entrants.
‘I will be known as the
BNP Ballerina. That will
stick with me for life’
Simone Clarke
‘Her position should be
immediately reviewed.
She should be sacked’
Lee Jasper
‘This will taint the ENB
in the eyes of many
minority communities’
Inayat Bunglawala
Her conversion to the far right was
prompted by watching the television
news and then reading the BNP mani-
festo. “I am not too proud to say that a lot
of it went over my head but some of the
things they mentioned were the things I
think about all the time, mainly mass
immigration, crime and increased taxes.
I paid my £25 there and then,” she said.
She protested that it is “really silly” to
point to her partner’s non-English origins,
adding: “It is not about removing for-
eigners. It’s about border controls.”
Nine of her 10 principal dancers at the
ENB are immigrants and she suggested
that this may have muted the internal
response, adding: “There are a lot of for-
eign dancers who have probably never
even heard of the BNP.”
guardian.co.uk/farright ≥
The Ultimate
Railway Experience
6 days from £399
April to October 2007
Travel to and from Scotland by overnight sleeper and take the opportunity to discover some
of the most dramatic and beautiful Highland scenery. Our itinerary includes three charming and
nostalgic railway journeys which really bring the special ambience of this lovely region to life.
Price includes
• Return rail journeys to Inverness or Aberdeen from Euston, Watford, Crewe or Preston station
on-board ScotRail’s Caledonian Sleeper train, in a two-berth compartment
• Three nights’ half board accommodation at the Highlander Hotel, Newtonmore
or the Grant Arms Hotel, Grantown-on-Spey
• Single journeys on the Kyle and West Highland lines
• A journey on the Strathspey Railway from Aviemore to Broomhill
• Visits to a distillery and the Speyside Heather Centre (entrances payable locally)
• Coach travel and the services of a tour manager whilst in Scotland
Call 0870 836 0834
Quote Advert Code GUA
For a selection of Reader Offer holidays visit: guardian.co.uk/travel/readeroffers
Email: gua@newmarket-group.co.uk
Calls provided by BT will be charged at up to 8 pence per minute at all times. A call set-up fee of 3 pence per call applies to
calls from residential lines. Mobile and other providers’ costs may vary. This holiday is organised by
Newmarket Promotions Ltd, McMillan House, Cheam Common Road, Worcester Park, KT4 8RQ.
ABTA V787X and is offered subject to availability.
Prices do not include travel insurance. Fax: 020 8330 6819.
10 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007

National

Accident Science Transport Courts

Teenager dies in stolen Gene that doubles breast Strike forces rail operator George Michael charged
car veering off road cancer risk is identified to cancel most services with being unfit to drive
The driver of a stolen car died in a crash Scientists have found a gene that doubles Hundreds of senior train conductors be- Pop star George Michael has been charged
in Cambridge just after 5am yesterday. A a woman’s risk of developing breast can- gan a second wave of strike action yester- with being unfit to drive after an incident
second man and a woman were hurt. cer, if damaged. The gene, PALB2, has also day, forcing Central Trains to cancel more in which he was found passed out in his
Police said the stolen grey Vauxhall Nova been implicated in a newly identified dis- than half of its services. The Birmingham- car, police said yesterday. The singer will
left the road shortly after officers in a order that causes tumours in children. based operator said it was running around appear at Brent magistrates court in Lon-
marked patrol car attempted to stop it. It Breast cancer is the most common form 400 of its 1,200 services planned for New don on January 11 after he was arrested in
was not clear whether the car was being of cancer in the UK and around 44,000 Year's Eve and would restrict services to north London in October. Michael, 43, was
chased when it crashed. “When signalled women are diagnosed each year. The In- “key routes" on New Year's Day. The Rail found by officers after motorists dialled
to stop by police officers the Nova is stitute of Cancer Research estimates that Maritime and Transport union said it ex- 999 to report his car was causing an
believed to have driven off at speed ... faults in the PALB2 gene contribute to pected solid support from its members for obstruction at traffic lights in Crickle-
crashing a few moments later,” police around 100 cases of breast cancer in the the 48-hour strike, which follows a 24- wood. He was arrested on suspicion of
said. The occupants were thought to be UK each year. One of the 10 breast cancer hour stoppage on Christmas Eve. The dis- being unfit to drive and for possession of
all teenagers. The Independent Police cases identified as being linked to PALB2 pute is over pay for working on Christmas what was believed to be cannabis. The
Complaints Commission is to investigate. was a male breast cancer. Around 300 Eve and New Year's Eve and the introduc- singer was taken to hospital before being
Press Association cases are diagnosed each year. Alok Jha tion of a computerised rostering system. cautioned. Press Association

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The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
National
Stern jobs warning as Bulgaria and Romania join EU
Workers face £1,000 fines
if they breach restrictions
Visitors will have access
to free NHS treatment
Patrick Wintour
Daniel McLaughlin Bucharest
People from Romania and Bulgaria, which
join the EU today, were given a stern
warning by the Home Office yesterday
that they would face £1,000 on-the-spot
fines if they breached the restrictions that
prevent their working except in some
seasonal agricultural work and a small
number of highly skilled jobs.
But the Department of Health con-
firmed that, in common with other citi-
zens of EU member states, all Romanians
and Bulgarians will have access to free
NHS treatment while visiting Britain.
Previously visitors from the two countries
had needed a visa.
A health department circular a fortnight
ago stated that Romanians and Bulgarians
were to get free health treatment in line
with other EU member states and would
need to show their passport to gain med-
ical assistance. However, elective treat-
ment and any treatment for pre-existing
conditions that could be dealt with in their
home state would be excluded.
It is the first time that Britain has im-
posed labour market restrictions on citi-
zens from an EU member state. It follows
intense cabinet debate on the “political
dangers” of allowing Romanians and Bul-
garians to seek work. The two have a com-
bined population of about 30 million.
Only Ireland has so far followed suit with
similar restrictions.
The government underestimated the
number of citizens it thought would come
to Britain for work in the first wave of east-
ern European accession states in 2004,
and how many would elect to work here
A man buys a European flag from a street vendor in Sofia Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images
for an extended time. It is still not sure
what the longterm impact of the cheap
labour might be on inflation and employ-
ment in the UK.
Ministers are allowing up to 20,000
low-skilled Bulgarians and Romanians a
right to six months’ employment in agri-
culture — work previously undertaken
largely by Ukrainians. Otherwise they will
have to seek work permits for specific
highly skilled jobs, or where there are
specific jobs for which no UK applicants
are available. A worry for the government
is whether these rules will be widely
breached.
In Bucharest, on the eve of joining the
EU, most people dismissed predictions of
an exodus of young talent to Britain or
other EU states, saying instead they
wanted to make the best of EU member-
ship at home.
“I want to stay here. If can’t make it at
Are you
really too
sick to
work?
The rise of
‘party flu’
g2, page 3
home, I won’t make it anywhere,” said
Razvan Popescu, a tourism student at the
University of Bucharest. “I would like to
stay here and make a business with Euro-
pean Union funds. We are not expecting a
miracle — people know the EU is not a land
of dreams.”
Relief in Romania and Bulgaria at be-
coming the 26th and 27th members of the
EU was palpable last night, as the coun-
tries’ leaders celebrated joining the bloc
Legal age for buying tobacco
raised to 18 from October 1
Patrick Wintour
Political editor
Under-18s will be banned from buying cig-
arettes in England and Wales from Octo-
ber 1, the public health minister Caroline
Flint confirmed yesterday. In Scotland the
ban comes into force in March.
Shops that break the new laws could
lose their licence to sell tobacco for as long
as a year. Lifting the legal age for buying
tobacco from 16 to 18 brings the law into
line with rules on the sale of alcohol.
A ban on smoking in enclosed public
places comes into effect on July 1, with
ministers setting aside £29.5m for local
authorities to enforce the law. A council
such as Manchester will receive £263,000.
Smoking will be banned from NHS and
government buildings from today.
The move came as Hazel Blears, the
Labour chair, admitted that the loosening
of the licensing laws would not halt
Britain’s drinking culture. She suggested
Britons enjoy getting drunk because they
enjoy risk-taking.
“I don't know whether we'll ever get to
be in a European drinking culture, where
you go out and have a single glass of wine.
Maybe it's our Anglo-Saxon mentality."
She was Home Office minister when the
drinking hours were introduced in 2005.
Anti-smoking campaigners welcomed
Tories ‘party of working people’
Patrick Wintour
The Tories are to make an audacious bid
to show they are the party of working peo-
ple by looking at measures to help the
poor rise up the social ladder.
David Cameron said yesterday: “We
must show that unlike Labour, we will be
a party that is for working people, not rich
and powerful vested interests.”
He has also asked shadow home secre-
tary David Davis to head a new Conserva-
tive taskforce to look at ways of ending the
slowdown in social mobility that has oc-
cured under the Labour government.
The move, part of an attempt to show
the Tories are no longer simply the mouth-
piece of big business also follows the re-
11
before its door closed, at least temporarily.
The Romanian prime minister, Calin
Tariceanu, drank a toast at midnight with
counterparts from several other European
states and top EU officials.
The Romanian president, Traian
Basescu, marked the arrival of 2007 in
Bucharest’s University Square, which has
been a traditional centre of the city’s new
year celebrations since the revolution of
1989 which toppled Nicolae Ceausescu. In
Transylvania, the medieval city of Sibiu
celebrated the start of its year as a Euro-
pean capital of culture.
The average Bulgarian earns £130 a
month. The populations of the two coun-
tries make up the poorest in the EU. Poles
were fleeing up to 20% unemployment at
home, but the economies of Romania and
Bulgaria have been booming.
20
The number in
thousands of low-
skilled Bulgarians
and Romanians
gaining the right to
six months’ farm
work in the UK
Unemployment is low and labour short-
ages are leading firms to hire workers from
China, Turkey, Ukraine and Moldova.
“Most people who wanted to leave have
already gone,” said Ionel Danca, chief
editor of Romania’s Eurolider political
magazine. “I don’t think we will see a big
change now — in fact, many people might
see opportunities here and come home
after spending years abroad.”
Mihail Arghiropol, who works for a
Bucharest advertising firm, said that
Romanians from poor, rural regions might
head west, but he did not think there
would be a brain drain. “The biggest mis-
take now would be to leave,” he said. “The
market is saturated abroad and lots of
multinationals are coming here. For us,
the future is Romania.”
guardian.co.uk/immigration ≥
lifting the legal age for buying cigarettes.
Government statistics show that 9% of
young people aged 11 to 15 smoke, down
from 13% in 1996. Most buy cigarettes
from small corner shops. A trading stan-
dards survey in 2005 found that 12% of
shops were willing to sell tobacco to chil-
dren clearly under 16.
Ms Flint said: “Smoking is dangerous at
any age, but the younger people start, the
more likely they are to become lifelong
smokers and to die early.
“Someone who starts smoking aged 15
is three times more likely to die of cancer
due to smoking than someone who starts
in their late 20s. Buying cigarettes has
been too easy for under-16s, and this is
partly due to retailers selling tobacco to
those under the legal age.
Deborah Arnott, director of ASH (Ac-
tion on Smoking and Health), welcomed
the change but said the current fines on
retailers were pitiful, with most given a
verbal warning.
Only 23% of under-16s trying to buy to-
bacco found it difficult to do so, accord-
ing to a previous Department of Health
study. The Association of Convenience
Stores (ACS), which represents around
32,500 shops, called on the government
to invest heavily in a campaign to explain
the change to consumers.
guardian.co.uk/smoking ≥
cent Tory assertion that relative and not
just absolute poverty must be cut.
Mr Davis’s taskforce, appointed by Mr
Cameron, will be separate from the work
being undertaken by the social justice pol-
icy commission headed by Iain Duncan-
Smith. It underlines the extent to which
Mr Cameron is going to face a formidable
challenge next year in marrying the con-
flicting polices likely to emerge from his
various working groups in the autumn.
Mr Davis has been chosen to lead the
taskforce partly since he himself symbol-
ises the value of meritocracy. He was
raised on a council estate and went to a
comprehensive school before developing
a successful business career.
Leader comment, page 22≥
12 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007

National

Lost tape could be Hendrix version of Welsh anthem

Steven Morris
He famously played his own screeching
version of the Star-Spangled Banner at
Woodstock but it has emerged that Jimi
Hendrix may also have had a bash at an-
other national anthem: the Welsh one.
The version of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau,
Land of My Fathers, was discovered on the
end of a dusty eight-track tape which had
languished for years in a forgotten tea
chest in a north London recording studio.
Experts believe the ear-rattling rendi-
tion may be Hendrix as the track appears
on the end of a recording by a group which
features a friend of his. He is believed to
have been in London when the tape was
made. And it does sound rather like him.
The recording was found when Dave
Chapman, a producer, was sorting tapes
discovered at the studio on Crouch Hill.
Most turned out to be unremarkable
demos by little known bands but at the
end of a recording of a group called the
New Flames, a wild, distorted version of
the Welsh anthem screamed out.
Mr Chapman had left the control room,
thinking the New Flames recording was
over. But he had left the door open and
suddenly heard Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau belt-
ing out. Friends said it made the hairs on
the back of his neck stand on end.
A little detective work established that
the New Flames' bass player, Viv Williams,
had known Hendrix well and lived round
the corner from the studio.
The recording’s owner, Martin Davies,
a record producer and writer, said he was
keen to establish if it was by Hendrix. It
may be particularly valuable because it
would be among the last recordings he
made before he died in 1970, aged 27. Mr
Davies said: “We would know exactly who
made the recording if we could find Viv
Williams. He must now be about 64 years
old. If anyone knows his whereabouts,
please let us know."
The recording can be heard at www.
Jimi Hendrix: did he record Land of My Fathers? Photograph: Ray Stevenson/Retna thereddragonhood.com/pages/jimi.html

No religion and
an end to war:
how thinkers
see the future
Alok Jha
Science correspondent

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The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007 13

Law

H
ad it been the US threats, should not readily accept that (the guidance on how to fill it in takes 16 What awaits our legal ministers in 2007?
Writ large supreme court, it
would have been
the threat justifies the use of torture, or
that the end justifies the means. It can
pages). But I cannot believe that anyone
else seeking advancement has to pro-
Gordon Brown, of course, but how will
he shuffle his pack of lawyers? There’s a
New law lord front page news and
he would have be-
be said that, by using torture, or even by
adopting the fruits of torture, a democ-
vide so many referees. Twenty-four of
them. But not just any old 24. Twelve of
general feeling that Tony Blair’s friend
Charlie Falconer will not survive as lord
come a household ratic state is weakening its case against them have to be judges or arbitrators; six chancellor and chief of the Department
took defiant name. But as we’re
talking about our
terrorists by adopting their methods,
thereby losing the moral high ground an
practitioners and six clients. But just to
introduce a touch of lottery about the
for Constitutional Affairs. For the first
time, according to the recent, controver-
stand on torture own top court his appointment has been
announced with a minimum of public-
open democratic society enjoys.” On a
less serious note, I can safely say that
process, only nine of the 24 will actually
be asked to give their opinions to the se-
sial Constitutional Reform Act, the lord
chancellor will no longer have to be a
ity. There is a new law lord, David Neu- Neuberger is the first law lord in history lection committee; how the lucky nine lawyer, nor indeed a member of the
evidence berger, whose appointment will be
much welcomed in civil liberties circles,
to have a sister-in-law who is both a
rabbi and a member of the house of
will be chosen is a mystery.
I mention these procedures in order
House of Lords.
Will Mr Brown have the courage to give
mainly for a judgment he gave in 2004, lords, Baroness (Julia) Neuberger. to ask: is this not making the QC contest the most ancient and glittering office in
when he was in the court of appeal. an absurdity? For heaven’s sake, it’s not the land, once held by Thomas More, to
The issue was whether evidence ob- There is only a month left for budding even a job these people want, only the an ambitious party apparatchik who may,
tained by torture could be taken into ac- QCs to send in their applications and right to put two letters after their names in his or her past life have been — an an-
count by the home secretary to detain they are going to need every moment and earn a lot more money as a result. It guished gulp from the lawyers — a
suspected terrorists. Two of the three (plus just under £3,000 for the privilege almost (but not quite) makes you wish teacher, social worker or local authority
appeal judges said yes. The third, Neu- of being allowed to apply). It’s just possi- for the good old days when QCs were official? I think not, and here’s a way out
berger, took an impassioned stand ble that there exists, somewhere in the chosen because someone had whispered for him. Make Lord Goldsmith the lord
Marcel Berlins against the majority. He said that “de- world, an application form longer than to the lord chancellor that they were chancellor and DCA boss, and Harriet Har-
mocratic societies, faced with terrorist the 118 pages they need to complete good chaps, not too bad at their work. man the attorney general.

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SAVERNIT5U0R%
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TO is a complex process, which many em-
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14 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007 15

Eyewitness 00.10am 01.01.07 London

In with the new

Fireworks explode above the London
Eye in central London this morning to
mark the beginning of 2007. The
display, now a traditional part of the
capital’s revels, rivalled celebrations
across the globe and was largely
unaffected by poor weather that hit
the rest of the UK. Photograph: Adrian
Dennis/AFP/Getty
16
International
Series of bombs
in Bangkok kill
two and injure
at least 30
Britons among those
wounded in blasts
Motive unclear as police
impose security lockdown
Jonathan Watts Bangkok
Associated Press
A volley of nine bombs shattered year-end
celebrations in Bangkok last night, killing
two people and wounding at least 34,
including two Britons.
Six near-simultaneous bombs at vari-
ous points across the capital in the early
evening were followed by three explos-
ions shortly before midnight at Central
World Plaza, a chic shopping mall with
designer stores popular with expatriates.
The location was close to where the main
countdown celebration for New Year had
been due to take place before officials
called it off.
The injured Britons were named as
Alistair Graham, 47, and Paul Hewitt, 55.
Mr Hewitt told the Guardian he had been
hailing a taxi when an explosion ripped
across the street. “There was a huge flash
and then I saw blood pouring out of my
arm,” he said. “Funnily enough I didn’t
feel anything.” Neither was seriously hurt.
The other injured foreigners were a Hun-
garian, an American and two Serbs.
Such episodes are a rarity in Bangkok,
though the blasts came at the end of a year
of unrest in Thailand, including a military
coup that ousted the prime minister,
Thaksin Shinawatra, three months ago
and an increasingly violent Muslim insur-
gency in the south of the country. Nobody
claimed responsibility for the blasts,
which sparked a big security clampdown
across the city after the first bombings.
At least five of the first six bombs were
detonated by timers within a 15-minute
period in areas of the city not normally fre-
quented by foreigners. The bombs, some
stuffed with nails, wounded about 20 peo-
ple seriously while the rest returned home
after treatment at hospitals, said the
health minister, Mongkol Na Songkhla.
The final three bombs, left in bags at the
side of the road, went off close to mid-
night in a more touristy part of the city. A
10th device was found unexploded in a
Rallies across Spain condemn violence after
airport bombing by Eta leaves two missing
Dale Fuchs Madrid
Thousands of people demonstrated in
cities across Spain yesterday as rescuers
searched for two people missing after the
Basque separatist group Eta exploded a
500kg bomb at Madrid airport, ending a
nine-month-old ceasefire.
“Eta has chosen the worst path, which
only has one end — jail,” said the govern-
ing Socialist party spokesman, José
Blanco, after a moment of silence in
Madrid’s Puerta del Sol. “Events like
yesterday show yet again that all Eta
wants to do is kill,” Francisco José Alcaraz,
president of an association of victims of
Eta violence, told Associated Press.
Spain’s prime minister, José Luis
Rodríguez Zapatero, called off talks with
Eta following Saturday’s attack in the car
park of the airport’s new terminal, ending
the ceasefire that had stirred hopes of a
peaceful solution to the Basque separat-
ist conflict, in which Eta has claimed
responsibility for taking 800 or so lives
over the years.
“Today’s step is the most mistaken and
useless that the terrorists could take,” Mr
Zapatero said at a press conference. How-
ever, his ambiguous words were inter-
preted by many observers to mean the
door had not been shut completely on
negotiations.
Two people were reported missing and
about 20 others were injured in the blast
at 9am, which destroyed five stories of the
hotel toilet.
An eyewitness, Klaudiya Tus, 32, from
Croatia, said: “We were sitting in a restau-
rant, we heard a bang and we thought it
was fireworks because it was just about
midnight. But then a lady came running
and said ‘It’s a bomb, it’s a bomb, it’s a
bomb, run’. So we fled. It was very scary,
everyone was jumping on top of each
other, then we saw people with blood on
their faces running out.”
An investigation was launched, but the
national deputy police chief, General Aji-
rawit Suphanaphesat, said separatist
insurgents were probably not behind the
attacks. Apirak Kosayothin, Bangkok’s
mayor, expressed shock at the extent of
the attacks and cancelled the city’s two
big public New Year’s Eve countdown cel-
ebrations and other smaller ones.
A receptionist at the Saxophone bar
near the Victory Monument, another tar-
get of the bombings said: “I heard a loud
explosion and I thought it was fireworks.
I ran there and saw a bleeding woman at
Thailand’s prime
minister General
Surayud
Chulanont visiting
people injured in
the series of bomb
blasts yesterday
the bus stop,” said Somrak Manphothong.
Police cordoned off bus stops in the area.
At a vegetable market in the Klong Toey
slum, where another bomb had exploded,
a pool of blood and egg yolks covered the
roadside next to an overturned motor-
cycle. Hotels stepped up security, search-
ing cars on their premises, and some
cancelled their expensive New Year’s Eve
dinners.
A big public celebration was also called
off in the northern city of Chiang Mai. “It
is not worth risking,” said Major General
Bandop Sukhonthaman, the provincial
police chief.
Police and soldiers with assault rifles
guarded some entertainment venues,
subway and light railway stations and
busy roundabouts. Roadblocks were
erected on some streets.
The nationals of several embassies were
advised through websites to avoid
Bangkok’s city centre, with the British
embassy urging Britons “not to travel into
carpark and caused chaos at the airport,
which was filled with thousands of New
Year travellers. Passengers were evacu-
ated after Eta gave three warning calls in-
dicating the bomb’s location and timing.
Arnaldo Otegi, leader of Eta’s political
arm, the banned party Batasuna, blamed
the return to violence on the govern-
ment’s failure to make a single gesture of
good faith, such as moving jailed Eta
members, now dispersed throughout the
country, to Basque prisons. “There has not
Protesters in Madrid after Eta’s attack
Thai bomb experts inspect the scene of one of the bomb blasts at a bus stop near
the Victory Monument in central Bangkok Photograph: Rungroj Yongrit/EPA
been one gesture from the government,”
Mr Otegi said. He added that “Zapatero
even bragged that he conceded less than
Aznar”, referring to the failed peace talk
in 1998 under the then conservative prime
minister, José María Aznar.
An editorial in La Vanguardia yesterday
accused Batasuna of ensuring failure of
the process by refusing to renounce vio-
lence: “What Otgei and his partners
should know is that the only obstacle to
peace for the last nine months is, prec-
isely, its refusal to condemn violence as a
condition for talks with the government.”
Mr Zapatero had expressed optimism
about the peace process despite escalat-
ing street violence and mounting warn-
ings from Eta and sympathisers that neg-
otiations were floundering. In his year-
end address on Friday he even predicted
progess. “In one year we will be better
than today,” he said.
But last week police discovered a stash
of weapons, and in October Eta members
were accused of stealing 350 pistols, a sign
that the group was rearming.
After the bombing, the conservative
opposition leader, Mariano Rajoy, re-
peated calls to end the “ill-named peace
process” with the Eta “assassins”. He
accused Eta of using the ceasefire as a ploy
to reorganise, with hundreds of its mem-
bers in jail and its financial network crip-
pled. The only solution to the conflict, Mr
Rajoy argued, was police action.
guardian.co.uk/spain ≥
Spaniard, 67, becomes oldest
new mother with birth of twins
Dale Fuchs Madrid
A 67-year-old woman who gave birth to
twins in a Barcelona hospital at the week-
end, becoming the oldest new mother in
the world, is expected to leave hospital in
the next couple of days after the normal
recuperation time for a caesarean birth, a
hospital spokesman said yesterday.
The woman and her sons are in good
health after a smooth delivery, said a
spokeswoman for the Sant Pau hospital.
The hospital would not reveal the
woman’s name or other personal infor-
mation, but the newspaper La Vanguardia
yesterday said that she had had in-vitro
fertilisation treatment in the US. Other
reports said she had received the treat-
ment in Latin America.
The twins were placed in an incubator,
the newspaper added.
The woman, who comes from And-
alucía, had been pregnant for the first
time. She gave birth at the Barcelona cen-
tre because it specialises in high-risk
deliveries, a term that usually refers to
pregnant teenagers, or women who suf-
fer an illness, the hospital spokeswoman
told the Guardian. She is expected to be
discharged tomorrow or Wednesday.
The oldest woman in Britain to have
had a baby is Patricia Rashbrook, a 63-
year-old child psychiatrist, who gave birth
to a 6lb 10oz boy this summer after
receiving in-vitro treatments in eastern
Europe. That pregnancy provoked criti-
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
Foreign editor: Harriet Sherwood
Telephone: 020-7239 9549
Fax: 020-7239 9787
Email: international@guardian.co.uk
Eyewitness
‘I feel very
anxious and
apprehensive’
Paul Hewitt, 55, a retired airline
employee from West Sussex, was
one of two Britons injured in the
bombings. He told the Guardian how
the last few minutes of 2006 were
the most eventful of his year
“I was at a party at the Amari
Watergate hotel and had left and
was trying to hail a taxi when almost
exactly as the clock struck new year
there was an explosion on the other
side of the road.
“It all happened so suddenly;
there was a huge flash and then I
saw blood pouring out of my arm.
Funnily enough, I didn’t feel any-
thing. The police told me the bomb
may have been in a telephone kiosk
or a car, but they are not sure. The
hospital are looking after me well.
They have found a piece of shrapnel
in my left arm.
“I arrived here in November, a few
months after retiring. I came here to
enjoy life and on January 3 I was
going to go to Krabi and then later
Australia, but I’m not sure now.
“I feel very anxious and apprehen-
sive. I’m not sure what’s going on in
Bangkok. I have always considered
Thailand to be one of the safest
countries, but I was in the wrong
place at the wrong time.
“Let’s just say it was a bad end to
last year and I’m hoping for a better
start to the new one.”
Jonathan Watts
the city until further notice”. But one
Briton ,Keith Waters, said: “No, I’m not
scared. I’m from England. There are bomb
scares all the time.” He nevertheless
expressed disappointment since he had
been looking forward to ringing in his first
new year with his Thai wife.
Bangkok has been largely insulated
from the violence in southern Thailand
that has claimed 1,200 lives in the past
three years. But several small explosives
were set off during recent political turmoil
in an apparent attempt to create a sense
of instability, not to cause casualties.
Mr Thaksin still has widespread sup-
port, and a number of arson attacks in
provincial areas have been blamed on his
followers.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political sci-
entist at Chulalongkorn University, said:
“There are two suspects: Muslim insur-
gents and Thaksin’s residual power. I tend
to think it’s residual power. I suspect the
previous regime. The coup was not done
right. If there had to be a coup, they had
to put away Thaksin and his cronies.”
cism from groups who said she was too
old to raise a child.
A retired university professor in Roma-
nia, Adriana Iliescu, gave birth to a daugh-
ter at the age of 66, in 2006. She was
thought to be the world’s oldest mother
until this weekend’s arrival. In 2003, a
teacher in India had a baby boy at the age
of 65.
Clinics in the UK and many other coun-
tries will not help women conceive after
a certain age in the belief that it is unfair to
the child. But many people argue that men
and women are living longer and remain
more physically fit than people of previ-
ous generations.
Some women hide their age to qualify
for fertility help. To get treatment, a 60-
year-old British woman, who gave birth
to a son in 1997, told a UK fertility clinic
she was 49. Many couples solve the prob-
lem by going to countries where the rules
are less strict, a practice now known as
“fertility tourism”. British authorities
have warned couples that some clinics
abroad allow practices banned in the UK,
such as implanting five embryos at once.
The mature mothers join other contro-
versies over reproductive techniques,
such as the selection of embryos to save a
sibling who is ill. The Spanish government
passed a law this spring to allow the tech-
nique in extreme cases, and the first three
families were recently given approval to
start treatments.
guardian.co.uk/spain ≥
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
International
Italy puts froth back into cappuccino
Italians are trying to preserve the perfect cappuccino, an important part of the country’s ‘national gastronomic culture’ Photograph: Matthew Klein/Corbis
Tom Kington Rome
In a fightback against the global spread
of super-sized frappuccinos and iced
cappuccinos, Italy has certified what it
considers the classic cappuccino.
In a snub to the Starbucks-driven
craze for loading gallons of hot frothy
coffee-flavoured liquid into cardboard
pots, Italy’s National Institute for Italian
Espresso is defending the traditional
squirt of steamed milk over a shot of
espresso that is knocked back by mil-
lions of Italians every morning at zinc-
topped bars up and down the country.
The newly certified milky coffee,
weighing in at only 150 ml and served in
a ceramic cup, was offered to MPs and
ministers at a Christmas event spon-
sored by the Italian parliamentary cul-
ture commission.
The institute has already given a gov-
ernment-backed certification to the per-
fect espresso coffee and yesterday the
organisation’s president, Marco Paladini,
Mugabe attempts to close last remaining newspaper opponents
Andrew Meldrum Johannesburg
Robert Mugabe’s government has moved
to close Zimbabwe’s remaining indepen-
dent press by stripping newspaper owner
Trevor Ncube of his citizenship.
The action against the publisher comes
as Mr Mugabe, 82 and president for 26
years, pushes for an extension to his term
of office by a further two years. Frustrated
by unprecedented resistance from within
his Zanu-PF party, he appears to be trying
to silence all of his critics.
Yesterday an outspoken opponent,
Lovemore Madhuku, accused the police
France
2006 was deadly year for
journalists, says watchdog
At least 81 reporters were killed in 2006,
the most for more than a decade, with Iraq
again the deadliest place, the media
watchdog Reporters without Borders said
yesterday. In its annual report, the Paris-
based group said 32 media assistants were
also killed, at least 871 reporters arrested
and at least 1,472 attacks or threats against
the media registered around the world —
a new record. It was the worst year for
journalists since 1994, the year of the
Rwandan genocide. For the fourth year
running, Iraq claimed the highest number
of deaths, with 39 journalists and 25 med-
ia assistants killed there. Reuters Paris
Cup winner
Italians are very proud of their tradi-
tional coffee, and even have a
National Institute for Italian
Espresso. Use the following
recipe to make your own perfect
cup.
Ingredients
125ml milk, no warmer than 3-5C,
containing a minimum of 3.2%
protein and 3.5% fat
25ml shot of hot espresso coffee
Directions
Add coffee to a 150-160ml capacity
ceramic cup
Froth milk with steam to a
temperature of 55C, and add to
cup
Add sugar and stir gently
of failing to investigate a fire at his home,
which he said was arson. “It is very clear
that the government is trying to silence
all critical voices, including Trevor Ncube
and his newspapers, and me. We are all
opposed to Mugabe’s attempts to extend
his rule to 2010,” said Madhuku, a law
lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe.
Senior government officials said
Mr Ncube, the publisher of two weeklies,
the Zimbabwe Independent and the Stan-
dard, was not entitled to Zimbabwean
citizenship because his father was Zam-
bian.
Zimbabwe’s strict media laws require
newspapers to be owned by Zimbabwean
Indonesia
Ferry survivors found
but hundreds missing
Rescuers have found nearly 180 survivors
from the ferry which sank in the Java sea
last week, and say there is hope of dozens
more — after life rafts were spotted with
people in them. However, hundreds are
still missing after the capsize around mid-
night on Friday. Helicopter crews dropped
food and water to a group of 30 survivors
drifting in lifeboats after heavy waves
prevented rescuers getting close, said
Hatta Radjasa, the transport minister. The
2,178-tonne ship, reported to be carrying
628 people and crew, was heading from
Kalimantan, Borneo, to Semarang, Java.
Reuters Rembang
stood up for the beleaguered cappuc-
cino, promising “to protect this impor-
tant expression of our national gastro-
nomic culture... A great success abroad,
but not always made with adequate sen-
sory quality”, the newspaper Il Giornale
quoted him as saying.
More froth than liquid, the Italian
cappuccino can be swallowed in sec-
onds, and according to purists should
leave a smear of milk on the inside of the
cup. Stirring the beverage to mix the
milk with the coffee that lurks in the
bottom should not produce an overall
brown colour, but streaks of coffee in
the pure white foam. A white moustache
is de rigueur after drinking.
According to many Italians, the light
brown colour is similar to that of the
robes worn by Italy’s Capuchin monks,
hence the name, while others credit Ca-
puchin monk Marco D’Aviano with the
invention of the drink, after he discov-
ered a sack of coffee captured from the
Ottomans during the battle of Vienna in
1683. D’Aviano was beatified in 2003 for
citizens. If the Mugabe government suc-
ceeds in withdrawing Mr Ncube’s
citizenship, it is expected to swiftly close
his two papers, which are staunch critics
of Mr Mugabe’s policies.
Mr Ncube told the Guardian yesterday
that he would go to court to retain his
citizenship: “I am a Zimbabwean. I was
born and bred in Zimbabwe and I have no
other citizenship.
“I am confident the courts will uphold
my rights,” he said.
Mr Ncube’s father was from Zambia but
held Zimbabwean citizenship by the time
his son was born, according to court
papers. A year ago the government seized
Cuba
Castro denies US claims
that his health is failing
Fidel Castro has rebutted American claims
about his health failing, saying his
recovery was far from being a “lost battle”.
In his traditional new year’s address, com-
memorating the 1959 revolution on the is-
land, the 80-year-old Cuban leader (pic-
tured in October) said in a statement read
by a radio newsreader that he was grate-
ful for the people’s “affection and sup-
port”. He added: “Regarding my recovery,
I have always warned that it could be a
prolonged process, but it is far from being
a lost battle. I collaborate as a disciplined
patient, attended by the devoted team of
doctors.” Duncan Campbell
his missionary work and miraculous
power of healing.
There is no debate over when a cap-
puccino is drunk. Italians line up every
morning in bars before steaming, shiny
coffee machines to gulp down their cof-
fee, possibly returning for a another cap-
puccino after a late night. One allowed
variant is the caffelatte, usually served
in a tall glass, with extra milk added.
Only tourists take a cappuccino or
caffelatte after lunch, as Italians believe
the milk plays havoc with digestion.
Nescafé may be making inroads in
Italy through advertising of its instant
granules, but Starbucks and other global
coffee chains have yet to set foot in the
bel paese. And if they did, they might
find their margins shrinking. An average
cappuccino, drunk standing up at a bar
in Rome, costs around 78 pence, an
espresso 47 pence — although prices
may rise by 100% if the drinker takes a
seat and waits to be served.
guardian.co.uk/italy ≥
Mr Ncube’s passport but the courts ord-
ered that it be returned to him.
He publishes Zimbabwe’s last remain-
ing privately owned newspapers. The gov-
ernment has closed down the Daily News
and three other papers since 2003.
Despite numerous arrests and threats
of violence, the Zimbabwe Independent
and the Standard have continued to
expose corruption and human rights
abuses.
Most recently Mr Ncube’s newspapers
were the only publications to reveal that
Mr Mugabe’s efforts to extend his rule
until 2010 were rejected at the Zanu-PF
party conference in mid-December.
17
Patients die as
Sicilian mafia
buys into the
hospital service
Tom Kington Rome
A wave of deaths in Sicilian hospitals has
highlighted a crisis in the island’s health
service, linked by a senior politician to the
draining of public funds by the mafia.
Three suspicious deaths of patients in
three days over Christmas have raised
alarm. A 78-year-old woman died of a
heart attack in a Palermo emergency ward
on December 28 after waiting four hours
to be seen. The ward has no triage, or sys-
tem for prioritising patients.
Earlier, a pregnant woman delivered a
stillborn child after doctors declined to
carry out a caesarean section, while the
parents of a newborn son who died in hos-
pital have accused doctors of malpractice.
“Cosa Nostra is investing heavily in pri-
vate health centres in Sicily which are sub-
sidised by the state,” said Francesco For-
gione, the head of Italy’s parliamentary
anti-mafia commission.
After drug trafficking, the control of
public and private contracting is the sec-
ond most lucrative activity for organised
crime in Italy, amounting to a turnover of
about €17.5bn (£11.8bn), of which the
Sicilian mafia is responsible for €6.5bn.
Sicily has about 1,800 private health
centres compared with 150 in the rich
northern region of Lombardy, said Mr For-
gione. Such clinics offer government-sub-
sidised services in order to reduce the
workload for public hospitals. “But that
has diverted funds from public hospitals,
which are falling into a state of disrepair,”
he said. “Sicily is the first region in Italy
6.5bn
The Mafia’s
€
turnover in public
and private
contracting in
Sicily alone. In the
whole of Italy the
figure is €17.5bn
for the financing of private health centres
and the first for patient deaths.”
Mr Forgione, who was appointed to
head the anti-mafia commission by the
centre-left government of Romano Prodi,
has said that investigating mafia penetra-
tion of the health business will be a prior-
ity in Sicily and Calabria. In 2005
Francesco Fortugno, number two in the
regional assembly, was murdered by
the ’Ndrangheta crime syndicate while
investigating the awarding of hospital
contracts.
In Sicily, the mafia is not only investing
in private clinics but is also involved in
steering public health contracts towards
friendly companies, said Mr Forgione.
“During the hunt for mafia boss Bernardo
Provenzano it was even discovered that
some Palermo neighbourhood bosses
were themselves doctors or lawyers, part
of a new mafia bourgeoisie.”
Giuseppe Guttadauro, the jailed boss of
Palermo’s Brancaccio district, was a high
profile surgeon. Police listened in as Gut-
tadauro discussed political appointments
with the city’s public health assessor
Domenico Miceli, himself a doctor. Miceli
was in turn sentenced to eight years for
mafia association in December.
As the Sicilian mafia moves into low key
businesses like healthcare, a more tradi-
tional Cosa Nostra calling card has how-
ever recently resurfaced in Sicily. A sev-
ered goat’s head was delivered to Rino
Foschi, sport director of Palermo football
club, on December 22, possibly as a protest
against a clampdown on the free distrib-
ution of tickets to games. The city’s cul-
tural assessor also received a goat’s head.
United States
Celebrity nicknames that
should be cut from a list
It would be “awesome” if “TomKat” (Tom
Cruise and Katie Holmes) and other nick-
names for celebrity couples “went miss-
ing” in the new year, according to Lake Su-
perior State University’s 32nd annual List
of Words Banished from the Queen’s Eng-
lish for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General
Uselessness. How would “Lardy” have
sounded for Laurel and Hardy, or “Bog-
Call” for Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Ba-
call? the list’s compilers asked. The
university chose its 16 cliches from 4,500
submissions. Many wanted a stop to the
onslaught of “awesome”, and banishment
of “gone missing”. Reuters Chicago
18
Financial
Belarus avoids cold new year by bowing
to Gazprom demand for price increase
Eleventh-hour agreement
averts gas switch-off
Russia’s tough line adds
to Europe’s energy worries
Nabi Abdullaev Moscow
Belarus narrowly escaped a winter energy
crisis last night after a last-minute deal on
gas prices was struck with Russian gas
monopoly Gazprom.
Gazprom had said it would cut off
supplies to Belarus, also threatening fuel
supplies to European countries served by
the Belarus pipeline, if a deal was not
reached by midnight last night.
The five-year contract will require
Belarus to pay $100 per 1,000 cubic
metres, a steep rise on the previous tariff
of $45, but a reduction from the $105 that
Gazprom had demanded. The agreement
requires Belarus to pay gradually increas-
ing prices after the current contract until
world market levels are reached by 2011.
“A mid-term agreement was reached on
gas prices to Belarus and on transit ship-
ments to Europe,” Gazprom boss Alexei
Miller told a press briefing at the Russian
gas monopoly's headquarters.
Gazprom will also be required to buy
50% of the shares in Beltransgaz, the Bela-
rusian pipeline network. Gazprom had
stipulated that Belarus pay $30 of the new
price in Beltransgaz shares, but under the
new contract Belarus will pay for the gas
in cash and Gazprom will buy the pipeline
shares in cash.
On Friday, Belarus's president, Alexan-
der Lukashenko, vowed that Minsk would
not pay more than Russian consumers,
saying that the two countries were mem-
bers of a customs union.
If no agreement had been reached,
Gazprom said it would stop gas supplies
to Belarus at 10am today. Minsk had
threatened to freeze the transit of Russian
gas to Europe through Belarus on the
same day.
Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov
and Alexander Timoshenko, spokesman
for the Belarus prime minister, had both
committed to continue talks right to the
deadline in order to resolve the crisis.
Gazprom is trying to end heavy dis-
counts to former Soviet republics and
bring gas prices closer to world levels of
about $230 per 1,000 cubic metres.
Georgia recently agreed to raise the
price it pays, but Azerbaijan is looking to
buy Iranian gas instead.
Mr Kupriyanov also stressed that the
Yamal-Europe transit gas pipeline which
runs across Belarus was the property of
Gazprom, and that Minsk was obliged to
allow unhindered transit of gas to west-
ern Europe.
Two-thirds of the 45bn cubic metres of
gas that Gazprom sold to Europe last year
was pumped via Belarus through the
Yamal-Europe pipeline.
Property companies rush to become savings trusts Thieves target power stations for
Phillip Inman and Tony Levene
Britain’s biggest commercial property
owners will today ditch their corporate
status and turn themselves into invest-
ment trusts.
British Land, Land Securities, Brixton
Estates and a dozen other firms will
become real estate investment trusts, or
Reits, following a change in the law
allowing them to own property and dis-
tribute the gains tax-free.
Within months, hundreds of the new-
style property trusts are expected to be up
and running with the result that much of
Britain’s commercial property, and even-
tually residential as well, will be held in
vehicles that avoid corporation tax and
capital gains tax.
The end of this “double taxation” will
allow dividends to be paid out of untaxed
income from the coming year provided at
least 90% is distributed to investors.
To convert to a trust companies must
pay a one-off charge to the Treasury
equivalent to 2% of the value of their
property portfolio. In British Land’s case
the fee would equal one year’s corpora-
tion tax bill, about £300m. After that it will
be free to expand its portfolio with little
hindrance from the tax authorities. The
changes are expected to attract new
investors. One study reported that 44% of
Stocking up on firewood in the Belarus village of Kopeinoye, south-east of the capital of Minsk Photograph: Sergei Grits/AP
Some 20% of Russian gas exports to
Europe — mainly to Poland, Lithuania and
Germany — passes through Belarus. The
other 80% flows through Ukraine. About
one-quarter of natural gas consumed in
Europe comes from Russia.
Last year, in a similar dispute, Russia
briefly shut off gas supplies to Ukraine,
which led to supply disruptions to Italy,
Austria and Hungary — for the first time
since the 1980s when the Soviet Union first
signed major contracts with European gov-
ernments. That episode undermined Rus-
sia's reputation as a reliable supplier.
In November, Richard Lugar, head of the
US Senate's foreign relations committee,
described Russia's energy policies regard-
ing former Soviet republics and eastern
European countries as “geo-strategic
blackmail”.
Meanwhile, Belarus has reportedly
been stockpiling oil and coal in recent
weeks, which would have allowed its
power plants to run without Russian gas
for a while.
“We will live in dug-outs but we will not
surrender to blackmail," Mr Lukashenko
said on Friday.
Although the price demanded by
Gazprom is well below world market
prices for natural gas, it still is likely to be
a tough blow to Belarus.
The country retains a mostly cen-
tralised, Soviet-style economy, and its in-
dustries depend on cheap Russian gas to
be competitive.
lorry-loads of precious copper
FAQ Reits
What is a Reit?
It’s a new type of company that
allows investment in commercial or
residential property to produce tax-
efficient rental income. Ninety per
cent of this income must be distrib-
uted to shareholders of the UK-Reit
and, in return, the company is
exempt from corporation tax and
capital gains on property sales.
Who can invest in a Reit?
Anyone can buy shares in a Reit,
much like a unit trust.
Why invest in a Reit?
Stephen Herring of accountants BDO
Stoy Hayward says not only can the
Reit avoid paying corporation tax and
capital gains, but the investor can
also avoid paying tax on their divi-
dend income if their shares are held,
say, in an ISA or a self invested per-
sonal pension (SIPP).
Any potential pitfalls?
Some experts argue the property
market is nudging its peak so invest-
ing now might prove to be a mistake,
despite the attractive tax breaks.
Sakhalin
European bank could scrap loan
Marianne Barriaux
The European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development may pull out of the
Sakhalin-2 liquefied gas project in Russia
in a further blow to a scheme already
mired in controversy.
The bank, which invests in countries
from central Europe to central Asia with
the aim of building up market economies,
had been in discussions with sharehold-
ers Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi about pro-
viding a $300m (£150m) loan for the $20bn
project, with a further $300m coming
from a loan syndicated to other financial
institutions.
But Gazprom, the Russian state-owned
energy giant, wrested control of the pro-
ject less than two weeks ago when it
negotiated a stake of 50% plus one share
in the Sakhalin Energy Investment Com-
pany, forcing the other three groups to
halve their own interests.
A spokesman for the EBRD said: “New
developments make things more difficult,
and, one could say, may make the bank
less needed for the project.” He insisted
that a final decision had not been reached.
financial advisers planned to add Reits to
their clients’ investment portfolios.
But many experts are sceptical. Janet
Measom at Morley, Norwich Union’s
investment arm said: “Commercial prop-
erty can’t continue to perform as it has
done over the past five or so years. It has
got to come down to earth”. The 15-year-
old Norwich Property Trust hit £3bn in Au-
gust, with over £1bn coming in over the
past 12 months alone. In the run-up to the
introduction of Reits property shares have
made huge gains with sector leaders such
as Land Securities and British Land rising
by around 50% since last winter.
The new Reits are also expected to
attract investors in residential property.
The rules for holding residential property
within the new trusts are complicated, but
still likely to prove enticing to investors.
Francis Salway, chief executive of Land
Securities, said Reits will prove more
attractive than buy-to-let.
While buy-to-let has had a strong run,
he pointed out that short tenancies can,
if there is a sudden excess, leave investors
with unoccupied properties for lengthy
periods with no rental income.
Land Securities has average unexpired
lease terms of around 10 years and no
property is worth more than 4% of the
total portfolio value. “So, in terms of risk,
we offer significant diversification bene-
fits,” he argues.
The bank prefers to finance projects in
the private sector, but Gazprom’s con-
trolling stake effectively means the
scheme now has a majority state interest
since Gazprom is controlled by the Russ-
ian government. A spokesman for Shell
refused to comment on the specifics, say-
ing: “Gazprom is a valuable partner to the
project and we will now determine the
next steps and engage with lenders.”
The controversial deal with Gazprom,
announced on December 21, came after
Russian environmental regulators
criticised the project in eastern Siberia.
They threatened to stop the scheme and
impose fines of up to $30bn on Shell and
its two Japanese partners. The allegations
were denied by Shell, which described
some of them as “unsubstantiated attacks
containing exaggerations and distor-
tions”. After Gazprom finally took control
of the project, the Russian president,
Vladimir Putin, said the environmental
concerns had been settled.
The EBRD’s planned loan is relatively
small compared to the overall cost of the
project. But its support is important from
an environmental perspective, as it has
studied the impact of the scheme.
Terry Macalister
Booming copper prices have triggered a
series of break-ins at power stations
around the country forcing electricity
providers to increase security at local sub-
stations and cut off power during repairs.
Thieves have cost the industry £5m this
year by stealing the metal, used for earth-
ing high-voltage equipment, according to
the Energy Networks Association.
“This is not only very costly to the
power companies and the wider commu-
nity but it is very dangerous. Two people
have already been killed this year and oth-
ers badly injured trying to steal copper,”
said Neil Grant, a spokesman for the
association.
The number of incidents rose dramati-
cally in 2006 after much publicised in-
creases in the value of copper and
precious metals, Mr Grant said. “We do
not like to give much publicity to this for
fear it will just encourage others but in the
main these break-ins are being perpe-
trated by organised gangs using lorries and
other equipment.”
Repairing substations that have been
broken into often involves the operator
having to cut off power to homes and po-
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
Business editor: Deborah Hargreaves
Telephone: 020-7713 4791
Fax: 020-7833 4456
Email: financial@guardian.co.uk
Tesco’s £80m
price cuts put
new pressure
on rivals
David Teather
Britain’s biggest supermarket chain,
Tesco, is further turning the screws on its
rivals by triggering a price war.
It is permanently cutting prices on 600
key items by a total of £80m. The move
will be viewed by critics as another
example of how the increasingly domi-
nant retailer is flexing its muscles against
smaller competitors.
A report published yesterday appeared
to underline its strength, suggesting that
the grocer took up half of all the new shop-
ping space in Britain last year. The data,
collected by Verdict Research, said Tesco
opened 2m sq ft, more than the entire
Bluewater shopping centre in Kent.
It currently has around 21.6% of the
grocery market in Britain, according to re-
search firm Planet Retail, followed by
Sainsbury with 11.8% and Asda at 10.1%.
Tesco is cutting up to 30% off the price
of a range of everyday items including
ketchup, tea bags and fruit juices, as well
as more than 100 health and beauty
products.
In addition to the more long-term cuts,
it will be pushing more than 100 half-price
promotions within its stores.
It is a move that is likely to refocus the
minds of rivals on price, after a year in
which the chains were battling it out on
green credentials and quality. However,
few retail analysts expect any slowing in
the trend towards sales of organic and
higher-quality food products among
Britain’s middle classes.
Sainsbury is in the midst of a pro-
gramme of cutting £400m from prices to
make it more competitive — regular sur-
veys in The Grocer magazine showed
Tesco was significantly cheaper on a bas-
ket of items. It appeared to be paying off
with profits heading back up. In Novem-
ber, it reported like-for-like sales were
ahead by 6.2%.
The Tesco cuts come ahead of publica-
tion of the anxiously awaited initial find-
ings from a Competition Commission in-
quiry into the grocery sector. The Office
of Fair Trading referred the inquiry to the
commission in the summer, and the early
findings are due to be published this
month.
In its submission, Sainsbury warned
that Tesco could have up to 43% of the
grocery market within four years if the
watchdog failed to take action to curtail
its growth.
At the time, Sainsbury said that Tesco
had more than half of all the sites that
were being developed into grocery out-
lets. Sainsbury, Waitrose, Morrisons and
Asda want changes to the planning regime
to allow them to compete more effec-
tively.
In October, Tesco chalked up half-year
profits of more than £1bn — only four years
after first breaching the £1bn level for a
full year.
tentially to doctors’ surgeries and emer-
gency services. Electricity companies are
introducing stricter monitoring systems
and experimenting with water-based ad-
hesives which can be sprayed over facili-
ties. These leave a print on hands, clothes
and anything else that comes into contact
with the copper, making it easier to trace
the thieves and the stolen metal.
E.ON, the group that owns Powergen,
confirmed that it was one of the many
companies that have been hit by this kind
of crime, most recently in Dudley, in the
midlands. The company said thefts and
attempted thefts of copper had trebled.
“We are working with Crime Stoppers
and local police forces to try to get the
message over to the local community that
this is very damaging to customers and
potentially fatal for those breaking in,”
said an E.ON spokeswoman.
E.ON has been checking its huge net-
work of substations around the country
to ensure they are as secure as they can
be. The railway industry has also been
plagued by thieves looking for copper.
The price of copper has risen fivefold
since 2001 to around $6,700 (£3,420) a
tonne with rising demand from the
industrialisation in China and strong
demand elsewhere in Asia.
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007 19

Economics

If you don’t Out of the cold

remember the
Emerging economies such as China
now make up 70% of the world’s
growth and are forecast to continue
powering world markets once again
through the coming year
Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters

1960s, this year

may help you
Ashley Seager
The world economy looks
like continuing a boom that
equals the postwar heyday
The world economy, including Britain’s,
looks set for another year of robust
growth. There are plenty of reasons to
be optimistic that the impressive perfor-
mance of the past few years, since the
world emerged from the mess of the
dotcom bust, will continue uninter-
rupted this year and possibly for the rest
of the decade.
Having grown by an average of more
than 3% a year so far this decade, the
noughties look set to be the world econ-
omy’s best decade on record, eclipsing
even the golden years of the 1950s and
1960s.
There are risks of course. Doomsayers
continue to warn of a slump in the dol-
lar, a renewed surge in the oil price or a
collapse in the US housing market that
could throw the world off course. They
are right that the risks exist, but the
world economy has proved its resilience
admirably in recent years.
Who would have thought, for exam-
ple, that the tripling of oil prices in the
past three years would fail to tip the
world into a recession combined with
soaring inflation? In those three years
the world economy has grown by almost
5% annually — the fastest for more than
30 years. World stock markets are
booming as investors show their
confidence.
Motoring
The main reason for optimism is that
growth has broadened out from relying
on the good old American consumer
who, boosted by the ultra-cheap money
and rising house prices of recent years,
kept the world economy motoring while
regions such as the eurozone and Japan
were sluggish.
Now both of those regions, along with
China and India and other emerging
economies, are performing well. They
should be able to withstand the slight
slowdown that many analysts are
expecting in the United States. In short,
the world is rebalancing.
The US economy, still by far the
largest in the world, looks certain to
slow this year. Its housing market
slipped last year and the house price
boom of recent years is a distant mem-
ory. Housebuilding has slumped, prices
are down everywhere and a lot of newly
built homes are standing empty. But
other parts of the US economy appear to
have taken up the slack.
Exports are healthy, thanks to a
strong world economy and a weaker dol-
lar; business investment and non-
residential construction are also doing
well. The Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and Development expects US
growth to slow to 2.4% this year, from
3.3% in 2006. It expects a sluggish first
half of the year before a rebound later in
the year. It does not predict a US reces-
sion, nor does the International Mon-
etary Fund, which is forecasting growth
of close to 3% for the US this year.
Frothy
Indeed, the Federal Reserve, which
raised interest rates from their low point
of 1% in 2004 to 5.25% last August in an
attempt to rein in the frothy housing
market and keep inflation in check, still
thinks high inflation is more of a danger
than slow growth. Last week, news from
the US showed sales of homes had
begun to rise again and stocks of unsold
homes had started falling.
If the housing market recovers, the US
economy could even return to surpris-
ingly robust growth in 2007. The Fed
looks likely to keep interest rates on
hold for the foreseeable future, but it
has room to cut them if the economy
looks weak.
The eurozone, long the sick man of
the world economy, turned in a surpris-
ingly respectable performance in 2006,
growing by around 2.6%, well above
2005’s rate of 1.4%. The OECD and IMF
expect growth to be closer to 2% this
year and next, partly because the Euro-
pean Central Bank has made it clear it
intends to continue raising interest rates
from their current 3.5%. That growth
rate may sound paltry, but it is decent by
the standards of recent years. might just be enough to do that, given
Germany has been the particular star
World economy how indebted the average Briton has
in Europe, as its companies have Growth to steam ahead... ...and become better balanced become. That could turn out to be the
responded to the strong world economy Annual % change, GDP Annual % change, GDP nasty surprise of this year.
by raising exports, although questions There will also be the small matter of
remain about the strength of domestic 10 10 a change of the guard at the Treasury, as
demand. Wage growth has been sluggish Gordon Brown looks set to move to
as firms have used the threat of moving 5.5
Number 10 in the first half of the year.
production abroad to keep pay rises to a 5 Forecast His March budget is likely to be
minimum. A rise in VAT today from 16% his swansong after a decade as
to 19% is not going to help consumer 4.5 chancellor.
spending, but is unlikely to derail the All in all, it is a pretty rosy scenario for
4 3.4
economy. 2.7 2.7 2.4 2.7 2.9 the world and one which will allow com-
Spain and Italy look a little less 2 2.1 pany profits to keep increasing. The
3.5
secure, with the former experiencing a main cloud on the horizon is not the US
property market bubble which looks 3 2006 2007 current account deficit or a potential run
vulnerable to a burst while the latter is 2002 03 04 05 06 07 08 UK Euro China Japan US on the dollar (it is likely to continue to
zone
suffering from a lack of competitiveness SOURCE: IMF slide, but not crash) but rather the
and high inflation. There are also some decade ago. The world is much less the economy looks to have powered into emerging crisis surrounding Iran.
question marks over the strength of the dependent on the US than it used to be. the new year in rude health. The Bank of If the country’s bellicose leadership
French economy. Japan, still the world’s second largest England, which raised interest rates continues to defy the United Nations
Few such doubts exist over China. Its economy, seems to be recovering twice last year to their current 5%, may with its nuclear programme and re-
economy is likely to grow by 10% again steadily from its decade-long slump even be tempted to nudge them up sponds to sanctions by carrying out its
this year, as it has done for many years, although there are still concerns about again, although I am not convinced it threat to shut the Straits of Hormuz and
taking it to number four in the world whether its deflation problem has been will have to. prevent a fifth of the world’s oil getting
economy ranking. It is now big enough solved in spite of rock-bottom interest The year here is likely to be domi- to market, the price of crude could
to make its growth matter for the whole rates of just 0.25%. nated by the rise and rise of house easily shoot through $100 a barrel and
world. Taken together, emerging Which brings us to Britain, the world’s prices, particularly in London and the finally rattle the confidence of world
markets including India, Russia and fifth largest economy. Here, too, things south-east. At some point the great stock markets.
Brazil now account for 70% of world look solid. Growth was better than noughties housing boom will have to
growth. They accounted for 50% a expected last year, at around 2.6%, and end. Another interest rate rise or two ashley.seager@guardian.co.uk

Britain joins international efforts to give a ‘kiss of life’ to stalled Doha trade talks
Larry Elliott
Economics editor
A flurry of diplomatic activity from Wash-
ington to New Delhi and on to the alpine
ski resort of Davos will mark the first
month of the new year as one final
attempt is made to provide a kiss of life to
breakdown in the World Trade Organisa-
tion talks last July. Tony Blair has been
urging George Bush, Angela Merkel, the
German chancellor, and President Lula of
Brazil to give a political push to the neg-
otiations, and two senior cabinet minis-
ters — the chancellor, Gordon Brown, and
the trade and industry secretary, Alistair
Darling — will visit India later this month.
Trade ministers from around 20 coun-
tries will then hold talks at the annual
meeting of the World Economic Forum in
Davos in late July, although trade experts
believe a more significant event will be the
swearing in next month of the new
Democrat-dominated Congress in the US.
The WTO’s director-general, Pascal
Lamy, has called 2007 a “defining year”,
resume. The talks involve plans for freer
trade in agriculture, tariff cuts in manu-
facturing and the opening up of global
trade in services.
President Bush now has a number of
important decisions to make, Mr Lamy
believes. Firstly, he has to decide whether
he is serious about a global deal or not; if
so he has to make bigger cuts in subsidies
Congress. Mr Bush will lose the ability to
fast-track a trade bill through Congress
under his Trade Promotion Authority
unless legislation is tabled by the end of
March. That, however, would require
negotiators to show a degree of urgency
lacking since the talks were started in the
Qatari capital in November 2001.
Peter Mandelson, Europe’s trade com-

19bn
the failing Doha trade talks. and in Geneva it is recognised that the to US farmers than currently offered. missioner, believes that the way to un-

$
Amid concern that only three months
are left to save the package of liberalisa-
tion measures, pressure will be put on the
main protagonists — the United States, the
European Union and India — to settle their
differences.
Downing Street sources said Britain has
not given up hopes of a deal, despite the
The annual next few months will be crucial both for
amount that US the Doha round and for the credibility of
spends in the WTO. No trade round has failed since
subsidies. It is the protectionist decade of the 1930s.
among issues that With 2008 seen as a write-off because
have stalled the of the US presidential election, the WTO
current trade talks says that if there is no deal in 2007 it will
be mid-2009 before negotiations can
Secondly, he has to face down demands
for a new farm bill when the current pack-
age of support runs out this year. WTO
sources said a new farm bill would spell
the end of the Doha round.
Finally, Mr Bush has to avoid partisan
warfare in Washington between a Repub-
lican White House and a Democratic
block the round would be for the US to put
a ceiling of $15bn (£7.6bn) on subsidies,
compared to current spending of $19bn.
An EU trade source said: “Doha is not
dead: definitely. There is a very narrow
window to pull it off, and the politics are
difficult. But some of the political stars are
coming into alignment.”
20
Comment
Don’t overlook the impact
Madeleine Bunting
of empire on our identity
A
spate of soul search-
Two anniversaries will ing is guaranteed by
feed into our national two major anniversa-
ries that loom this
sense of self-doubt this year: the abolition of
the slave trade in the
year, but also offer a
British empire in 1807,
chance for a reality check and the Act of Union
of England and Scotland in 1707. Both
will feed into Britain’s nagging sense of
self-doubt: who are we? As the debates
around integration and multiculturalism
show no sign of flagging, both anniver-
saries will be mined for their contempo-
rary relevance. Add the imminent
arrival of a Scot as prime minister — and
one who has invested time and energy
into mastering the history of British
identity — and the stage is set for intense
national introspection. Television pro-
grammes, books, ceremonies, confer-
ences and newspaper supplements have
been in the planning for months.
Some might regard this self-referen-
tialism as tedious; they might advocate
an apology for the slave trade and let’s
be done with 2007’s anniversaries. But
our reckoning with British history has
been so limited that these two anniver-
saries provide us with a good opportu-
nity for an overdue reality check. Any
chance of reinventing a plausible
national identity now (as many are keen
to do) is only possible if we develop a
much better understanding of how our
nation behaved in the past and how
nationalisms (English, Scottish and
British) were elaborately created over
the past few hundred years — and how
incomplete and fragile that process
always was. In how many other coun-
tries do children grow up uncertain of
what to call their country, or adults
hunt through those drop-down menus
on the internet, uncertain whether their
country is listed as the UK, Great Britain,
Britain or England?
The coincidence of these two anniver-
saries is fortuitous. The abolition of the
slave trade is a painful reminder of Brit-
ish imperial history, which we have,
incredibly, managed to largely forget.
Who remembers the Bengal famine or


Hola camp, the empire’s opium trade
with China or our invention of concen-
tration camps in the Boer war? We too
easily overlook how empire was a linch-
pin to British national identity, vital to
welding Scotland and England together.
Indeed, historian Linda Colley suggests
The abolition of the three ingredients for British identity:
slave trade is a painful “Great Britain is an invented nation that
was not founded on the suppression of
reminder of our history, older loyalties so much as superimposed
which we have managed on them, and that was heavily depend-
ent for its raison d’etre on a broadly
to largely forget Protestant culture, on the treat and
tonic of recurrent war, especially war
with France, and on the triumphs, prof-
its and Otherness represented by a mas-
sive overseas empire.”
These three props for Britishness
have collapsed: Protestant Christianity
T
The shifting
here was something
curiously cuddly about
the man Churchill called
of history
“Uncle Joe”. He may
have been a blood-
drenched tyrant — oblit-
erating his own people
by the million — but he
also had a jovial way with a vodka bot-
Peter Preston tle. He was a joker, a shrewd practical
thinker, and a politician other politi-
cians held in awe. Without his charisma
and grit, indeed, the second world war
Newly deceased would have turned out very differently.
leaders have rarely Which brings us to Saddam Hussein.
Saddam has not got much joy from
received the obituaries the obituary writers these past couple
of days. He is hanged by the neck, and
that they deserve his death brings no mourning. Wrap
the corpse in a flimsy sheet and bury
it deep. But there’s a problem to con-
front openly here: what the obituaries
say today is almost certainly not what
they’ll say tomorrow.
Just look at the chaos of Iraq as
2007 begins. Does anyone for a second
believe that the execution of Saddam
will bring calm to the land he ruled? For-
get it. The genies of religious and racial
hatred are out of the bottle now in a
fashion that Saddam never allowed. His
followers killed hundreds of thousands
who moved against them. They gassed
Debate
has declined sharply, war with France is
the pastime only of a few drunken foot-
ball fans, and the empire is no more. No
wonder Britishness is on the decline;
over the past couple of decades, people
have become increasingly likely to
define themselves in polls as English or
Scottish rather than British.
This is the social trend in defining
identity that politicians such as Gor-
don Brown watch closely. Could this
re-emergence of the older loyalties to
which Colley refers have political
consequences? Could the Scottish
National party translate that into
significant electoral gains in the Scottish
elections only a few days after the
official commemoration of the Act of
Union in May? It’s not just the Scots
who could decide they’ve had enough
of the English — the feeling could
become mutual. The grumbles are
getting louder about Scottish MPs
who vote on legislation affecting the
English and the disproportionate
amount of public spending swallowed
up by the Scots.
Brown clearly has a vested interest
in stilling such complaints. He’s been
at the forefront of an establishment
attempt to redefine Britishness on the
grounds of “common values” such as
fair play and tolerance. But talking
about fair play in May at the anniversary
of the Act of Union will look more than
a little hollow less than two months
after the anniversary of the abolition
of the slave trade in March and its
reminder of the savagery of Britain’s
imperial record. “Fair play” is one of the
fondest of British delusions; it rests on a
very partial reading of history.
As Britishness recedes and older loy-
and they bombed and burnt alive. But
they kept their benighted land together,
united in glum acquiescence.
Look back on that Iraq in, say, 30
years, and you may have to ask the
question that some brave historians
ask today about Stalin. Where did the
greater evil lie: in suppression or chaos?
Nothing can wipe away the memory
of what he did. Without him, though,
we can also glimpse why he did it. And
there, of course, is the shifting context
of history — not the instant verdict
delivered as a noose jerks tight.
Consider, by contrast, the other big
death of the past few days: that of Presi-
dent Gerald Ford. No close comparisons
possible, of course. But you can reflect
with mild derision on the obituary
gush that signalled his passing. Payers
of tribute (from White House to leader
writing rooms) spoke eloquently of his
“wisdom” and “benignity”, hailing a
“healer” who helped “bind the wounds
of a nation”.
That’s a point of view, to be sure: but
surely it also wraps the 38th president
in too much panoply. Gerald Ford was
an accident that happened when Spiro
Agnew fell down a pit of his own digging
and Richard Nixon toppled after him.
Mr Ford progressed by chance and party
decree: a nice, slightly stolid chap who
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
Conveniently
forgotten
Tariq Ali
alties such as Englishness re-emerge,
this is where the battle now is. Who Saddam committed most
is going to define Englishness? Julian
Baggini has a stab at it in a book to be
of his crimes when he
published in March, Welcome to Every- was an ally of those who
town: A Journey into the English Mind.
now occupy his country
I
He spent six months living in Rother-
ham to get beyond the metropolitan,
liberal elite’s perceptions of Englishness t was symbolic that 2006 ended
— all country cottages, picturesque with a colonial hanging — most
landscapes and organic lamb joints — of it shown on state television in
and establish what most people (ie the occupied Iraq. It has been that
white working class) understand by sort of year in the Arab world.
their Englishness. The trial was so blatantly rigged
Parochial, tightly knit, focused on that even Human Rights Watch
family and local communities; nostalgic, had to condemn it as a travesty.
fearful of the future and insecure; a Judges were changed on Washington’s
dogged belief in common sense: these orders, defence lawyers were killed
are his conclusions. For Rotherham, the and the whole procedure resembled a
good life is comfort, convenience and well orchestrated lynch mob. Where
familiarity; not the ambitious, stressful Nuremberg was a relatively dignified
striving of the urban middle class so application of victor’s justice, Saddam
heavily promoted by New Labour. Hussein’s trial was the crudest and most
Baggini confesses to feeling that his six grotesque to date.
months in Rotherham was like visiting The great thinker-president’s refer-
a foreign country, and no doubt many ence to it “as a milestone on the road to
of the people he met would regard six Iraqi democracy” is as clear an indica-
months in London as profoundly tion as any that Washington pressed
alienating. How do you weld national the trigger. The leaders of the European
identities out of global metropolises Union, supposedly hostile to capital
disconnected from their hinterland? punishment, were passive, as usual.
Englishness is riven with huge regional Although some Shia factions cele-
and class divides. The stakes are high — brated in Baghdad, the figures published
for example, a rising BNP vote, a fear of by a fairly independent establishment
asylum, and hostility to Islam. The anni- outfit, the Iraq Centre for Research
versary of the Act of Union will provide and Strategic Studies, reveal that more
a stage for all this to be played out. It’s than 80% of Iraqis feel the situation in
just as painful a commemoration for the the country was better before it was
English as for the Scottish. It required occupied. (The ICRSS research is based
one nation to lose its sovereignty and on detailed house-to-house interview-
the other its identity. ing carried out during the third week
of November.) Only 5% of those ques-
m.bunting@guardian.co.uk tioned said Iraq is better today than in
2003; 12% felt things had improved and
ILLUSTRATION: SIMON PEMBERTON
9% said there was no change. Unsurpris-
ingly, 95% felt the security situation was
worse than before.
Add to this the figures supplied by
the United Nations high commissioner
for refugees: 1.6 million Iraqis (7% of the
population) have fled the country since
March 2003, and 100,000 leave every
month — Christians, doctors, engineers,
women. There are 1 million Iraqis in
Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 150,000 in
Cairo. These are refugees who do not
excite the sympathy of western public
opinion, since the US — EU-backed
— occupation is the cause. Perhaps it
was these statistics, and estimates of a
million Iraqi dead, that necessitated the
execution of Saddam.
That Saddam was a tyrant is beyond
dispute, but what is conveniently
forgotten is that most of his crimes were
committed when he was a staunch ally
of those who are now occupying the
country. It was, as he admitted in one
of his trial outbursts, the approval of
Washington and the poison gas sup-
plied by what was then West Germany
that gave him the confidence to douse
Halabja with chemicals in the middle of
the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam deserved a
proper trial and punishment in an inde-
was no threat to anyone, a country club pendent Iraq. Not this.
golfer set down in the Oval Office. And, The double standards applied by
even with every inherited advantage the west never cease to astonish.
in town, he couldn’t survive two years Indonesia’s Suharto, who presided over
later when a peanut farmer from Plains, a mountain of corpses, was protected by
Georgia, came to Washington. Washington. He never annoyed them as
Why garland him in such adulation, much as Saddam.
then? The reality of his abbreviated term And what of those who have created
didn’t deserve it. But in America the the mess in Iraq today? The torturers of
office makes the man. Ford’s modest Abu Ghraib; the pitiless butchers of Fal-
achievement was keeping that myth of luja; the ethnic cleansers of Baghdad;
the office alive — which is why, 30 years the Kurdish prison boss who boasts
hence, he’ll still have his niche, and see that his model is Guantánamo. Will
the others who came after him bathed in Bush and Blair ever be tried for war
a similarly roseate glow.
What, for instance, will the obitu-
crimes? Doubtful. And former Spanish
prime minister José María Aznar? He
arists make of the 43rd president, is currently employed as a lecturer at
George Walker Bush? Will he be a Georgetown University, in Washington,
“valiant fighter for democracy and where the language of instruction is
Rumsfeld prize winner” in the New York of course English — of which he hardly
Times? A “humble, much undervalued speaks a word.
friend of freedom” in the Telegraph? Saddam’s lynching might send a
A “favourite son who found God and shiver down the spines of the Arab
charted a new course for the 21st ruling elites. If Saddam can be hanged,
century” (the New York Post, or maybe so can the Egyptian president, Hosni
the Sun)? You wouldn’t bet against any Mubarak, the Hashemite joker in
of that. Amman and the Saudi royals — as long
Nor, alas, would you bet against the as those who topple them are happy to
eventual rehabilitation of Saddam. What play ball with the United States.
goes down in the prison yard has an odd
way of coming up again years later. Tariq Ali is the author of Bush in Babylon:
the recolonisation of Iraq
p.preston@guardian.co.uk tariq.ali3@btinternet.com
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
Jackie Ashley
The new year holds great
promise: a new prime
minister, an invigorated
opposition, and a turning
away from excess


This age of Blair was
also an age of plenty,
but that has not
produced a happier or
more stable country
Get ready for a gust of
optimism on all fronts
W
elcome, blus-
tery and wild
2007. This is
going to be a
good year for
those of us who
still believe in
politics. It is
going to be good not because Gordon
Brown will alight from his chariot and
save the Labour party — though I hope
he does — but for bigger reasons. We are
going to have a new prime minister, with
a workable majority, who knows he can-
not thrive by spin or charisma, only suc-
cessful policies. He faces an invigorated
opposition, tackling the serious issues.
It is going to be a year when we turn to
Westminster with revived interest.
Maybe it will be better than that.
Perhaps we will find some of our rancid
cynicism about public life draining away.
Brown has flaws, but he is not cynical
and he retains an energetic optimism
about the possibility of human improve-
ment. David Cameron may be an Old
Etonian with posh chums and a weak-
ness for glib photo opportunities, but
he is also a serious man who has tried to
take the Tory party towards mainstream
policies on poverty and public services.
Around them are other leaders who
are also the reverse of cynical, from the
earnest and intelligent Menzies Camp-
bell to the rumbustious Scottish nation-
alist Alex Salmond. Ministers we can
expect to hear a lot of this year include
the likes of Ed Balls, David Miliband,
Douglas Alexander, Harriet Harman,
Jon Cruddas and Hilary Benn — serious-
minded, hardworking people who
believe in public service ahead of flashy
self-advancement.
Politicians will face new issues too.
Two very different, equally unpleas-
ant, new year images should help close
a door on the recent past. The first was
the hanging of Saddam Hussein: if there
are any liberals out there having sec-
ond thoughts about bringing back the
death penalty, then the grisly, drooling
voyeurism of the last moments of that
tyrant gives them the reminder they
need. The second was the public ritual
of Tone and Cherie’s holiday junketing,
which is becoming a parody of itself. It
is demeaning having the prime minister
taking showbiz freebies.
The bloodsoaked catastrophe of the
Iraq invasion will not fade from the front
pages and television screens because
Saddam is dead. Nor should it: even as
British troops begin to return later this
year, our debts to that wrecked place are
huge. And Blair, that politician of stu-
pendous gifts who blew so much of our
hope for New Labour when he led Brit-
ain into Iraq, will be in office for some
months to come. Yet an era is ending.
It is worth remembering that this age
of Blair was, for many, also an age of
plenty. For the working, home-owning
majority, the past decade has been a time
of ever greater self-enrichment. On the
back of rocketing property prices, low
inflation and easy credit, the British have
travelled the world and filled their homes
with gizmos that would have made Nero
or Louis XIV goggle with envy.
The strange thing is, this age of plenty
has not produced a happier or more sta-
ble country. A YouGov poll, published
yesterday, showed a vast gap between
people’s assessment of their private
position and their beliefs about the
country. Whereas 40% said 2006 had
been a good year for them personally,
and only 24% said it had been a bad one,
just 7% thought it had been good for
Britain as a whole, and 55% thought it
had been bad. Asked if Britain was bet-
ter or worse to live in than it had been
five years ago, 62% said worse. Asked
to give their guess about five years’
time, just 11% thought things would get
better, and 53% were pessimists.
These figures show the scale of the
job facing political leaders. But they also
confirm that riches have not made us
more optimistic. People have the new
kitchen or the new car, bought on credit,
but they look out of the windows and
they do not see a fairer, more stable,
more secure country. In the old days, at
the end of the Thatcher boom, the left
said the Tories had created a country
of private affluence and public squalor.
Well, after a decade of New Labour,
some of that squalor has been dealt with
— there have been real improvements in
schools, hospitals and once derelict city
centres — but the sense of imbalance
remains. It’s less mass unemployment
that worries people than immigration
and crime. We don’t fear nuclear annihi-
lation, but we do worry about terrorism.
This is a failure of politics. We had
hoped that a New Labour time would
revive confidence in the public realm.
So much has been frittered away. Some
of it can be won back by the more aus-
tere, serious administration that Brown
promises. But the real change, the
reason that 2007 should mark a turning
point, is that the public mood is turning
away from hollow-hearted consumer-
T
ism, if only for environmental reasons.
he greatest challenge
is global warming. This
isn’t only about tax rates,
car travel or cheap flights.
It is about the culture of
wastefulness and excess.
It is about the droughts
and famines that are pro-
voking the wars and migrations that, in
turn, provoke the pessimism recorded in
the YouGov poll. It can only be matched
by a revival of politics, not simply as the
act of a few at Westminster but as a sys-
tem we support and believe in. In their
different ways, both Brown and Cam-
eron know this very well.
The years ahead are not going to be
hairshirt years. This is still going to be a
remarkably well-off and lucky country.
But the party is over. It is time to look
around at all those who were never
invited to it in the first place; to end the
habit of waste. Far from being a gloomy
prospect, it is likely to revive and enthuse
anyone with public spirit. In the past few
years, politics has been degraded into a
grimy suburb of celebrity culture, which
provided fuel for comedy but which ordi-
nary people stopped taking seriously. Iraq
gave all that an angry edge, reminding
everyone that political decisions could
still have terrible consequences.
Now, in this new year, we have the
chance to move on. No doubt there are
plenty of follies and failures just around
the corner. There always are. But 2007
should be, and can be, the year when a
gust of optimism blew into town.
jackie.ashley@guardian.co.uk
21
Comment editor: Seumas Milne
Telephone: 020-7713-4995
Fax: 020-7837-4530
Email: comment@guardian.co.uk
The comfort
of deja vu
David Thomson
We say we go to the
movies to hear new
stories, but in practice
we prefer the familiar
S
ix out of Hollywood’s 12
biggest hits last year were
sequels. Next year, the pro-
portion could be higher. A
part of us is expected to
nod at this news and say:
“Business as usual.”
Another part is asked to
sigh at the falling back on old habits.
Whatever view you care to hold, there
are so-called laws waiting to serve you —
that every sequel earns less than the
original; or: if you’ve got something that
works, why throw it away? But no one in
Hollywood trusts anything, and that’s
why they like to talk in rules — it’s a
protection against insecurity.
I have a friend, a retired projectionist
— not that they really use projectionists
any longer. But he projected pictures in
the 40s, in packed houses, in the days
when people went to the pictures, and
not to see a particular movie.
Anyway, my friend used to read the
things I wrote about the movies and he
told me I was complicating the matter.
“All this fancy commentary on a picture.
Let me tell you what happens: I turn the
house lights out; I turn the projector on;
the story starts; people see something
they never saw before; but they see a
story just like all the others they ever
saw. They are moved. They laugh. They
are scared. I turn the projector off. I put
the house lights on. They go home. Next
week they come back.”
I like that idea. The movies are a
habit, and a big part of us just wants
them to be like they were before. Sur-
prise me, we ask, show me something
new — but let me recognise it.
Jean Renoir said that a film-maker
made the same film over and over again.
He tried to change, but he couldn’t help
it. He had his story. Orson Welles
shocked everyone with Citizen Kane so
they said they’d never seen a film like it.
But then over the years, he used the
same images — the way painters do —
and he had this recurring situation of a
powerful man being investigated and
found out — The Stranger, Mr Arkadin,
Touch of Evil.
When the old studios had people
under contract that the public loved,
they made vehicles for those stars. So a
Joan Crawford might curse the system
and beg for something fresh, but the
studios said: “Joan, dear, you’re always
best as Joan.” And in the end, she was
“Joan Crawford” with those big staring,
lost eyes, and every real person she’d
ever tried to be had faded away.
And you don’t put Lassie in a
Crawford picture, or vice versa. It’s a
business, and if the public like a person-
ality, you tell the stories that make the
personality look good. A mythology
develops, a whole set of legends —
we call it the star system and the code
of genres. And we enjoy these rules
because they are the schemes by which
we know we should be wary of Peter
Lorre or Sydney Greenstreet but trust
Bogart and Bergman.
You see, we say we go to the movies
to hear stories we never heard before.
But in practice we like it when the whole
thing is close to deja vu, because then it
seems to confirm the old dream. It’s fun
at the movies because it used to be.
Of course, the movies are changing.
Many of the old rules are crumbling.
And there are artists ready to test us in
new ways. But as soon as the new ways
work, they become institutionalised. No
one thought The Godfather would do
well. It became the most successful film
made in 1972. So they let Coppola make
The Godfather: Part II. It did far less
well, but it’s a better film because in
doing part one Coppola had learned new
ways of doing a story, and the uneasy
possibility that at the end a villain could
be left in charge. That was new for a
moment. Now everyone does it.
David Thomson is the author of The
New Biographical Dictionary of Film
comment@guardian.co.uk
22 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007

Founded 
Number ,

Iraq after Saddam January 

Milestone on the road to nowhere
Saddam Hussein’s execution is likely to make
little difference to the fate of the country he
ruled so cruelly for more than two decades.
Few can now doubt that he was guilty of ter-
rible crimes against humanity — his own peo-
ple and others — and showed not a shred of
remorse. Millions around the world were able
to watch the grotesque, sordid spectacle of his
final, defiant moments, cursing “Americans,
spies and Persians” to the very end. It is hard
to imagine that Iraq’s bloody divisions could
get very much deeper. Reactions there — and
there can be no mistaking the jubilation along-
side the apathy and the fury — have predictably
been split entirely along sectarian lines.
The spate of killings that followed was
equally predictable; Saturday’s 90 or so dead
was a fairly average daily toll. Even with
Saddam buried, the violence seems to have
an unstoppable momentum of its own. Nuri
al-Maliki’s government signed his death war-
rant, but it has been unable to defuse or crush
the Sunni insurgency, end the routine suicide
bombings, kidnappings and murder, or ensure
that its own Shia security forces do not act as
sectarian death squads. A government whose
writ barely runs beyond Baghdad’s Green Zone
and whose commitment to justice consists of
little more than killing the tyrant is hardly a
government worth the name. It could have
been done differently. The twisted politics
of war and occupation poisoned the judicial
process that allowed hooded thugs to place
the noose around Saddam’s neck, taunting him
as they did. That process was fundamentally
flawed. Neither judges nor lawyers showed an
understanding of international criminal law.
Witnesses testified anonymously, defence law-
yers were murdered and a judge was removed
under government pressure. A UN or interna-
tional tribunal in a neutral venue would have
been better.
It bears repeating that the death penalty
remains a cruel and unusual punishment. It
was only a matter of time before the lightly
sanitised official version of the execution was
supplemented by uncensored mobile phone
pictures of the whole tawdry event — snaps
from the scaffold for our digital age. Perhaps
(an unintended useful consequence?) they will
win new recruits to the abolitionist cause.
Saddam went unrepentantly to the gallows
because of one atrocity: the killings of 148 Shia
villagers after a failed assassination attempt in
Dujail in 1982. But justice, and the memory of
his many thousands more victims, would have
been better served if had stood trial for the
“Anfal” campaign against the Kurds for which
he and his accomplices were accused of geno-
cide. The same is true for the crushing of the
Kurdish and Shia rebellions after the 1991 Gulf
war, and for his invasions of Kuwait and Iran. It
may be naïve to believe that a different judicial
course might possibly have served some puta-
tive process of truth and reconciliation to help
heal Iraq’s wounds. But it is certain that noth-
ing but vengeance and retribution are served
by the brutal and public manner of his end.
The hanging took place as President Bush
(breathtakingly hailing it as “a step towards
democracy”) was consulting advisers at his
ranch to plan his next Iraqi move — anticipat-
ing the moment when US fatalities, which have
already surpassed the dead of the 9/11 attacks,
reach 3,000. At least there was no American
awkwardness at the use of the death penalty.
That had a squirming Margaret Beckett repeat-
ing Britain’s principled opposition to it but
bizarrely “respecting” Iraq’s sovereign right to
use it. Saddam’s crimes were committed in the
name of sovereignty too. His execution can only
augur badly for the future of a ruined country
that is now worse off in so many ways than it
was in the darkest days of his dictatorship. The
condemned man boasted he was prepared to
die as a sacrifice for Iraq. But this ghastly mile-
stone of his death will do it no good at all.

The aftermath
of the Tay
bridge disaster
Dundee, Wednesday evening. The
work of exploring the wreck of the
North British train now lying in the
river Tay has been prosecuted with
great vigour today, and has resulted in
important discoveries.
It must be admitted that operations
hitherto have been slow, but, three
divers having been employed, only
two could work at one time, owing to
the provision of but two diving ves-
sels. The Government have evidently
taken notice of this, for the Admiralty
sent to Dundee the district coastguard
to investigate matters and order
assistance if he deemed it necessary.
The people of Dundee heard
tonight with satisfaction that
increased efforts to discover the bod-
ies will be made tomorrow
However, up to the present time
it is clear to all that the bodies of the
human beings who occupied the first
part of the train on Sunday have been
washed away and may never be recov-
ered. Major Marindin, Government
inspector, observed today that, even
supposing any are among the debris,
the probabilities are that they have
been crushed to such an extent as to
be beyond all recognition.

The world in  The search party started at eight

o’clock in the morning, long before it
could be said to be light. The scene of

The era of weak governments

Twelve years ago Bill Clinton declared that the
era of big government was over. A dozen years
on, it is not obvious that he got it right. Since
9/11 in particular, the US federal government
has grown not shrunk, while on this side of the
Atlantic governments are either spending more
heavily than before on domestic programmes
— as the Blair government has been doing — or
are agonising indecisively about whether and
how to wield the knife on historically large ones
— as Angela Merkel is doing in Germany. The
rhetoric of big government solutions may have
declined, but much of the reality of it remains,
though whether for good, for ill, or for both,
remains a matter of lively argument.
A much more clear-cut change in the years
since Mr Clinton’s pronouncement would be
the end not of big government but of strong
government. Looking around the governments
of the developed and democratic world on this
first day of 2007, the most striking common fac-
tor is their political weakness. In the US, George
Bush’s power has been crippled by last year’s
midterm elections and the strategic failures of
the war on terror. In Canada, Stephen Harper’s
minority government, elected less than a year
ago, may not see out 2007 without a fresh man-
date. In Germany, Ms Merkel’s grand coalition of
left and right has run into increasing domestic
political difficulties. In France, Jacques Chirac’s
government is limping towards the electoral
finishing line in May, with no guarantee that
its replacement, whether from the left or the
right, will have much greater authority. In Italy,
Romano Prodi governs on that country’s tradi-
tional knife-edge. In Britain, Tony Blair is a defi-
ant but unmistakably lame duck. The G7 may
dub themselves the world’s economic great
powers, but they are not great power govern-
ments. Only in Japan does one of them have a
government with anything much resembling a
political future this year.
Part of this is circumstantial. A few rolls of
the electoral dice could result in a set of gov-
ernments with clearer mandates by 2009. But
the real weakness runs deeper. Modern gov-
ernments do not shape the world as they once
did, but nor do they shape their own societies
either. Faced with globalisation, modern media
and democracy, national governments find it
hard to get results and re-elected. The nature
of leadership has changed — and so has the
nature of what it means to be led. Messrs Bush
and Blair often describe themselves as strong
leaders, but their low public esteem reveals a
huge gap between their sort of strength and
true effectiveness. Their successors will prom-
ise to do better. But the art of combining small
government with strong government is likely
to remain as elusive in 2007 as it was in 2006.
the disaster was reached by 8.30 and
the barge and the launch were moored
between the third and the fifth demol-
ished piers.
A third-class carriage, with its
roof off, was standing on its wheels, a
fact attributed to the action of the cur-
rent when the vehicle first
entered the water. The diver searched
the carriage on his first errand but
found no trace of human remains or
personal baggage.
[One diver reported] his hand had
come into contact with some form
of substance, and there were objects
floating about which he believed
might be corpses. Probing with a boat
hook, the diver found that it stuck
into something he found to be a rail-
way carriage cushion, which was fol-
lowed by a quantity of horse-hair pad-
ding. The man alleged that he caught
hold of something which seemed to
him to be the dress of a female.
[Other evidence was found] pretty
plainly showing that it could not have
been owing to the train leaving the
rails and colliding with the ironwork
that the bridge fell, a theory previ-
ously much in vogue.
After the finding of the engine, the

In praise of… vegetarianism locomotive superintendent suggested

What with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s real-
meat mincemeat and Nigella Lawson’s goose
fat, Christmas 2006 seemed at times to be one
of the meatiest. A week after the event, many
Britons are still recycling the Yuletide bird and
pulling the stringy bits from between their
teeth. Yet a large minority also eschewed the
Christmas flesh-fest in favour of alternatives
that have come a long way since the days of tex-
tured vegetable protein. Humane meat is now
more popular than ever, representing a huge
break from the cruelty of the factory farm, but
vegetarians still look elsewhere. Ethical doubts
about meat date back to Plato. Now environ-
mental concerns are entering the equation too:
when it takes 10 kilos of feed to make one of
beef, cattle-farming swallows land and all too
often forest. Like most human ideas, vegetari-
anism is rarely applied with perfect logic. Veg-
etarian Hindus in Kerala justify eating fish by
labelling it a type of egg laid by the sea. Vegans
object that those who continue to chomp on
cheese and eggs collude with an industry that
continues to kill animals. It is also true that
there are ethical dilemmas about many non-
meat foods in the modern world — like the fruit
and vegetables flown in from distant continents
at the expense of the ozone layer. For all that,
vegetarianism confronts ethical questions that
a lot of us prefer to ignore. And, on a day when
new year’s resolutions are being set, it is likely
that more people than ever will decide that this
seasonal turkey will have been their last.
that if the diver went down again he
might find the bodies of the driver and
the stoker.
At a meeting convened by the
Provost of Dundee the sum of £1,800
was raised for the sufferers, the North
British Railway Company subscribing
£500, the Directors £500, and Thomas
Bouch, engineer of the bridge £250.
[Sir Thomas Bouch’s] view is not
that the fall of the bridge was the
direct result of the force of the storm
exerted with overpowering violence
upon bridge and train together but the
indirect result of that force exerted
upon the travelling train.
The hypothesis is that the car-
riages were by a sudden gust of wind
tilted against the girders with a force
which, Sir Thomas says, no girders are

Country diary intended to withstand.

More than 75 passengers died when

Claxton, Norfolk
At dusk it was the murder scene in
the woods that got me thinking about
predator-prey relations.
Across the leaf litter were the typi-
cal remains of a sparrowhawk kill — a
wild corolla of plucked pigeon feath-
ers scattered around a central carcass.
At its epicentre was the exposed
breast bone of the victim, the neck
and head performing a lifeless arc to
one side.
I tried to imagine the moment of
impact, with the pigeon pinned hope-
lessly down, the hawk’s yellow eyes
staring into the wood’s middle dis-
tance as it made that funny kneeding
action with the talons, slowly massag-
ing the life from its prey.
When I walked out on to the marsh
there were two other predators at
work. A wildfowler was already
scattering grain along the dyke in
preparation for the duck at nightfall.
Beyond him, dissolving in the haze of
late afternoon, a barn owl was patrol-
ling its beat.
I too was made to feel like a
predator when a Chinese water deer,
alarmed by my silhouette, charged
away across the field and lay down
in a hollow.
Only its head was visible and while
it stared in my direction, I knew it
couldn’t see me. Chinese water deer
are short-sighted creatures and
within 15-minutes of complete still-
ness I was rewarded by the deer’s
nervous return. It alternated between
an anxious grazing and even more
edgy pauses, when it would sniff the
air and stare towards the site of its
original alarm.
Chinese water deer are Asian
imports to the UK that have estab-
lished a self-sustaining population.
They bring a hint of exoticism to the
Broads. One friend suggested they
had something of the hyena about
the head. To me the facial expression
— the black button nose and round
furry ears — seems rather ursine or,
at least, teddy bear-like. Yet the tusks
on the males (a protruding pair of
canines) don’t quite fit the otherwise
cute image.
My male soon abandoned all fear of
me and, in fact, abandoned thoughts
of predators altogether, in favour
of that other great transaction of
the dark. His looping trot took him
straight to another deer of smaller and
more delicate build. She stopped graz-
ing and sniffed him, their necks briefly
entwining, before she turned away
and he rose up.
Through the gloom I could just
make out their single silhouette at one
with the night.
Mark Cocker
the centre of the Tay bridge collapsed
under their train in a violent night
storm on December 28 1879. An offi-
cial inquiry found against Sir Thomas
Bouch’s design and construction. He
died within a year.
Corrections and
clarifications
The office of the readers’ editor is closed
over the holiday period and will
reopen for normal service on January
3. Letters may still be addressed to the
Readers’ Editor, The Guardian, 119
Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER,
or email: reader@guardian.co.uk
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
Reply
Letters and emails
Flawed justice and the death of a dictator
Though few people in the world
will miss Saddam Hussein (Saddam
executed, December 30) and his vile
crimes, we are opening up a Pandora’s
box of legal and other issues that will
result from his execution by a govern-
ment that many see as an illegitimate
puppet of the US and Britain.
Iraq has yet to become a stable, demo-
cratic nation with a properly functioning
government that serves and is respected
and trusted by all Iraqis. Saddam’s trial
by a dubious court, similar to the trial
of Slobodan Milosevic by a non-Yugo-
slav kangaroo court, will be seen by
many Iraqis as a farce; and Iraq’s former
leader (just like Milosevic) will be seen
by many as a martyr who was executed
because he resisted the Bush family
and US/British imperialism. Prepare for
much more violence in his name.
Dr Michael Pravica
Henderson, Nevada, USA
• The sectarian overtones to the tim-
ing of Saddam Hussein’s execution
should not be overlooked. In foreign
secretary Margaret Beckett’s character-
istically awkward phrase, he was “held
to account” for killings carried out in
Dujail, following a 1982 assassination
attempt against him. The tribunal found
the Dujail killings to be a crime against
humanity, a conclusion it did not stoop
to justifying with a written judgment.
Dujail was the predicable outcome of
the failure of an assassination bid staged
by the Dawa party. That party is repre-
sented in the current Iraqi government
by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.
By pushing Saddam on to the gallows,
Maliki closed the dossier on Saddam’s
much bloodier and arguably much more
serious war crimes against Iran, Kuwait
and his genocidal campaign against the
Kurds. The execution is tainted by the
involvement of Maliki’s party in the ter-
rorist campaign that provoked the Dujail
reprisals. It is all a very long way from
the justice Saddam deserved.
John Spencer
London
• I listened to the news of Saddam
Hussein’s execution with tears of frus-
tration welling in my eyes. This is what
has been achieved by the regime that
Arise, Sir Oscar
So, the media is getting excited about
the prime minister’s holiday (Leaders,
December 29). But what of the free holi-
days that inform many travel features? I
have also heard journalists boast about
the plays, films etc they gain free admis-
sion to “because we are press”.
David Wotherspoon
Downholland, West Lancashire
• A newspaper editor can go on holiday
without worrying about political assas-
sination, the lenses of the paparazzi or
being buttonholed for his opinions. If a
millionaire’s mansion is the only place
Blair and his family can get some peace
and quiet, good luck to them.
Chris White
London
• As a 50-something, I have Ezio and
Bruce Springsteen on my iPod, but no
Cliff or Bee Gees music, although I’d
accept a free holiday from them (The
secrets of Blair’s iPod, December 29).
Linda Bristow
Oswestry, Shropshire
• My friends, family and I have been
walking in the countryside, going to the
cinema, lunching in cafes, talking and
socialising (Life without a parachute,
December 30). Shopping has featured
nowhere during these precious days.
Claire Salisbury
Derby
• Are the new year honours the new
Oscars? After all, entertainers need
all the recognition they can get for
their unsatisfying, arduous, poorly
rewarded work.
John Davies
Kirkby-in-Cleveland, North Yorks
• Forget the stolen bowling plans
(Sport, December 28). England has won
a psychological advantage by not batting
to any plan.
Philip Johnson
Barnsley
governs my country. It is not just that
such judicial murder is a symbol of bru-
tality and immaturity of spirit, but that
it is so obviously foolhardy. Tony Blair
has never understood the reaction of
millions in this country before the war
of 2003. They thought about the conse-
quences of the invasion of Iraq and saw
it as utterly mad, releasing untold death
and misery in the region and incalcula-
ble national and international harm.
The execution of Saddam, following
the narrowly conceived and flawed trial
of this dreadful man, follows the same
thought pattern. Now we have helped
to create Saddam the martyr. How
many additional deaths will happen as
a consequence? What further horrors
must we now lay at the door of Blair’s
regime, which has so betrayed the
interests of the British people it
claims to serve?
Professor Tony Booth
Canterbury Christ Church University
Predictions for 
The destructive forces unleashed by the widening pay gap
Brendan Barber is right to ask if the
pay gap between top executives and
workers is having a “divisive effect on
society” (Report, December 28). If he
reads research by Richard Wilkinson
into the effects of inequality, he would
reach a clear answer: “yes”. Inequality
kills. Wilkinson discovered that inequal-
ity has a negative impact on both our
physical and mental health. The wider
the income gap, the worse the impact.
Although the poorest suffer most in an
unequal society, everyone’s health gets
attacked by stress and anxiety.
Wilkinson’s research for his books
Unhealthy Societies and The Impact
of Inequality is breathtaking in its
thoroughness and ability to refute
alternative explanations of such things
as health problems. We also now know
from other research that levels of trust
are higher in more equal societies.
Social mobility is also improved in an
egalitarian state. For instance, Denmark
has better social mobility than the US.
Equality is simply better for democracy.
If a society is seen as being just or fair,
119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER
Telephone: 020-7239 9959
Fax: 020-7837 4530
Email: letters@guardian.co.uk
• The judicial murder of Saddam Hus-
sein, finally stripped away the last shred
of morality from those who pathetically
try to defend the illegal invasion of Iraq.
The special court was established by the
US specifically to try Saddam Hussein
and his regime members. The whole
process was effectively controlled by
the US. The outcome of this trial was
pre-determined. Ramsay Clark, once
US attorney general and member of Sad-
dam’s defence team, described the trial
as “an assault on truth and justice”.
However, as grubby as this trial was,
it wasn’t the grubbiest injustice. This
was the policy imposed by the US and
supported by the UK, to ensure that
Saddam’s trial was held in Iraq and not
at the international court of justice, and
to limit what he was charged with to a
crime that didn’t allow for a revelation
into how the US and UK governments,
along with businesses from those and
other countries, had supported and
people join in. The research backs this
up: unequal societies eat away
at the social fabric. Perhaps Barber
needs to visit the Nordic countries
for a few answers?
Graeme Kemp
Wellington, Shropshire
• The damage wrought in human terms
by the obscene City bonuses, recently
highlighted in the media, is real enough,
but the left would make an enormous
mistake by bringing back “the politics
of envy”, as advocated by Peter Wilby
(Comment, December 29). To do so
would simply reinforce the image of the
left as being reactive and negative rather
than creative and positive.
Thus the antisocial increase in house
prices that results from these inflated
payments can be countered by a vast
increase in public home-building. The
criminality that results from the widen-
ing gap between rich and poor can be
remedied by stimulating investment
outside the home counties. And the best
way to nullify the impact produced by
We do not publish letters where only
an email address is supplied;
please include a full postal address,
a reference to the article and a daytime
traded with Saddam, even while he
was carrying out the most murderous
atrocities.
Brian Abbott
Cork, Ireland
• At the end, Saddam Hussein lived up
to the horror comic of his life and mur-
ders. He traded insults with his execu-
tioners. But who were they, behind their
masks? Officialising, as George W Bush
might put it, in absentia, were himself,
long a believer and deliverer of state-
sponsored death, and Tony Blair, whom
we might have assumed reflects Britain’s
rejection of the death penalty. How
wrong we are.
Whatever else this travesty has been,
it is the first case in more than 40 years
of our government’s collusion in an
execution. And, so far, we have heard
no regrets.
Tim Llewellyn
London
Illustration: Mr Bingo/Zeegan Rush
the super-rich buying themselves into
the best education and medical care
is to set our schools and hospitals free
from the stultifying bureaucracy that
prevents them from giving the best
possible service to the taxpayer.
Walter Cairns
Manchester
• Peter Wilby is right but he does not go
far enough. The massive sums awarded
to fat cats are not unconnected to real
activity. Each £1m bonus equates to the
production of at least 10,000 laptops in
China or 450 Nissan Micras in Sunder-
land — all of which produces the emis-
sions that are killing the planet. These
people are driving the demands that
rack up unnecessary production, fuel
unnecessary consumerism and leave
the unhappy masses turning to junk
food for consolation. When will politi-
cians realise the link between growing
inequality, environmental destruction
and the obesity epidemic?
Dr Tony Morgan
Cambridge
23
telephone number.
If you do not want your email
address published, please say so.
We may edit letters.
Green light for
a food fight
The reason why many leading food
manufacturers and retailers are opposed
to the Food Standards Agency’s call for a
traffic lights system for food labelling is
because it will work (Food agency takes
on industry over junk labels, December
28). Industry leaders should be ashamed
of themselves for resisting the introduc-
tion of this simple and quick tool to help
people make an informed choice about
what they buy. If companies such as
Kellogg’s are concerned about the effect
on the sales of their products, then they
should make those products healthier,
not try to keep consumers unaware of
what they are eating. The Food Stand-
ards Agency must not give in to this
cynical industry campaign.
Richard Mountford
Tonbridge, Kent
• The Food Standards Agency’s “traf-
fic lights” scheme for food labelling is
over-simplistic, while the complex set
of guideline daily amounts (GDAs) pro-
posed by the food industry is, perhaps
deliberately, impenetrable.
So how about combining the basic
elements of each? You could retain the
GDA listings, but simply colour the
tags when they reached certain levels,
as proposed by the FSA’s nutritional
experts. Once salt levels reached, say,
5% of the GDA, the tag could be yellow,
over 10% red, and so on for the other
“bad” components such as unsaturated
fats, sugars etc.
This would satisfy those wanting the
details, while making it relatively easy
for the rest of us to avoid foodstuffs
with red as the most prominent part of
the label.
David Reed
London
• In February the government is to
announce the findings of its “people’s
panel”, recommending that the obese
do not get priority NHS treatment. Yet
the food industry seeks to block the
correct labelling of its products, which
would make it much easier for people to
avoid high-fat and high-sugar foods, ie
those contributing most to obesity. How
are people to avoid obesity if the major
industry food producers and retailers
prevent them getting basic knowledge
about the food’s contents?
The article quotes Alastair Sykes,
chief executive of Nestlé UK. “We’re
driven by consumers and what they
want, and much of what we do has been
to make our products healthier,” he
said. Is he claiming consumers previ-
ously demanded unhealthy foods? Does
it not bother people that supermarkets
and food producers market “health
foods”, a tacit admission that the rest
of their output is unhealthy? How has
it come to pass that supermarkets and
processed food producers dominate the
food chain in this country when they
peddle unhealthy foods?
Robin Tudge
London
Unfair scorn for
Duke Hussey
If Duke Hussey had never done anything
other than be still standing on two
feet into his 80s despite the appalling
wounds he suffered during the second
world war, he would have deserved
better than Dan van der Vat’s sneering
obituary (December 28). As it is, that
outpouring of snobbish bile dishon-
oured the memory of a truly decent
and courageous man who held the
chairmanship of the BBC through 10
difficult but successful years. It ignored
his wicked sense of humour, his infinite
concern for the personal wellbeing of
all manner of people he came into con-
tact with and his passionate love of and
defence of public service broadcasting.
By circumstance Duke Hussey could
easily have been the caricature Van
der Vat portrays — stupid, snobbish, in
thrall to powerful governments. In fact,
he was none of these. Those of us who
worked closely with him during his BBC
days have cause to mourn a brave man
and a faithful friend. Everyone who still
enjoys a BBC that is strong, independ-
ent and free of party political trammels
owes him better than Van der Vat’s
mean-spirited piece.
Liz Forgan
London
24
Obituaries
Saddam Hussein
An opportunist and
brutal dictator, he
wreaked havoc on
Iraq, the Middle
East and the world
T
he Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein, who was exe-
cuted early on Saturday
morning at the age of
69, may not yield many
general biographies
— he was personally too
uninteresting for that
— but he will be a case study for politi-
cal scientists for years to come. For he
was the model of a certain type of
developing world despot, who was,
for more than three decades, as suc-
cessful in his main ambition, which was
taking and keeping total power, as he
was destructive in exercising it.
Yet at the same time, he was
commonplace and derivative. The
Soviet dictator Stalin was his exemplar.
The likeness came from more than
conscious emulation: he already
resembled him in origin, temperament
and method. Like him, he was unique
less in kind than in degree, in the
extraordinary extent to which, if the
more squalid forms of human villainy
are the sine qua non of the successful
tyrant, he embodied them. Like Stalin,
too, he had little of the flair or colour
of other 20th-century despots, little
mental brilliance, less charisma,
no redeeming passion or messianic
fervour; he was only exceptional in the
magnitude of his thuggery, the brutality,
opportunism and cunning of the
otherwise dull, grey apparatchik.
His rise to power was no more
accidental than Stalin’s. If he had not
mastered Iraq as he did, someone very
similar probably would have, and very
probably also from Tikrit. Saddam’s
peculiar fortune was that, on his
political majority, this small, drab town,
on the Tigris upstream from Baghdad,
was already poised to wrest a very
special role in Iraqi history.
Saddam was born in the nearby
village of Owja, into the mud house of
his uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, and into
what a Tikriti contemporary of his called
a world “full of evil”. His father, Hussein
al-Majid, a landless peasant, had died
before his birth, and his mother, Sabha,
could not support the orphan, until she
took a third husband.
Hassan Ibrahim took to extremes
local Bedouin notions of a hardy
upbringing. For punishment, he beat
his stepson with an asphalt-covered
stick. Thus, from earliest infancy, was
Saddam nurtured — like a Stalin born
into very similar circumstances — in
the bleak conviction that the world
is a congenitally hostile place, life a
ceaseless struggle for survival, and
survival only achieved through total
self-reliance, chronic mistrust and the
imperious necessity to destroy others
before they destroy you.
The sufferings visited on the child
begat the sufferings the man, warped,
paranoid, omnipotent, visited on an
entire people. Like Stalin, he hid his
emotions behind a facade of impassivity;
but he assuredly had emotions of a
virulent kind — an insatiable thirst for
vengeance on the world he hated.
To fend off attack by other boys,
Saddam carried an iron bar. It became
the instrument of his wanton cruelty; he
would bring it to a red heat, then stab a
passing animal in the stomach, splitting
it in half. Killing was considered a badge
of courage among his male relatives.
Saddam’s first murder was of a shepherd
from a nearby tribe. This, and three more
in his teens, were proof of manhood.
The small-town thug possessed all the
personal qualifications he might need
to earn his place in the 20th-century’s
pantheon of tyrants. And the small
town of Tikrit, lying in the heart of
the Sunni Muslim “triangle” of central
Iraq furnished the operational ones,
too. Orthodox Sunni Arabs are only a
small minority, 15% at most, of Iraq’s
population, outnumbered by the Shias
of the south, 60% at least, and the Kurds
of the mountainous north. Yet they
always dominated Iraq’s political life.
Thanks partly to the decline of
traditional river traffic, Tikritis
had taken to supplying the British-
controlled Iraqi state with a dis-
proportionate number of its soldiers.
With time and plentiful purges, they
emerged within the army as a distinct
group; a preponderance which had
been fortuitous at first finally became
so great they could deliberately enlarge
it. A close-knit minority within the
Sunni minority, they exploited ties of
region, clan and family to seize control
of the army, then the state. Saddam,
perfect recruit to the sinister, violent,
conspiratorial underworld that was Iraqi
politics, positioned himself at the heart
of this process.
He himself was never a soldier, but he
used a formidable array of Tikritis who
were, and Ba’athists to boot. Ba’athism
was a radical, pan-Arab nationalist
doctrine then sweeping the region.
Though doubtless impelled in that
direction by the extreme, chauvinist
beliefs of his uncle Khairallah, who
had been dismissed from the army
and imprisoned for five years for his
part in a 1941 attack on an RAF base
near Baghdad, it was mainly out of
convenience, not conviction, that
Saddam joined the party; strong in Tikrit
and the Sunni “triangle”, dedicated to
force not persuasion, it readily appealed
to a man of his ambition and temper.
In theory he remained a Ba’athist to
his dying day, but for him Ba’athism
was always an apparatus, never an
ideology: no sooner was command of
the one complete than he dispensed
entirely with the other. For next to
brutality, opportunism was his chief
trait. Not Stalin himself could have
governed with such whimsy, or lurched,
ideologically, politically, strategically,
from one extreme to another with quite
such ease, regularity, and disastrous
consequences, and yet still, incredibly,
retain command to the end.
The Ba’ath, and other “revolutionary”
parties, had come into their own
with the overthrow, in 1958, of
the “reactionary”, British-created
Hashemite monarchy. They quickly
fell out with General Kassem’s new
regime and with each other, rivalries
that expressed themselves mainly in
streetfighting and assassinations. That
was the way of life that Saddam fell into
as a street-gang leader, after going, in
1955, to live with his uncle in Baghdad
to study at Karkh high school.
Saddam first achieved national
prominence in 1959 with a bungled
attempt to kill Kassem. He seems to
have lost his nerve and opened fire
prematurely. But though his role was
less than glorious, it became an essential
component of the Saddam legend — that
of the dauntless young revolutionary
extracting a bullet from his leg with his
own hand, and, with security forces in
hot pursuit, swimming the icy waters of
the Euphrates, knife between clenched
teeth, before galloping to safety across
the Syrian desert; eventually fetching
up in Cairo, where his university
law studies were terminated by the
next political convulsion back home
— Kassem’s overthrow in February 1963.
Securing a share in the new regime,
the Ba’athists lost it the following
November when they fell out with
the other parties. Pushed back into
the underground, Saddam took what
subsequently turned out to be his first,
concrete step towards supreme office.
In 1964, he formed the Jihaz al-Hunein,
the Instrument of Yearning, the first,
embryonic version of a terror apparatus
of which, in its full fruition, Stalin
would not have been ashamed.
It was an outgrowth of the party. That
meant that, through it, Saddam, though
not an officer, could now see his way to
the summit. But at this stage his main
asset was his collaboration with his
fellow-Tikriti, Brigadier Ahmad Hassan al-
Bakr. Thanks to a combination of Bakr’s
traditional military means and Saddam’s
new, “civilian” ones, the pair pulled off
A
the “glorious July 1968 Revolution”.
t 31, as deputy sec-
retary general of the
Ba’ath party, Saddam
was the power behind
President Bakr’s
throne. But at first he
assumed, like Stalin
in his similar period,
a disarmingly modest and retiring
demeanour as he lay the foundations of
what he called a new kind of rule; “With
our party methods,” he said, “there is
no chance for anyone who disagrees
with us to jump on a couple of tanks and
overthrow the government.” Gradually
he subordinated the army to the party.
There was nothing modest about the
Ba’athists’ inaugural reign of terror;
few knew it then, but it was chiefly his
handiwork, and quite different from
anything hitherto experienced in a
country already notorious for its harsh
political tradition. Saddam’s henchmen
presided over “revolutionary tribunals”
that sent hundreds to the firing squad on
charges of puerile, trumped up absurdity.
They called on “the masses” to “come
and enjoy the feast”: there was the
hanging of “Jewish spies” in Liberation
Square amid ghoulish festivities and
bloodcurdling official harangues.
That was the public face. Behind it
were such places as the Palace of the End.
So called because King Faisal died there
in the 1958 Revolution, it was now more
aptly named than ever. Saddam’s first
security chief, Nadhim Kzar, had turned
it into a chamber of horrors. But Kzar, a
Shia, nursed a grudge against his Sunni
patrons; in 1973, he turned against them;
Saddam, Bakr and a host of top Tikritis
had a very narrow escape indeed.
Thereafter the badly shaken number
two relied almost entirely on Tikritis;
the more sensitive the post, the more
closely related its incumbent would
be to himself. Meanwhile, with guile
and infinite patience, he worked his
way towards his supreme goal. Purge
followed judicious purge, first aimed at
the Ba’athists’ rivals, then the army, then
the party, then influential, respected,
or strategically located people whom he
deemed most liable, at some point, to
cry halt to his inexorable ascension.
When, in June 1979, all was set for
him to depose and succeed the ailing
Bakr, he could have accomplished
it with bloodless ease. But he chose
blood in what was a psychological as
well as a symbolic necessity. He had to
inaugurate the “era of Saddam Hussein”
with a rite whose message would be
unmistakable: there had arisen in
Mesopotamia a ruler who, in his barbaric
splendour, cruelty and caprice, was to
yield nothing to its despots of old.
Only now did he emerge, personally
and very publicly, as accuser, judge
and executioner in one. He called an
extraordinary meeting of senior party
cadres. They were solemnly informed
that “a gang disloyal to the party
and the revolution” had mounted a
“base conspiracy” in the service of
“Zionism and the forces of darkness”,
and that all the “traitors” were right
there, with them, in the hall. One of
their ringleaders, brought straight
from prison, made a long and detailed
S
confession of his “horrible crime”.
addam, puffing on a Havana
cigar, calmly watched the
proceedings as if they had
nothing to do with him.
Then he took the podium.
He began to read out the
“traitors’” names, slowly
and theatrically; he seemed
quite overcome as he did so, pausing
only to light his cigar or wipe away his
tears with a handkerchief. All 66 “trai-
tors” were led away one by one.
Thus did the new president make
inaugural use of that essential weapon
of the ultimate tyrant, the occasional
flamboyant, contemptuous act
of utter lawlessness, turpitude or
unpredictability, and the enforced
prostration of his whole apparatus, in
praise and rejoicing, before it. Those of
the audience who had not been named
showed their relief with hysterical chants
of gratitude and a baying for the blood
of their fallen comrades. Saddam then
called on ministers and party leaders
to join him in personally carrying out
the “democratic executions”; every
party branch in the country sent an
armed delegate to assist them. It was,
he said, “the first time in the history
of revolutionary movements without
exception, or perhaps of human struggle,
that over half the supreme leadership
had taken part in a tribunal” which
condemned the other half. “We are
now,” he confided, “in our Stalinist era.”
But in one way he had actually
surpassed his exemplar. Upon entering
the Kremlin, the former Georgian
streetfighter had at least kept himself
aloof from his “great terror”. Not Saddam.
Newly exalted, he was to remain down-
to-earth too; new caliph of Baghdad, but,
direct participant in his own terror, very
much the Tikriti gangster, too.
The “Leader, President, Struggler” now
emerged as a regional and international
actor with the disproportionate capacity
for promoting well-being and order
or wreaking havoc which Iraq’s great
strategic and political importance, vast oil
wealth, relatively educated citizenry and
powerful army conferred on him. With
U-turns, blunders and megalomaniac
whimsies, he chose havoc; he wreaked
it on the region and the world, but
above all it descended on the land of
Iraq itself. In September 1980 he went
The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007 The Guardian | Monday January 1 2007
Saddam Hussein fires shots into the air
to mark the start of a military parade in
2000, during which 1,000 Russian-
made tanks rumbled through Baghdad.
Photograph: Faleh Kheiber/Reuters
to war against Iran. It was known as
“Saddam’s Qadisiyah”, after the Arabs’
early Islamic victory over the Persians.
His official, strictly limited war aims
revolved round the Shatt al-Arab estuary
and his determination to renegotiate the
“Algiers agreement” he had concluded a
mere five years before. A dire emergency
had forced that humiliation on him: the
Iraqi army had been close to defeat in
its campaign to suppress the last great,
Iranian-backed Kurdish uprising led by
Mullah Mustafa Barazani. The quid pro
quo for Algiers had been the American-
inspired withdrawal of the Shah’s
support for Barazani.
His “Qadisiyah”, first of his
spectacular volte-faces, was now to
avenge the humiliation. But he also
had a higher, unofficial aim: to weaken
or destroy the Ayatollah Khomeini’s
new-born Islamic Republic, or at least
its subversive potentialities in Iraq
itself. For Iraq’s Shia majority now
saw in their Iranian co-religionists a
means of bringing down Sunni minority
rule. Hitherto closely bound to the
Soviet Union, Saddam now bid for the
west’s favour as the Shah’s natural heir
I
as the “strong man” of the Gulf.
n the terrible eight-year struggle
that followed, the Ayatollah’s Iran
remorselessly turned the tables
on the Iraqi aggressor, recovered
all its conquered territory, and,
in a series of fearsome “human
wave” offensives, tried to con-
quer Iraq, and turn it into the
world’s second “Islamic Republic”.
That would have been a geopolitical
upheaval of incalculable consequences.
To forestall it, the west, beneath a mask of
outward neutrality, put its weight behind
one unlovely regime because it found the
other unlovelier still. While the frightened,
oil-rich Gulf furnished cash, the west
furnished conventional weapons, and the
means to manufacture a whole array of
unconventional ones: nuclear, chemical
and biological. Almost miraculously,
Saddam held out, until, in July 1988,
Khomeini drank from what he called “the
poisoned chalice” of a ceasefire.
Of course, Saddam hailed this, his
“first Gulf war”, as a victory. Though
what possible victory there could have
been in an outcome which, in addition
to hundreds of thousands of dead,
wounded and captured, immense
physical destruction and economic
havoc, left Iraq on a permanent war
footing, still seeking to renegotiate the
status of the Shatt al-Arab?
Even if he could not officially admit
it, he had good reason to give his people
some recompense for their sufferings.
He made as if to offer them two
things, material betterment and some
democratisation. But he cannot have
been serious about either. Thanks to
the ravages of his “Qadisiyah”, he had
no money for economic reconstruction.
And, in another great volte-face, he
staged a virtual counter-revolution
against the one ideal of Ba’athism, its
socialism, which he had made a passable
attempt to put into practice. Worse,
the main beneficiaries of the economic
revisionism were the Tikriti pillars of his
regime, now corrupt as well as despotic.
With the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu,
the east European dictator he most
closely resembled, Saddam abandoned
talk of “the new pluralist trends”
he discerned in the world. Indeed,
he persisted, more surrealistically
than ever, in the despot’s law:
the more disastrous his deeds the
more they should be glorified. His



cult of personality expressed itself
most overbearingly in monumental
architecture, where the public — an
amazing array of bizarre or futuristic
memorials to his “Qadisiyah” — merged
with the private (his proliferating
palaces) in grandiose tribute to all the
Saddam was nurtured The west contented attributes, bordering on the divine,
in the bleak conviction itself with little ascribed to him.
It reflected a degree of control that
that the world is a more than a wringing enabled him, amazingly, to embark,
congenitally of hands when he within two years of the first, on his
“second Gulf war”, and then, more
hostile place gassed his own people amazingly still, to survive that yet
greater calamity in its turn. It was
a resort to the classic diversionary
expedient, a flashy foreign adventure,
of the dictator in trouble at home. He
cast himself once again as the pan-
Arab champion, boasting that, having
secured the Arabs’ eastern flank against
the Persians, he was now turning his
attention westwards, with the aim of
settling scores with the Arabs’ other
great foe, the Zionists. He threatened
“to burn half of Israel” with his weapons
of mass destruction, thrilling large
segments of an Arab public desperately
short of credible heroes.
But instead of Israel, it was Kuwait
which, on the night of August 2 1990,
Saddam attacked, or, rather, gobbled up
in its entirety. Hardly had he done that
than, to appease Iran, he unilaterally
re-accepted the Algiers agreement
on the Shatt al-Arab. It was the most
breathtaking of his volte-faces; even
as he dragged his people into another
unprovoked war, he was in effect telling
them that, in the first, they had shed all
that blood, sweat and tears for nothing.
The Kuwait invasion was the ultimate
excess, whimsy and Promethean delusion
of the despot: the belief that he could
get away with anything. Yet nothing had
encouraged this excess like the west’s
indulgence of his earlier ones. Sure, it
had never loved him. But neither had it
protested at his use of chemical weapons
against Iran. It had contented itself with
little more than a wringing of hands when
he went on to gas his own people.
In March 1988, in revenge for an
Iranian territorial gain, he wiped out
5,000 Kurdish inhabitants of Halabja;
then, the war over, he wiped out several
thousand more in “Operation Anfal”,
his final, genocidal attempt to solve his
Kurdish problem. In effect, the west’s
reaction had been to treat the Kurds as
an internal Iraqi affair; exterminating
them en masse may have briefly stirred
the international conscience, but it
tended, if anything, to reinforce the
existing international order.
But now that he was so ungratefully,
so shockingly threatening this order
itself, the west finally awoke to the
true nature of the monster it had
nurtured. Before long, Saddam faced an
American-led army of half a million men
assembled in the Arabian desert.
He did not blench. And for a few
months he won adulation as the
latter-day Saladin, who, after Kuwait,
would go on to liberate Palestine. He
said his army was eagerly awaiting
the coalition’s great land offensive to
reconquer Kuwait; in “the mother of all
battles”, Iraq would “water the desert
with American blood”.
But he stood no chance. For a
month, allied aircraft rained high-tech
devastation on his army, air force,
economic and strategic infrastructure.
He panicked, ordering his army’s
withdrawal from Kuwait. It was not
enough for the allies. As their ground
forces swept almost unopposed through
Kuwait, then into southern Iraq, the
withdrawal became a rout. They could
have marched on Baghdad. He caved in
utterly, accepting every demand that
the allies made. Only then did they
cease their advance.
They had shattered most of his
“million-man army” except for its elite
Republican Guards, held in reserve to
defend the regime against the wrath
of the people. And this time their
wrath was truly unleashed. The two
oppressed majorities, Shias and Kurds,
staged their great uprisings. These
began spontaneously, when a Shia tank
commander, having fled from Kuwait to
Basra, positioned his vehicle in front of
one of those gigantic, ubiquitous murals
of the tyrant and addressed it thus:
“What has befallen us of defeat, shame
and humiliation, Saddam, is the result
of your follies, your miscalculations and
your irresponsible actions.”
But the uprisings foundered on the
rock of Saddam’s residual strength,
western betrayal and, in the south, their
own disorganisation, vengeful excesses
and failure to distance themselves from
Iranian expansionist designs. Exploiting
the Sunni minority’s fear that if he went,
so would many of them, in the most
horrible of massacres, Saddam sent in his
guards. Dreadful atrocities accompanied
the slow reconquest of the south. And
when the guards turned north, the whole
population of “liberated” Kurdistan fled
in panic through snow and bitter cold to
Iran and Turkey.
The television images of that
grim stampede caught the measure
of western betrayal. Four weeks
previously, President George Bush
senior had urged the Iraqis to rise up.
But when they did so, he turned a deaf
ear to their pleas for help. “New Hitler”
Saddam might be, but he was also the
only barrier against the possible break-
up of Iraq itself. Saudi Arabia, for one,
could not tolerate the prospect. It told
25
the US it would work to replace Saddam
with an army officer who would keep
the country in safe, authoritarian, Sunni
Muslim hands.
Saddam was saved again. And for 12
more years he hung on, as his people
sank into social, economic and political
miseries incomparably greater than
those which had propelled him into
Kuwait. Tikriti solidarity continued
to preserve him against putsch and
assassination. And never again would
the people stage an uprising without
assurance of success. Only the west could
provide that. But the west, preoccupied
with other crises, was paralysed.
It would, or could, not withdraw
from what, after the Gulf war, it had
put in place, a curious, contradictory
amalgam of UN sanctions that penalised
the Iraqi people, not its rulers, a moral
commitment to safeguard “liberated”
Kurdistan, an ineffectual “no-fly zone”
over the Shia south. But it also feared to
go further in and, completing the logic
of what it had begun, join forces with a
serious Iraqi opposition that could bring
the tyrant down and keep the country
in one piece thereafter. This was inertia,
which, the longer it lasted, the more
dearly the west would pay for in the
end. Every now and then confrontations
erupted between the world’s only
superpower and this most exasperating
of “rogue states”; they arose out of
Saddam’s attempts to break out of his
“box”, via some renewed threat to
Kuwait, an incursion into the western-
protected Kurdish enclave, or — most
persistently — showdowns over the UN’s
mission to divest Iraq of its weapons of
mass destruction.
In the last of them, in 1998, his elite
military and security apparatus took a four-
day pounding from the air. Heavy though
this was, it proved to be the last, symbolic
flourish behind which the Clinton
administration acquiesced in what, with
the expulsion of the arms inspectors, was a
diplomatic victory for Saddam.
In the end, it was less his own
misdeeds that brought the despot down,
but those of the man who, for a while,
supplanted him as America’s ultimate
villain, Osama bin Laden. Saddam had
nothing to do with 9/11, but he fell
victim none the less to the crusading
militarism, the new doctrine of the pre-
emptive strike, the close identification
with a rightwing Israeli agenda,
that now took full possession of the
administration of George W Bush. Iraq
became the first target among the three
states (with Iran and North Korea) that it
had placed on its “axis of evil”, and with
the launch of the invasion by the US, UK
and their allies in March 2003, Saddam’s
H
days were numbered.
owever, three years
passed between
his capture and his
execution on Sat-
urday. In December
2003, following a
tip-off from an intel-
ligence source, US
forces found him hiding in an under-
ground refuge on a farm near Tikrit,
where his life had begun. It was the
middle of the next year before he was
transferred to Iraqi custody, and in July
2004 the former president appeared in
court to hear criminal charges. Another
year passed before the prosecution was
ready to proceed with counts related to
the massacre in the small Shia town of
Dujail in 1982. The trial at last opened
in October 2005 and the proceedings
were immediately adjourned. Saddam,
who two months earlier had sacked
his legal team, pleaded innocence. A
second trial on war crimes charges relat-
ing to the 1988 Anfal campaign opened
on August 21 this year. He refused to
enter a plea, and episodes of black farce,
which characterised his earlier appear-
ances in court, recurred, with the judge
switching of his microphone because
of his interruptions, and ejecting him
from the court four times. The trial was
adjourned on October 11, but on Novem-
ber 5 the court handed down a guilty
verdict and sentenced Saddam to death
by hanging, a sentence confirmed by
Iraq’s highest court on December 26.
Saddam married Saida Khairallah
in 1963. Their sons Uday and Qusay
(obituaries, July 23 2003) were killed
by American forces; they had three
daughters.
David Hirst
Saddam Hussein abd al-Majid, politician,
born April 28 1937; died December 30 2006
This obituary appeared in Saturday’s late
editions
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Weather&Crossword

Weather report Weather forecast

Around the UK and Ireland Air pollution UK and Ireland Noon Summary
Sun Rain Temp (°C) Weather Sun Rain Temp (°C) Weather London low
hrs mm High/Low (day) hrs mm High/Low (day) Shetlands Key London, E Anglia, E Midlands, Lincolnshire
SE England low
Aberdeen 0.0 9.9 7 1 Gales Kinloss 0.0 3.8 8 4 Rain Mostly dry with sunny spells and the odd shower.
SW England low Wind
Anglesey 0.1 2.0 11 9 Gales Knock 3.7 7.1 6 3 Showers 992 Brisk westerly winds. Max temp 7-10C (45-50F).
S Cent England low
Aviemore 0.0 13.2 6 2 Gales Leeds – – 11 6 Gales
Channel Islands low Tonight, dry. Min temp 3-6C (37-43F).
Belfast 0.7 4.1 11 4 Showers Lerwick 0.7 4.3 7 4 Hail 6 Sunny intervals
SE Anglia low
Belmullet 2.8 22.4 9 6 Showers Leuchars 0.0 5.6 8 3 Thunder
NE Anglia low 6
Birmingham 1.4 5.1 11 6 Rain London 0.0 9.4 12 9 Rain
E Midlands low Showers England, Cent S England Sunny spells with
Bognor Regis 0.0 0.8 11 10 Rain Lowestoft 0.4 2.0 11 7 Cloudy scattered showers mostly on the south coast.
W Midlands low
Bournemouth 0.0 5.1 13 9 Rain Malin Head 1.9 7.1 7 5 Fair 996 Partly cloudy
Bristol 0.0 7.9 12 7 Rain Manchester 0.0 1.5 11 6 Gales
S Wales low Fresh westerly winds. Max temp 8-11C (46-52F).
Cent Wales low Tonight, showers. Min temp 4-7C (39-45F).
Buxton 0.5 1.3 10 4 Rain Margate 0.0 0.8 12 8 Dull Light rain
N Wales low
Cardiff 0.0 0.3 12 9 Cloudy Newcastle – 4.1 10 5 Gales
NE England low Rain
Clacton n/a Newquay 0.0 4.8 13 8 Rain W Midlands, Yorkshire, NE England Sunny
NW England low
Colwyn Bay 0.6 6.1 12 8 Rain Norwich – – 10 8 Rain 1000
Cork 1.3 8.9 8 4 Fair Oxford 0.0 7.6 12 6 Rain
Scotland low spells with blustery showers mostly in the west.
N Ire/Ireland low 7 Brisk westerly winds. Max temp 6-9C (43-48F).
Cromer 0.0 13.5 9 6 Cloudy Prestatyn 1.3 1.3 13 8 Rain Grains of weed pollen per cubic metre
33
Dublin 3.9 2.0 9 6 Sunny Ross-on-Wye 0.0 8.6 12 7 Rain of air: low (0-20); moderate (21-40); Rough Tonight, showers. Min temp 2-5C (36-41F).
Eastbourne 0.0 3.0 13 10 Rain Rosslare 1.6 22.1 10 8 Showers high (41-100); very high (100+) Very rough
Edinburgh 0.0 5.1 10 5 Gales Saunton Sands 0.0 3.8 13 8 Rain
Eskdalemuir 0.0 12.4 8 4 Gales Scarborough 0.0 1.0 10 4 Dull
Channel Is, SW England, Wales, NW England
1004
Falmouth 0.0 8.4 12 10 Rain Shannon 2.5 5.3 9 6 Cloudy Lighting up 7
Heavy showers, some with hail and thunder. They
Fishguard 0.0 5.3 11 7 Rain Shrewsbury 0.4 7.1 11 6 Rain will be wintry on the high ground. Fresh to strong
Glasgow 0.0 15.2 8 5 Gales Skegness n/a Belfast 1608 to 0846 westerly winds. Max temp 8-11C (46-52F).
Guernsey 0.0 1.0 14 9 Cloudy Southend – 5.8 12 8 Cloudy Birmingham 1604 to 0818 8 Tonight, showers. Min temp 4-7C (39-45F).
Hastings 0.0 3.0 12 10 Rain Southport 0.0 0.3 12 6 Showers Bristol 1612 to 0816
Hayling Island 0.0 4.1 12 9 Rain Stornoway 0.0 5.3 8 4 Gales Dublin 1616 to 0840
Herne Bay 0.0 1.0 12 9 Cloudy Swanage 0.0 6.3 13 9 Showers Glasgow 1554 to 0847 1008 Northern Ireland, Ireland Sunny spells with
Hunstanton 0.0 22.9 11 6 Cloudy Teignmouth 0.0 6.6 14 9 Rain London 1602 to 0806 33 showers. Some will be heavy with a risk of hail
Isle of Man 0.0 6.6 12 8 Rain Tenby 0.0 7.9 12 9 Showers Manchester 1600 to 0825 6 35°
Isle of Wight 0.0 1.5 12 10 Rain Tiree 0.0 12.7 9 5 Gales Newcastle 1549 to 0831 Rough and thunder. Brisk to strong westerly winds will
30°
Jersey 0.9 0.8 13 10 Rain Torquay 0.0 12.2 14 8 Showers strengthen in the west later. Max temp 6-9C (43-
Keswick n/a Valentia 0.5 9.9 10 7 Showers 25° 48F). Tonight, showers. Min temp 2-5C (36-41F).
Kilkenny – 1.8 9 6 Sunny Weymouth 0.0 5.3 12 7 Showers Sun & Moon
Met Office report for 24 hours to 6pm yesterday. Irish locations (sunshine from previous day) supplied by MeteoGroup 1012 20°
SW Scotland, NW Scotland, W Isles, N Isles
15°
Showers, some heavy with hail and thunder. They
High tides 10° will fall as sleet or snow on the hills. Fresh to
Aberdeen 1127 4.0m 2350 4.0m Hull 0349 6.8m 1636 6.7m 10 28 5° strong westerly winds. Max temp 5-8C (41-46F).
Avonmouth 0451 11.3m 1725 11.6m Leith 0002 5.0m 1239 5.0m 1016 0°
Tonight, showers. Min temp 2-5C (36-41F).
Belfast 0854 3.3m 2124 3.3m Liverpool 0912 8.5m 2136 8.7m
Dover 0848 6.1m 2128 6.0m London Bridge 1143 6.4m – – Sun rises 0806 Channel Is -5° SE Scotland, NE Scotland Showers, mostly
10
Galway 0251 4.7m 1518 4.7m Penzance 0226 4.9m 1452 5.0m Sun sets 1602
Greenock 1015 3.2m 2254 3.2m Scrabster 0648 4.6m 1908 4.7m Moon sets 0633 -10° affecting the Central Belt and the west. Brisk
Harwich 0917 3.5m 2158 3.5m Weymouth 0427 1.9m 1659 1.8m Moon rises 1328 -15° westerly winds. Max temp 5-8C (41-46F).
Holyhead 0819 5.1m 2042 5.2m Whitby 0131 5.0m 1408 5.0m Full moon January 3 Tonight, showers. Min temp 0 to 3C (32-37F).

Around the world UK and Ireland Five day forecast Atlantic front Noon today
°C °F Weather °C °F Weather °C °F Weather °C °F Weather
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
Ajaccio 17 63 Sunny Corfu 13 55 Sunny Lisbon 14 57 Fog Paris 10 50 Cloudy 1000 L
Algiers 17 63 Sunny Dakar 30 86 Fair London 12 54 Fair Perth 35 95 Sunny 976
968
Alicante 19 66 Sunny Dallas 12 54 Cloudy L Angeles 16 61 Sunny Prague 9 48 Sunny 976 LQ
L
Ams’dam 11 52 Cloudy Denver -8 18 Fair Lux’bourg 8 46 Cloudy Reykjavik 2 36 Sunny 984
Athens 10 50 Fair Dhaka 22 72 Fair Madrid 8 46 Cloudy Rhodes 13 55 Sunny
1016 LN 992 1024
Auckland 17 63 Fair Dublin 11 52 Showers Majorca 17 63 Fair Rio de J 23 73 Rain 1000
B Aires 28 82 Sunny Faro 18 64 Sunny Malaga 16 61 Sunny Rome 13 55 Cloudy 1008 1016
1008
Bangkok 31 88 Sunny Florence 15 59 Drizzle Malta 17 63 Cloudy Shanghai 12 54 Cloudy 1032
Barcelona 15 59 Sunny Frankfurt 10 50 Cloudy Melb’rne 28 82 Fair Singapore 30 86 Cloudy 1032
L 992
Basra 10 50 Sunny Funchal 21 70 Sunny Mexico C 24 75 Fair St P’burg 2 36 Cloudy 984
Cold front
Beijing -3 27 Fair Geneva 12 54 Cloudy Miami 27 81 Fair Stockh’m 5 41 Sunny 1000
Warm front
Belgrade 3 37 Fair Gibraltar 15 59 Fair Milan 8 46 Sunny Strasb’g 13 55 Sunny Occluded front
H 1040
Berlin 10 50 Cloudy Harare 26 79 Fair Mombasa 32 90 Sunny Sydney 24 75 Cloudy T h
Bermuda 21 70 Fair Helsinki 5 41 Drizzle Montreal -8 18 Snow Tel Aviv 11 52 Rain High 11 Low 3 High 12 Low 6 High 10 Low 5 High 12 Low 5 High 12 Low 5 Low Q will move east. Low N will move south-east.
Bordeaux 15 59 Cloudy H Kong 22 72 Sunny Moscow -2 28 Fog Tenerife 23 73 Sunny
Boston 2 36 Snow Innsbruck 4 39 Sunny Mumbai 30 86 Fair Tokyo 9 48 Sunny
Brussels 9 48 Cloudy Istanbul 7 45 Sunny Munich 10 50 Sunny Toronto 0 32 Mist
Budapest -2
Cairo 16
28
61
Fog
Rain
Jerusalem 11
Jo’burg 23
52
73
Rain
Sunny
Nairobi
Naples
20
13
68
55
Cloudy
Sunny
Tunis 16
Vancouv’r 5
61
41
Sunny
Sunny Weatherwatch
Calcutta 24 75 Fair Karachi 27 81 Fair New Delhi 16 61 Fair Venice 5 41 Fair
Cape Town 18 64 Fair K’mandu 16 61 Fair N Orleans 22 72 Cloudy Vienna 0 32 Fog
C’blanca 17 63 Sunny Kingston 33 91 Fair New York 6 43 Cloudy Warsaw 9 48 Cloudy
Chicago 8 46 Fog K Lumpur 29 84 Fair Nice 15 59 Sunny Wash’ton 6 43 Fog It came as a shock to travellers before runway. Commercial airliners were fre- and was installed at 11 UK military air-
Christ’rch 9 48 Fair Larnaca 14 57 Cloudy Oporto 16 61 Cloudy Well’ton 12 54 Fair
Christmas that the weather, particu- quently diverted large distances to any fields. Fido is said to have saved the lives
C’hagen 8 46 Showers Lima 24 75 Cloudy Oslo 1 34 Fog Zurich 11 52 Sunny
Reports for noon yesterday (previous day in the Americas) larly fog, could disrupt their holiday airfield that was not fogbound. of 15,000 men and 2,500 planes return-
plans. Even so it was not the inability Then along came Fido, military ing to fogbound Britain from raids.
of aircraft to land or take off that was shorthand for Fog Intensive Disposal The cost of 200,000 gallons of fuel
Weathercall the problem but the extra space and Of. Trenches were dug either side of an hour, and the potential hazards
10-day regional outlook forecasts – 0901 471 00 + area code 10-day regional forecasts by fax
Greater London 01 West Mids, Staffs & Warks 11 Dumfries & Galloway 20 – 09065 2600 + area code time needed by aircraft to avoid crash- the runway into which aircraft fuel was involved, made Fido an expensive
Kent, Surrey & Sussex 02 Notts, Leics, Derbs &
Northants 12
Central Scotland
& Strathclyde 21
South East 91 Scotland 96 ing into each other while parking at the piped. In fog this was set alight, heating option for civil airlines, but the system
Dorset, Hampshire & IOW 03 South West 92 Northern Ireland 97
Devon & Cornwall 04 Lincolnshire 13 Fife, Lothian & Borders 22 Wales 93 Midlands 98 terminals. up the air so fast it absorbed the fog and was frequently used in fogbound loca-
Wilts, Glos, Avon & Somerset 05 Mid Wales 14 Tayside 23
Berks, Bucks & Oxon 06 North Wales 15 Grampian & East Highlands 24
North West 94 East Anglia 99 Before today’s advanced electronic allowed clear sight of the runway for tions for decades after the war. Charles
North East 95
Bedfordshire, Herts & Essex 07 North West of England 16 West Highlands & Islands 25 wizardry, fog was the pilots’ and pas- approaching planes. In the latter part of de Gaulle airport in Paris still had a Fido
Norfolk, Suffolk & Cambs 08 Yorkshire & York 17 Calthness, Suthlnd, Orkneys 5-day holiday sun forecasts – 0901 471 0028
South Wales 09 North East of England 18 & Shetland 26 0901 costs 60p/min. 09065 costs £1.50/min. iTouch (UK) Ltd. EC2A 4PF.
sengers’ worst enemy. The only way to the war it was a matter of life or death for emergencies until 1988.
Shrops, Hereford & Worcs 10 Cumbria, L’District & I’ of Man 19 Northern Ireland 27 Helpdesk 0871 200 3985
land then was by human eyes seeing the for returning bomber crews short on fuel Paul Brown

Starwatch Cryptic crossword

disc through a telescope. Its globe is set 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Across 12 A tenor isn’t out to be
like a slightly yellowish bauble within loud (10)
rings that reach across 45 arcsec and have 1 House gets money owing 15 Cobbler’s farewell
their S face tipped 13 arcsec towards us. 9 10 back for nursery (6) ceremony? (4,5)
Venus is brilliant (mag -3.9) but low 5 The problem of race? (8) 16 The Scriptures completely
down in our SW evening twilight, though 9 Freshly minted trademark recorded, it’s reported
its altitude at sunset does improve from three quarters finished (4,4)
11
Sa

7° to 15° during the month. By the 31st it (5-3) 19 Revised point I’d raised
tur
n

sets in the WSW 2 hours after the Sun and 12 10 Royal house, divided with Edward (6)
serves as a guide to Mercury, 7° below- internally, naturally (6) 21 Perfect way to make a
right of Venus and easy to spy through 13 14 15 11 Oscar’s tiptop variety of hole (2,3)
binoculars at mag -0.9. bar snack (6,6) 22 Roman day that is endless
16
Jupiter is conspicuous before dawn 13 Big name in the (4)
though it, too, is very low down. It rises 17 18 performing arts (4)
in the SE at about 06:00 tomorrow and 14 It’s slung out when
04:30 by the 31st, climbing 10° to 14° 19 scrapping (8)
high in the SSE by dawn. At mag -1.8 to 20 21
17 Again, but for the last
-1.9, it tracks eastwards in Scorpius from time? (4,4)
its place some 5° N of the red supergiant 22 18 Slough outbuilding (4)
Antares in Scorpius at present. Mars, rela- 20 Party under cover? (12)
23 24
tively dim at mag 1.4, hugs the SE horizon 23 Potency of port half an
before dawn but is unlikely to be seen in hour later (6)
South the twilight. 24 Such tolerance may be a
Those who brave the chill nights of Janu- Moonlight swamps the Quadrantids 25 26 matter of degree (8)
ary enjoy some of the best night skies of meteor shower which is active until the 25 Tyres can burst in race (8)
the year. Orion stands in the SSE at our 6th but peaks sharply on Wednesday No 23,962 set by Rufus 26 Neglect order issued (6)
map times encircled by a cohort of bright night. Its meteors diverge from a radi-
stars and fine constellations. Sirius, the ant that follows the Plough as it climbs R O S E B U G S P E A S E B L O S S O M Winners of Christmas
prize puzzle 23,957.
brightest star in our sky after the Sun, through our NE sky later in the night. U
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N O
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T O
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S U
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R E
A
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B
H E
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S E U S The winners of a Collins Down
twinkles feverishly low in the SE while Alan Pickup T K T O H H B B T T R H R D T
English Dictionary
the Pleiades glimmer high on the merid- P H I L O S T R A T E H I P P O L Y T A
are D and G Price of 2 I got up to receive the king
Market Lavington,
ian. The Moon, near the horns of Taurus January diary R N M H R R O L N R Devizes; D J and B A — a terrible person (4)
tonight, returns to hide some of the clus- O R G Y H E R M I A S N U G A M I D Taylor of Carsluith, 3 One tap bar drunk may
O S W E N C G B O S Newton Stewart;
ter’s stars on the 27th, though the occul- F L U T E A U D I T I O N Q U I N C E M and J Georgeson
think himself Napoleon
tations end by nightfall over the UK. 3rd 14h Full Moon. N R L P L S E of Birmingham; A F (9)
Saturn shines brightly low in the E at 4th 00h Peak of Quadrantids meteor shower. S T A R V E L I N G P E R C O L A T E D Roberts of Barnston, 4 Give fellow a note (6)
Wirral; M Tomkins of
our map times, having risen in the ENE 5th 04h Jupiter 5° N of Antares. E R A O O O E
Devon; D and S Dare of
5 Timothy and Helen, two
L A M E N T G R I D I R O N C O R G I
70 minutes earlier. At mag 0.2, it is edging 6th 18h Saturn 0.9° S of Moon. L E T D T E O F K N Edinburgh; A E Knight combining in aria (2,4,3,6)
away from Leo’s brightest star Regulus as 7th 06h Mercury in superior conjunction. B O D Y M O T H C O B W E B P U C K of Caversham, Reading; 6 How bookies pay place
J Poarch of Bradley
they climb together to pass high in the S 11th 13h Last quarter. Y S M I A O D H P E
Stoke, Bristol; Mrs A money? (4,4)
another 6 hours later. Look for the Moon 15th 17h Jupiter 6° N of Moon. D E M E T R I U S T H R E E S E A T E R
Pocklington of Swanage, 7 On which adders slide to Stuck? Then call our solutions line on
A I O N L H A R L R A 09068 338238. Calls cost 60p per minute
sandwiched between Saturn and Regulus 19th 04h New Moon. Dorset and M Doherty of and fro? (5)
T I T A N I A A T L A N T A E G E U S Newtonabbey. at all times. Service supplied by ATS.
next Saturday evening when Saturn lies 20th 17h Venus 0.8° N of Moon. E R R E T N O T C N N E Please allow 28 days 8 He turns on a spider, Want more? Access over 4,000 archive
1,254m km away and shows a 20 arcsec 25th 23h First quarter. S P E A R H E A D I N G L Y S A N D E R for delivery perhaps (3,7) puzzles at guardian.co.uk/crossword.
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