A post template

No image available
/ 25 November 2004

Chirac cements ties with Libya

President Jacques Chirac, who arrived in Libya on Wednesday on the first visit by a French head of state, expressed the desire for a ”true partnership” with Tripoli after years of ”heavy turbulence”. Speaking to about 200 people at the residence of the French ambassador, Chirac said he wished to ”rebuild a strong dialogue and to establish a true partnership” with Libya, after years in which the North African country had supported terrorism.

No image available
/ 25 November 2004

On the trail of natural highs

”You have to take it,” insisted my friend Alex, a vigorously hedonistic, endearingly irresponsible type. ”If you go to the Mexican desert, you simply have to try the peyote, otherwise it’s a wasted trip.” Simon Mills rides the mind-blowing Chihuahua al Pacifico railway into the Copper Canyon for a glimpse of the real Mexico — but steers well clear of the peyote.

No image available
/ 25 November 2004

The seamy side of Cannes

For a chap with a few pounds in his pockets and a furtive fondness for forbidden fruit, it’s damned hard to beat Cannes. For well over 150 years, the British upper crust have been coming here to sin in the sun — and, it seems, they still are. French police say they have no clear idea of why or how Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, should have vanished so completely from the Cote d’Azur early this month.

No image available
/ 25 November 2004

Insurgents step up the battle for Mosul

Insurgents increased their efforts to take control of Mosul on Wednesday, ambushing a convoy of Kurdish peshmerga fighters and attacking the Kurdish deputy governor of Nineveh province. The United States military commander in Mosul, Brigadier General Carter Ham, has warned that militants, mainly Sunni Arabs, are trying to foment civil war in the ethnically mixed city of 2-million.

No image available
/ 25 November 2004

Israel rebuffs Straw’s road map pleas

The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, pressed Israel to re-embrace the road map to peace on a visit to Jerusalem on Wednesday. But although diplomats said there were signs of greater Israeli flexibility since the death of Yasser Arafat, its foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, repeated that the Palestinians must first ”end terror”.

No image available
/ 25 November 2004

Zimbabwe tour nears collapse

England’s tour to Zimbabwe was on the brink of cancellation on Wednesday night after David Morgan, the chairperson of the England and Wales Cricket Board, instructed Michael Vaughan’s team not to board a flight to Harare an hour before it was scheduled to leave Johannesburg.

No image available
/ 25 November 2004

US rejects Ukraine poll as protesters dig in

The United States on Wednesday night raised the stakes in Ukraine’s election crisis when Colin Powell, the secretary of state, insisted that Washington would not accept the official result and threatened to ostracise the Russian-backed regime. His intervention, which sets the Bush administration on a collision course with Moscow, came as the opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, called for a nationwide strike.

No image available
/ 25 November 2004

Thatcher: ‘I feel like a corpse in a river’

Mark Thatcher must submit to questioning in South Africa over his alleged role in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, the Cape Town high court ruled on Wednesday, compounding legal woes which he said had left him ”destroyed”. ”I will never be able to do business again. Who will deal with me?” he told Vanity Fair. ”Thank God my father is not alive to see this.”

  • Thatcher’s bail conditions extended