After all, left-wingers were everywhere, even in the army, and if he was to save Chile from the “diabolical Marxists” he had to be as cunning as they were.Once he had committed himself to the conspirators, he moved quickly to seize the initiative from the other members of the junta, while also asserting himself as commander of the army.He achieved both aims with a mixture of deviousness and ruthless determination that were a revelation to those who had known him in an earlier incarnation. In June 1974 he had himself declared Supreme Chief of the Nation, and nobody could touch him.. The Foreign Office will this week be asked to take detailed notes of all meetings with the police to avoid a repeat of the controversy caused by last year’s visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin, it emerged today. The Foreign Office will this week be asked to take detailed notes of all meetings with the police to avoid a repeat of the controversy caused by last year’s visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin, it emerged today.
According to The Sunday Telegraph, a Metropolitan Police review of the visit will blame Foreign Office officials for ordering a crackdown on protesters during the visit.But the Foreign Office insisted the report will show there was no interference by Government officials in police decisions and other sources also said there was no criticism of Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in the report.Scenes during the visit caused outrage throughout the country when anti-China demonstrators were met by a heavy police presence.Some officers were seen confiscating Free Tibet flags during the visit and parking their vans to stop the president seeing demonstrators protesting about China’s human rights record.A Foreign Office spokesman said: “It is certainly our understanding that the report will clearly show that as we said all along the purpose of the discussion and meetings that the Foreign Office had with the police was to take the police through the proposed programme for the Chinese state visit so they could take decisions on operational matters.”There is no question of Foreign Office interference in these decisions.”A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “The report is due to be published shortly and it would be inappropriate to comment further.”It has already been disclosed that Foreign Office officials met police eight times before the visit when the concerns of the Chinese authorities about demonstrations was discussed.. Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland are making preparations to unleash fresh violence, a Home Office report has warned.
Terror groups have been carrying out arms training and weapons seizures have not dropped during the past year. Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland are making preparations to unleash fresh violence, a Home Office report has warned. Terror groups have been carrying out arms training and weapons seizures have not dropped during the past year.
Ulster Unionist security spokesman Ken Maginnis said the report was “very disturbing”. He told Radio 4’s Today programme: “Some of the finds of weapons and explosives of recent days have been very clearly tied to Provisional IRA.”The language that is being used by Sinn Fein, particularly in the wake of the crisis we had in the Assembly when it had to be suspended, indicates they have not ruled out terrorism.”In his annual report on the Prevention of Terrorism Act, Crown Court recorder John Rowe said that after regular visits to Ulster he was convinced there was still a need for its tough powers. He did not specify which terror groups could be planning attacks.The report will be a blow to the strained peace process amid fears that the breakaway Continuity IRA will carry out new outrages in protest at the Good Friday Agreement.In his report, Mr Rowe, who also accompanied security patrols, warned: “Paramilitary groups are still in existence, and they are known to have structure and organisation and they apply expertise to their planning and management.”Throughout 1999 there has been continuing incidence of deaths, injury, and damage to property, carried out by paramilitary groups.”Firearms, ammunition and bombing and explosive devices have been discovered, and this, among other things, is clear evidence that paramilitary groups have been making preparations to make violent attacks on the community.”Mr Rowe said paramilitary organisations still exercised “significant influence” over certain sections of communities in the province.Some 369 people were detained in Northern Ireland and 12 people detained in England and Wales in connection with terrorism in Northern Ireland last year of whom 126 were later charged with offences.The report also noted that the UK was increasingly likely to be used as a base by foreign terrorists planning attacks elsewhere.. Britain’s top auction houses are helping to keep the market for stolen art alive by refusing to guarantee that works they sell were not looted by the Nazis.
Britain’s top auction houses are helping to keep the market for stolen art alive by refusing to guarantee that works they sell were not looted by the Nazis.
This is despite growing pressure from museums and galleries who have been advised not to buy paintings or artefacts without being certain of their history.Yesterday it was claimed that the failure to co-operate of the art world, from small dealers to Sotheby’s and Christie’s, has left institutions vulnerable to buying works looted during Second World War.Sharon Page, a restitution expert who is responsible for major purchases at the Tate Gallery, said that no auction house or dealer in Britain would give her the guarantees she wanted, even though the more contract-conscious Americans were able to do so.The standard contract that she had devised to prevent the purchase of stolen goods was invariably returned by auctioneers and dealers who offered their own, less rigorous documents instead. Ms Page said: “There is still considerable reluctance in the art market to having such acquisition contracts, other than those which exclude all liability on the part of the vendor as to title and provenance.”The situation had created a problem for gallery trustees who were torn between their obligations to add to their collections and not wanting to buy looted art, she added. “If a museum finds something that is a real gap in their collection, there’s a huge dilemma about what to do if there are doubts about provenance.”The problem is particularly acute when a gallery is pitted in the bidding against private buyers, many of whom are still willing to take a risk on a potentially suspect work.A trade insider said: “The galleries are effectively being told: take it or leave it.”The issue has come to a head in the past two years as pressure to resolve issues arising from the war has increased.Lucian Simmons, of Sotheby’s, said the auction house was now much more sensitive to issues of provenance and had tried to take a lead in tackling the problem. It had set up an internal “due diligence” system and staff were trained in it.
Its own database contained 2,500 names, such as known Nazi dealers, to act as a warning signal of potential problems. In addition it had part-funded a separate database at the Art Loss Register where families seeking a lost work could register details for checking.The National Museums Directors Conference last week published the names of 350 paintings of “uncertain provenance” hanging in the national museums and galleries after comprehensive searches on the advice of its stolen-property working party.Both the working party and the Museums and Galleries Commission have warned that curators should make extensive checks on the history of works of art, paying particular attention to the period 1933 to 1945, before buying. If they remained in any doubt, the sale should not go through.However, Professor Patrick Boylan, the former ethics committee chairman of the International Committee of Museums, said yesterday that the galleries and museums were first given this advice as long ago as 1970 but had ignored it.When he was director of museums in Leicestershire 30 years ago, he had been asked to draw up a national code of ethics and, later, he devised the international code on similar principles.”Both of these made it absolutely clear that museums should not acquire anything unless they were satisfied that they could acquire legal title,” Professor Boylan said.Under British law, a buyer does not have valid legal title if a work was acquired in an illegal way at any point in its history.”The sort of investigations that have gone on in the national museums and galleries in the past nine months should have been done before anything was acquired over the past 30 years,” Professor Boylan said.He added that Britain was still vulnerable to being a conduit of looted art because it had refused to sign up to any of the international conventions, such as the 1970 Unesco convention on illicit trade or the 1954 Hague convention on cultural property in times of war.. Parents who for years have handed out wads of pocket money in an effort to make their teenage children happy have been wasting their cash. A new report shows wealth plays no part in making adolescents happy.
