LONDON Feb 3: Winston Churchill stood in awe of her and Tony Blair values her advice - Queen Elizabeth II has been consulted by ten British Prime Ministers during her 50-year reign and all have valued her intellect and diligence.

Churchill’s affection for the young queen when she ascended the throne on February six, 1952, can be put down to the sentimentality of an old conservative in frail health near the end of his career, but even hard-headed labour Prime Ministers have come to respect the queen’s shrewd common sense and wide experience.

The weekly audience is a fixed part of British political ritual. No notes are kept and nothing is ever repeated. But its significance is considerable.

"I know from personal experience that there were at least two Prime Ministers who came away from audiences impressed by what the queen had said and taking it seriously," Lord Armstrong, who served Harold Wilson and Edward Heath as a senior civil servant, told a recent biographer of the queen.

According to a member of Margaret Thatcher’s own staff, the iron lady’s curtsey "almost reached Australia", and the queen is reported to have held Thatcher in high regard, although she once joked she "never listened to a word she said".

Wilson considered putting off his 1976 retirement if one of the royal family’s perennial crises broke. John Major valued being able to talk to an apolitical person and found she had views honed by decades of diligent attention to her task.

Blair, not yet born when Elizabeth started her reign, sees himself as a moderniser, but he too has fallen under the spell of her conscientious attention to detail. The tuesday evening meetings tend to stretch on well past their appointed 60 minutes.

Every workday sees the arrival at the palace of ten red boxes full of documents. Secretaries select those needing the monarch’s attention, and the queen dutifully ploughs through them.

One of her main concerns is the commonwealth, that typically British institution with ill-defined rules and purpose that holds the bits of the former empire together in an informal sort of club.

The dress at her 1953 coronation carried symbols of the various countries embroidered onto the white satin, and the club has been at the centre of her attention ever since.

Successive Prime Ministers have shown little interest, as Britain increasingly focussed on its membership of Europe and its alliance with the United States, but the queen, as titular head of the commonwealth, has gone out of her way to keep the institution going.

She is seen as having helped it through several crises and secured the affection of its leaders as a result, including Sonny Ramphal, Secretary-General from 1975, who was initially sceptical of having a monarch at the head of the commonwealth.

"The queen transcended the barriers of race, colour and caste very easily. In all my 15 years i have never met a Prime Minister or President who did not set the greatest store by the 20 minutes she spent with each one of them at our heads of Government meetings," he said after he had retired.

Former Foreign Secretary David Owen has noted that many "servants of the crown" do in fact feel they serve the monarch directly rather than the Government.

Those at the top of the diplomatic service or the military would not hesitate to make use of their direct access to the queen if they felt something was seriously wrong, and Prime Ministers were aware of this, he said.

Historians are beginning to rank the achievements of Elizabeth II alongside those of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and Victoria (1837-1901), although she has reigned during a period of diminishing British influence by contrast with the earlier queens.

And with her health still excellent at the age of 75, she may yet outlast Victoria and become the longest serving British monarch. (DPA)

‘No monetary compromises for defence’

NEW YORK, Feb 3: The Government will "unhesitatingly" provide all resources, including monetary, needed to ensure the security of the country and no compromises will be made on that count, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha has said.

"... I would like to state that, like any other country in the world, India would not compromise its security concerns. Therefore, whatever it takes to safeguard and protect India will be unhesitatingly provided for the defence," Sinha said at a press conference here yesterday.

He, however, said India’s defence expenditure will continue to be modest.

"The trend of modest (defence) spending will continue," Sinha said, noting India has never indulged in reckless spending in the defence sector.

The minister said he did not expect the defence spending to cross the budgeted figure in the current year, but declined to reveal what he intends to do next year, telling reporters to wait for the next budget.

Sinha, however, made it clear that as far as capital defence expenditure is concerned, its impact on the economy is beneficial because it is an investment. But the Government is cutting down on unproductive expenditure, he said.

He also did not expect the continuing fight against terrorism to have a major impact on the budget.

"We have been struggling with terrorism for decades now and defence budget has been reflecting the cost of fighting terrorism," he said. (PTI)

Afghan jostling for power spurs new violence

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN, Feb 3: Uneasy allies at best, Afghanistan’s patchwork quilt of Pashtun tribes and Central Asian peoples are once more at one another’s throats.

"The biggest threat to Afghanistan’s peace and stability is the internal power struggle," said a leading politician in Kandahar province in the south who is a member of one of the region’s prominent families.

After 24 years of revolution, civil war, foreign occupation and anarchy and with a nation 80 per cent illiterate, Afghans have been left with only one means to power: the Kalashnikov rifle.

It is cheap, easy to maintain and every 12-year-old Afghan male knows how to use one.

A few weeks ago the remnants of the Taliban and their allies of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network would have been seen as the main challenge to Kabul’s interim administration.

In Paktia province, in eastern Afghanistan, local Pashtun warlords have dealt a bloody blow to the new Kabul-appointed Governor. He in turn has threatened a counter-offensive.

Scores of tribesmen have been killed.

In the north, Uzbeks and Tajiks — formally allies in the new Government, and led by the Deputy Defence Minister and Defence Minister respectively — have fought running skirmishes.

"If things unravel, that’s the chance for outsiders to step in with fistfuls of dollars and buy up the dissidents — it would be a window of opportunity for new Taliban and Al Qaeda backed by neighbouring States," the politician said.

The fighting presents the international community, especially the United States, with a dilemma.

Washington declared war on terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and helped topple the Taliban and scatter Al Qaeda with a prolonged bombing campaign in Afghanistan.

It has troops based at Kandahar airport, in Central Asia and has the use of Pakistani airspace for its carrier-based aircraft in the Arabian sea.

Does it stand aside and watch the fragile, multi-ethnic coalition led by Hamid Karzai fall apart, or does it wade in, throwing its forces behind the Government and taking an active role in combat?

The multinational peacekeeping force responsible for security in Kabul faced a similar challenge.

"The Americans and their allies must be aware that overt military action on behalf of the Karzai Government against fellow Afghans would only discredit the authorities," the politician said.

If Afghans had one thing in common over and above tribal and ethnic divisions, it was the Muslim faith and a visceral hatred of any power perceived to be trying to exert control over them.

The last thing the new Kabul Government wants is to underscore any impression among Afghans that it has been brought into office purely on the coat-tails of a superpower’s forces.

Support for Kabul in the present crisis on the part of the Western powers was likely to be low-key, possibly covert, and almost certainly indirect. In other words, there would be plenty of advice, and some equipment, including spares and ammunition.

"I am saddened by what’s happening, obviously," said a Government official. "But I am not surprised that this struggle for power should be taking place ahead of the Loya Jirga (grand council) that will decide the country’s future."

Afghanistan has no parliament as yet, no working courts, no national media — no institutional structures to contain the impulse to power, or the rivalry between communities jostling for a bigger share of resources promised by donor states.

"So far, the fighting is limited, the squabbling localised," the official said.

"It could have been a lot worse." (AGENCIES)

Russia slams ‘double standards’ on terrorism

MUNICH (GERMANY), Feb 3: Russia’s Defence Minister accused his allies of "double standards" today for failing to condemn Moscow’s Chechen enemies as "terrorists" with the same vigour as they have pursued Osama bin Laden.

Sergei Ivanov warned that disagreement over who should be called a terrorist could undermine the coalition in which Russia has joined its old cold war adversaries to combat the Islamist militants the United States accuses of the September 11 attacks.

"What is our greatest concern today is the existence till the present time of double political standards with regard to separatism, religious extremism and fanaticism," Ivanov told a conference in Munich, whose audience included US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other Western ministers.

"If those who blow up apartment houses in Moscow or buinaksk in Dagestan are declared freedom fighters while in other countries such persons are referred to as terrorists, one cannot even think of forging a united anti-terrorist front," he added.

Moscow blames Chechen separatists for the bombings in 1999 in which more than 300 Russians died. But while condemning those attacks, the United States and European powers have also voiced concerns about Moscow’s own military operations in mainly Muslim Chechnya — though criticism has been muted since September 11.

Chechen separatist leaders deny planting the 1999 bombs and have said Russia’s own secret services could be responsible.

Ivanov did not name states practising "double standards" but Moscow has repeatedly accused the West in general of failing to support it in its Chechen wars of the 1990s. It protested last month to Washington, London and Paris over diplomatic contacts with the region’s fugitive elected president, Aslan Maskhadov.

Russia regretted the world community had not agreed a common legal definition of terrorism, Ivanov said, adding that the 1999 blasts should be equated with the attacks on the United States. He also said Moscow had irrefutable evidence that Chechen fighters had foreign support, notably through links with Al Qaeda leader bin Laden. He also said Chechens had now set up a "hornets’ nest" in the Pankisi Gorge in neighbouring Georgia.

The minister warned that unnamed militants could try to attack nuclear installations and power plants, seize weapons of mass destruction and attempt to prompt environmental disaster with actions like blowing up dams.

"Any delay on the part of the world community in taking preventive measures against terror may result in even more horrible consequences," he said.

"It is easier to prevent a disease than to cure it."

Ivanov said the international community had to clamp down on the trafficking of drugs and illegal immigrants which was helping fund extremists, saying too little had been done since the Taliban fell to clamp down on the Afghan drugs trade.

He urged cooperation in developing early warning systems, joint efforts to prevent attacks on nuclear installations as well as pooled resources to eliminate "terrorist organisations and outlawed armed groups", he said, without elaborating. (AGENCIES)

Robertson says NATO still relevant, but work to do

MUNICH (GERMANY), Feb 3: NATO Secretary General George Robertson mounted a robust defence of the 19-nation alliance’s relevance today, but warned European nations that they must build their military capability to avert US unilateralism.

Robertson, speaking at a security conference in the German city of Munich, also urged Washington to share defence technology with its European allies — or face a choice between acting alone or not acting at all.

Doubts about the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s usefulness first surfaced with the collapse of the alliance’s arch-foe, the Soviet Union.

With the United State’s decision to take the war on terrorism to Afghanistan virtually alone, commentators have again started to argue that NATO is being marginalised and that its future is in doubt.

US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the security conference yesterday that NATO needed a revamp to face the new challenges thrown up by the September 11 hijacked airliner attacks on America.

But Robertson, in a now familiar refrain, argued that NATO has a central role in dealing with the new threats which were highlighted by the suicide attacks on New York and Washington, which left more than 3,000 people dead.

"The critics were wrong after the cold war and the Gulf war," he told defence heads and experts from 43 countries. "They are wrong now. NATO is not only a part of the campaign against terrorism — it is an essential part."

He said the US-led campaign in Afghanistan reinforced the fact that modern military operation cannot be undertaken by a single country.

"Even superpowers need allies and coalitions to provide bases, fuel, airspace and forces. And they need mechanisms and experience to integrate these forces into a single coherent military capability," he said

However, he said NATO must evolve to safeguard its relevance, and one of the biggest challenges was the modernisation of European and Canadian forces to ensure a fair sharing of the security burden.

Appealing to European Finance Ministers, Robertson noted that Europe struggles to maintain its 50,000 peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and said hardly any country could deploy effective forces in significant numbers beyond its borders.

"American critics of Europe’s military incapability are right," he said. "So if we are to ensure that the United States moves neither towards unilateralism or isolationism, all the non-US allies — Europeans and Canadians — must show a new willingness to develop effective crisis management capability."

The NATO chief also called on Washington to help European defence modernisation by easing "unnecessary restrictions" on technology transfer and industrial cooperation.

Without this, interoperability within NATO or within coalitions would become impossible.

"The gap between American forces on the one hand and European and Canadian forces on the other will simply be unbridgeable," he said. "And for Washington, the choice could become: act alone or not at all, and that isn’t really a choice at all." (AGENCIES)

British PM reopens inquiry into Hinduja passport affair

LONDON, Feb 3: British Prime Minister Tony Blair has reopened an inquiry into the Hinduja passport controversy after "some further papers came to light", a spokesman of downing street said.

"The inquiry has been reopened because some further papers came to light," he said last night adding that Sir Anthony Hammond, the former treasury solicitor who conducted the original inquiry last March has been asked to reopen it.

"We expect Sir Hammond to conclude his review shortly and, as before, we expect it to be published", the spokesman said.

According to the Sunday Times, the Prime Minister is understood to have acted after Peter Mandelson, who resigned as Northern Ireland secretary after questions were raised about his role in the citizenship application of Srichand Hinduja, produced new documents that he believed will clarify his role.

Shortly before Christmas, Blair asked Hammond to examine the papers and establish whether the evidence would have affected his conclusions published last March.

Hammond’s report had stated that Home Office ministers complied with the official policy by granting British citizenship to Srichand, chairman of the Hinduja group.

The report found that the Hindujas had won their passports fairly and without any improper ministerial involvement. But it failed to clear confusion surrounding the circumstances of Mandelson’s resignation.

Hammond began work last month and was helped by Home office officials who had worked on the original inquiry.

The original report, according to the Observer daily, ducked the key question of whether Mandelson applied improper pressure by phoning a Home office minister about passport applications from the Hindujas, who were offering to sponsor the millennium dome.

According to the report in the times, Mandelson is understood to have slipped undetected into the Home office late last month for a meeting with Hammond and the Secretary to the inquiry, Tyson Hepple, a senior Home office official.

Since his resignation, the second in his career, Mandelson has faced political isolation. The Hartlepool MP was cleared of any impropriety by Hammond, but a question mark has always hung over whether, while he was the minister responsible for the Millennium Dome, he made a crucial phone call in the summer of 1998.

The call was said to have been made to mike o’brien, a home office minister, about the passport application of srichand hinduja.

Mandelson maintained he had "no recollection" of making the call and no documents were found by hammond to confirm absolutely that it had taken place.

Nevertheless, hammond concluded that it was "likely" Mandelson did make the call because of O’brien’s strong recollection of it. He accepted Mandelson’s honestly held belief that he did not remember it.

The suspicion had been that if Mandelson, a cabinet minister, had phoned the then junior immigration minister about an individual passport application, this would have amounted to improper pressure.

When Hammond’s report was published and Mandelson was cleared, queries were raised over 10 Downing Street’s handling of the affair. The Tories complained the Hammond report was a "whitewash". (PTI)

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