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ARROGANT EU chief Romano Prodi last night ordered Tony Blair to put the brakes on the planned US military action in Iraq.Mr Prodi told the PM to take advantage of Britain’s special relationship with America and persuade President Bush not to bomb Baghdad.And in a startling boast, he predicted the European Union would become a “superpower” to rival the US. His outburst came in an astonishing interview in which he warned that Britain must ditch the Pound or “vanish” and the EU must have a single foreign policy. He also slammed Mr Blair for snubbing the EU over Afghanistan war...

(Filed: 25/03/2002) THE Army's new Apache attack helicopter cannot fire its Hellfire anti-tank missiles for fear that debris ejected on launching could cause catastrophic damage. The problem is confirmed by a Ministry of Defence document leaked to The Telegraph. The MoD was unable to say how much damage could be caused. It was working with the makers to solve the problem, officials said.But defence sources said there were serious concerns that the debris could damage the main or tail rotors, causing the helicopter to crash.The Army is buying 67 Apache helicopters. They are being built in Britain by Westland under...

BRITAIN’S 1,700-strong commando battle group will be ready for combat within about two weeks of arriving in Afghanistan, Brigadier Roger Lane, the British commander of the force, said yesterday. He added that he would hold the power of veto over any proposal by the American commander in Afghanistan to launch an offensive involving the Royal Marines if he felt it was right to do so. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that the brigadier had a “national red card”, but said that he would be involved in planning with the Americans and could express any concerns then. Brigadier Lane said that...

SIKH ACTIVIST DETAINED IN CANADA AND BRITAIN AT BEHEST OF INDIAN GOVERNMENT -- HON. DAN BURTON (Extensions of Remarks - March 21, 2002) [Page: E426] GPO's PDF --- HON. DAN BURTON OF INDIANA IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Wednesday, March 20, 2002 Mr. BURTON of Indiana . Mr. Speaker, Dr. Bhagwan Singh Sandhu, a leader of the Sikh Students Federation, was detained at the airports in Vancouver and in London last month, apparently at the behest of the Indian government. According to information I have received, Dr. Sandhu was detained overnight and interrogated by Canadian intelligence agents who were in...

War on terror » Indian police say a pilot has confessed to planning attack on Parliament but Scotland Yard doesn't want to knowAn al-Qa'ida plot to crash an airliner into Parliament is being "swept under the carpet" by Scotland Yard, one of India's most senior policemen has claimed.On Tuesday, Mohammed Afroz, 24, a trainee pilot, will be taken from a top-security Bombay prison to be charged in court with masterminding a plan to hijack a Manchester-bound aircraft and fly it into the House of Commons on 11 September.According to the Indian authorities, the plot was abandoned when security was stepped...

Monday March 25, 8:46 AM Britain can attack Iraq without a UN mandate: Hoon Britain can use force against Iraq without a United Nations mandate if Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is seen as a threat, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said. The government reserves the right to order a nuclear attack against Iraq if chemical or biological weapons are targeted at British troops or the public, Hoon said in a television interview, echoing comments he made last week. His remarks appeared to be at odds with those of Britain's International Development Secretary Clare Short, who on Friday insisted that any military...

Britain was accused last night of falsely claiming that al-Qaeda terrorists had built a 'biological and chemical weapons' laboratory in Afghanistan to justify the deployment of 1,700 Royal Marines to fight there. The allegation follows a Downing Street briefing by a senior official to newspapers on Friday which claimed US forces had discovered a biological weapons laboratory in a cave in eastern Afghanistan after fighting near the city of Gardez this month. A 'senior Whitehall source' gave detailed claims of how American soldiers had found the cave following heavy fighting for al-Qaeda positions around the village of Shah-e-Kot. One report...

British objections to the use of British-supplied weapons in Israel's latest military push against the Palestinians have focused new attention on the United States' reluctance to restrain Israel's use of the multi-billion-dollar, high-tech arms it sells to the Jewish state each year. The US is embarrassed by the high profile given to some of its machinery in the occupied territories - particularly its F-16 fighter jets, in missile strikes against police stations and other public buildings, and its Apache attack helicopters, in Israel's controversial campaign to assassinate Palestinian militants. But the Administration has refused to go public with its growing...

THE Church of England is on a collision course with the Government over Iraq by producing a report for bishops which argues that an attack on Saddam Hussein would be immoral and seen as the "cruel thirst for vengeance".The report, by the Church's Board for Social Responsibility, says that it would be difficult to see how Western military action in Iraq could meet the criteria of being a just war. Instead, in an implicit criticism of the hardening stance being taken by Tony Blair, the briefing paper says that calls for such action merely "reflect the priorities of American foreign...

Billed as crack mountain troops, the marines lack the training for the task ahead, writes their former instructing officer John Barry Some time soon, but not too soon we hope, those members of the Taliban or Al-Qaeda who have stayed for the fight will be squinting through their sights at a new enemy: 3 Commando Brigade and the boys of 45 Commando Royal Marines. As they wait and watch and shoot, they may have time to ponder why this new force has replaced the last one they encountered — the US army in differing forms, from mountain troops to various...

RECORDS of Osama Bin Laden’s calls from his satellite phone reveal Britain was at the heart of the terrorist’s planning for his worldwide campaign of murder and destruction. Bin Laden and his most senior lieutenants made more than 260 calls from their base in Afghanistan to 27 numbers in Britain. They included suspected terrorist agents, sympathisers and companies. Some were prearranged calls to contacts using public pay phones. The records, obtained by The Sunday Times, show that the terrorist leader made more calls to Britain than any other country in the two years that he used the phone. He stopped...

SENIOR British military and Whitehall sources are suggesting that any attack on Iraq is likely to be illegal under international law. In what will come as a fresh blow to Tony Blair’s hopes of winning support for the campaign, senior figures in the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office have advised that they cannot see a legal way to topple Saddam Hussein. The advice also marks a significant split between the way any campaign would be viewed in London and Washington. Although there are no contingency plans under way in Britain for such an attack, No 10 has requested...

Britain last night widened its role in the campaign against international terrorism by deploying two spy planes to overfly Somalia in the search for suspected al-Qaida cells. Two RAF Canberra reconnaissance aircraft with sophisticated photographic equipment landed last night at the Kenyan port of Mombasa. A Russian Antonov transport aircraft, hired by the RAF to carry military equipment and 140 personnel, also landed at Moi International airport in Mombasa yesterday, British defence officials said. US and German reconnaissance aircraft are already patrolling the skies and coast of Somalia. One hundred and sixty German navy personnel are based in Mombasa. Since...

Time to stop being America's lap-dog Tony Blair is faced with a stark choice - either to ally himself to the increasingly conservative and intolerant US or be a fully engaged European Observer Worldview The Europe pages - Observer special Will Hutton Sunday February 17, 2002 The Observer The most important political story of our time is the rise of the American Right and the near collapse of American liberalism. This has transformed the political and cultural geography of the United States and now it is set to transform the political and cultural geography of the West. Britain's reflex reactions...

UNITED NATIONS & PEACEKEEPING: Private Military Companies March 20, 2002; Britain is studying new laws to regulate and license "private military companies" (e.g., mercenaries). While some in Britain want to ban such companies and their operations entirely, the government has noted that such companies could respond more quickly to UN calls for peacekeeping and disaster relief and could do so with fewer political repercussions. --Stephen V Cole

British legislators held a rare emergency debate Wednesday following a Ministry of Defense decision to send 1,700 troops to Afghanistan for combat deployment. The debate was requested by Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative Party defense spokesman. The Tories, along with some members of the ruling Labour Party and other legislators, want to know more about how many troops will be engaging the enemy in Afghanistan, the rules of engagement they will be operating under, the length of the mission and other details. Jenkin said that the Conservatives supported in principal the decision to send troops, but criticized the government for making...

The UK is prepared to use nuclear weapons against rogue states such as Iraq if they ever used "weapons of mass destruction" against British troops in the field, defence secretary Geoff Hoon has told MPs. Mr Hoon said he was not certain Britain's nuclear arsenal would deter a first strike from a state willing to sacrifice its own people to make a "gesture". He also told MPs the possibility of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction was a cause for "real anxiety" and something "we would have to guard against very seriously". However, he stressed, there was no evidence that...

THE Tories called an emergency debate on the deployment of 1,700 Royal Marine commandos to Afghanistan yesterday amid fears that Britain was being sucked into an open-ended commitment. Bernard Jenkin, shadow defence secretary, invoked a rarely used parliamentary procedure to secure today's three-hour debate after Geoff Hoon, Defence Secretary, admitted it was "open-ended". Ready for action: members of 45 Commando during final training at Buddon firing range near Arbroath The move came amid increasing signs that the Government has no exit strategy whereby British troops would be withdrawn. Mr Hoon told BBC's Today programme that the commandos, who are on...

Diana Baird took a taxi home because she had been drinking, but she wound up spending the night in jail anyway. Baird, of Littleton, sued Denver in federal court Wednesday, contending that she was wrongly nabbed by police officers, hauled to the city's detox center, assaulted and then jailed. Denver Assistant City Attorney Stan Sharoff said he could not comment because the city had not yet received a copy of the lawsuit. The trouble started on the night in September 2000 when two Denver cops stopped a taxi driver for speeding and careless driving. Baird was a passenger in the...

AN Arabic translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf which has become a bestseller in the Palestinian territories is now on sale in Britain. The book, Hitler's account of his life and anti-Semitic ideology written while he was in prison in the 1920s, is normally found in Britain in academic or political bookshops. But The Telegraph found it on sale in three newsagents on Edgware Road, central London, an area with a large Arab population. The book, originally translated in the 1960s and revived by Bisan, a Lebanese publisher in the 1990s, has a picture of Hitler and a swastika on the...