Jacques Chirac is faithful in friendship, but he had planned to celebrate his 74th birthday the evening of November 29th, in Riga, where the NATO summit ...

Jacques Chirac is faithful in friendship, but he had planned to celebrate his 74th birthday the evening of November 29th, in Riga, where the NATO summit is being held, with a rather awkward friend, Vladimir Putin. But yesterday evening the Kremlin finally announced that the Russian president would "unfortunately" not be at the celebration. The deputy spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitriy Peskov, explained in Moscow that discussions had indeed taken place regarding such a trip. "But unfortunately, given the impossibility of coordinating the schedules of the heads of state, ultimately this trip will not take place," he said in very diplomatic terms. It must be noted that the possibility of this three-person dinner (since Latvia's President Vaira Kike-Freiberga was to be among the guests) provoked the anger of American President George Bush on Sunday  November 26th. Embarrassed by the scale assumed by this affair, the Latvian president then hesitated about issuing a visa to Vladimir Putin, thereby managing to offend the sensitivity of the Russians.

In fact, initially Vaira Kike-Freiberga had planned to make a gesture at one time or another "to wish a happy birthday" to the French president "with the heads of state and government present." The summit was to conclude with a lunch offered to her guests by the Latvian president. But the announcement of the Chirac-Putin dinner had upset this nice schedule.

According to Alliance officials, initially the French president wanted to celebrate his birthday in an Armenian restaurant in Riga, with his closest European partners and his Russian counterpart, but without Tony Blair or George W. Bush. Upon learning this, the American President reportedly intervened to block this plan. The Elysee [the president's office] presented a very different version yesterday: "President Putin expressed the wish to come meet the president of the Republic to offer his best wishes, as he has done with other heads of state and government," and "the idea was suggested by Russia of a three-person dinner, hosted by the president of Latvia."

The former prison chief lambasts a justice system in meltdown after Tony Blair's decade of failure on crime and punishment

 Yesterday's announcement that the prison population now exceeds 80,000 is the latest low point in what one can only describe as the Government's headlong and self-induced race to absurdity as far as the conduct of imprisonment is concerned.

The reasons for this dreadful figure are not hard to find. If you produce legislation that results in longer prison sentences, more people will be in prison. If you do not resource prisons, to enable them to conduct work, education and training, prisoners are more likely to reoffend, as proved by the fact that the reoffending rate among adult males has gone up from 55 per cent to 67 per cent in the past five years. If you continue to have a dysfunctionally organised prison service, you will continue to have dysfunctional organisation of an overstretched system. And so on.

Many people have been warning the Government about this for years but, instead of listening to those with practical experience, it has preferred to take advice from people who know nothing about running large organisations, let alone an operational service. When, as now, the whole is run by a home secretary who, within weeks of taking office, publicly described the Home Office and the overburdened immigration service as not being fit for purpose, and recently disparaged the probation service to prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs, you do not exactly have a recipe for getting out of what is an increasingly dire situation. Leaders undermine the morale of their own troops at their peril. If, at the same time, you continue to bombard them with a continuous torrent of flawed legislation, much of which replaces previous legislation before the ink on it is dry, you create a mess that can only be cleared up by long-term planning, based on discussion with those who understand not only what needs to be done but how it might be done. That requires ditching current plans that are marching the whole system into even greater chaos.

The European Commission on Wednesday called for a partial suspension of Turkey's negotiations towards European Union membership after Ankara refused to open its harbors and airports to Greek Cypriot ships and planes.

"We are going to recommend suspending the chapters of negotiations which are connected with commercial restrictions on Cyprus, which is between four and nine chapters out of 35," a

Commission source said.

"Turkey has undoubtedly made progress. But it has still not implemented all obligations it has agreed to," said Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

A spokesman for the Turkish representation to the EU in Brussels, Caglar Cakiralp, said eight "chapters," or policy areas into which the accession talks are divided, would be suspended.

He added that he considered the move too harsh.

"It means you suspend nearly the whole process," he said. "It's too much."

On Wednesday, the European commission demanded from some EU counties, including Germany, to cut carbon credit permits for 2008-2012, under its European Trading Scheme (ETS), after over-supplying emission rights.

The ETS aims to reduce greenhouse gases by 8 percent by 2012 as it promised under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The scheme, established last year and ending in 2007, aims to reduce carbon emissions by providing a market-based trading system. It is based on limiting the total amount of CO2 emissions, but can offer control over reductions flexibly and at a low-cost.

It is designed to put caps on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by heavily polluting factories across Europe. But in 2006, the governments of some EU countries gave away free carbon pollution permits that exceeded the amount of pollution that was released -- which the European environment commission has decided to put a stop to.

Germany was the most generous, with France and Poland also handing out carbon credits faster than pollution can be emitted. Only a few countries -- such as Britain and Ireland -- distributed allowances that fairly matched the needs of big companies.

EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas criticized several European countries, including Germany, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia and Sweden, for giving away too many pollution allowances that they hold in reserve for building new factories.

France's Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has declared his intention to run for the presidency next April.

The announcement had been widely expected, and Mr Sarkozy is the favourite to win the election, according to recent opinion polls.

His centre-right UMP party is due to select its candidate in January and President Jacques Chirac is not expected to seek a third term.

Whoever wins the UMP's race will face the Socialist Party's Segolene Royal.

"I feel I have the strength, the energy and the desire to propose a different view of France," Mr Sarkozy said in an interview to be published in a number of regional newspapers on Thursday.

"I have the ambition to develop a new relationship with the French based on two words: confidence and respect. Confidence in pledges made and respect for every Frenchman considered individually."

# Damning verdict on one-sided US-UK relations after Iraq
# State Department official says Blair is ignored by Bush

Timeline

In a devastating verdict on Tony Blair's decision to back war in Iraq and his "totally one-sided" relationship with President Bush, a US State Department official has said that Britain's role as a bridge between America and Europe is now "disappearing before our eyes".

Kendall Myers, a senior State Department analyst, disclosed that for all Britain's attempts to influence US policy in recent years, "we typically ignore them and take no notice -- it's a sad business".

He added that he felt "a little ashamed" at Mr Bush's treatment of the Prime Minister, who had invested so much of his political capital in standing shoulder to shoulder with America after 9/11.

Speaking at an academic forum in Washington on Tuesday night, he answered a question from The Times, saying: "It was a done deal from the beginning, it was a onesided relationship that was entered into with open eyes . . . there was nothing. There was no payback, no sense of reciprocity."

His remarks brought calls from British politicians last night for the special relationship to be rethought, but also attracted scathing criticism from one close supporter of the Prime Minister.

Both papers reveal that Scaramella has been under investigation since January at the least. Transcripts of legally obtained taps have been leaked to both papers.

The excerpts indicate a conscious scheme on Scaramella's part to beaf up false evidence against Romano Prodi, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio (head of the Greens and now Minister of the Environment) and Antonio Bassolini, president of the Campania Region. In a conversation with Senator Paolo Guzzanti, Scaramella volunteers unsubstantiated charges against Pecoraro Scanio immediately after a violent diatribe in TV between Guzzanti and Pecoraro Scanio. Scaramella accused Bassolino and Pecoraro Scanio of being linked to the camorra and the KGB.

Scaramella used Litvinenko as a source that Prodi was a KGB informant. Litvinenko had always denied being Scaramella's source and further accused Scaramella of having tricked him into signing false revelations.

It has also been revealed that one of Scaramella's consultants was Bob Lady, the Milan CIA agent wanted for the Abu Omar kidnapping. A second CIA agent who collaborated with Scaramella is not named.

Other revelations have Scaramella allegedly sabotaging the San Marino investigation into a possible international arms trade involving Switzerland. By publicizing that investigation as a Russian "KGB" operation, Scaramella blew the investigation apart.

There are wire taps on Ukranian and Russian spies or criminals, such as Alexander Talik, that indicate bewilderment on their part over Scaramella's actions.

In a conversation with his wife, Scaramella tells her that the Teramo scam reported yesterday (in which hapless Ukranians were arrested for transporting Russian grenades to a Neapolitan address) had nothing to do with Guzzanti. The Berlusconi press campaign had trumpeted the story as an attempt to kill Guzzanti and Scaramella. Both received police escorts after that campaign.

A conversation in mid- February  2006, between Guzzanti and Scaramella shows that Scaramella knew he was being tapped. Investigators are presently seeking to discover who was Scaramella's informant within the Interior Ministry. Neither article points to the unprecedented Telecom wiretapping scandal that involves Tavaroli, Mancini and Cipriani.

Although Berlusconi is never named it is apparent from the conversations that Guzzanti met and discussed Scaramella's hokum with him and received encouragement to immediately publicize the false accusations against Prodi.

Public Ministers have asked parliament for authorization to use the taped conversations. By law any conversation with a member of parliament or in which the name of an MP is mentioned (a Berlusconi law) must have authorization by the parliament to be used in an eventual trial. Criminal elements need only drop the name of an MP to complicate any investigation.

By publishing these leaks, both the Corriere and the Stampa have once again joined in the battle against parliamentary attempts to limit press freedom.

The family of former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar - who collapsed during a visit to Ireland last Friday - believes he was poisoned.

Mr Gaidar, who had been treated in a Dublin hospital after becoming ill during a conference in NUI Maynooth, is now being treated for a mystery illness in a Moscow hospital.

The Kremlin has said President Vladimir Putin telephoned Mr Gaidar at the hospital in Moscow yesterday and wished him a speedy recovery.