THE WEEK THAT WAS

by MONITOR
l DESPITE unprecedented increases in government spending on it, Britain's National Health service went into deficit for the first time in five years; however its chief executive Sir Nigel Crisp pointed out that the sum involved, 250 million pounds, was only 0.4 per cent of its total budget. Mr Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, warned that some areas of Britain were becoming “fully fledged ghettos, literal black holes” and he counselled care about further encouragement for the concept of multi-culturalism. At the Liberal Party Conference Mr Charles Kennedy was described as “more of a chairman than a leader” but his rousing final speech in which he attacked Mr Blair's policies on Iraq and anti-terrorist legislation appeared to win over most of the delegates. In Iraq violence continued unabated and two British undercover Special Forces men arrested by Iraqi police in Basra were rescued by other troops who made a forced entry into the local police station. In Washington the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said that Iraq was disintegrating and its collapse could lead to war in the region. North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons after two years of talks involving China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States, but then appeared to renege on the agreement; at the same time it told international aid agencies providing food and other supplies to leave the country. There was deadlock in UN talks in Vienna on whether Iran should be reported to the Security Council for failure to co-operate over its nuclear development plans; the Iranian government said that if the Security Council was involved it would ban UN inspectors from its nuclear sites. After the German election the incumbent Social Democrats and Christian Democrats were separated by three seats and both sides claimed victory; what is likely to be a prolonged period of negotiations with minor parties to form a viable coalition began.