THE WEEK THAT WAS

by MONITOR
MR Tony Blair shook hands with the Rev Ian Paisley but not with Mr Gerry Admas when he had separate meetings with them to discuss progress on the Northern Ireland peace process following the IRA's announcement that it would forthwith “dump” its weapons and pursue its objectives by political means. A spokesman for Mr Paisley said that it might take the Democratic Unionist Party more than two years to be satisfied of the IRA's good faith and in the meantime would not agree to power-sharing with Mr Adams' Sinn Fein. Arrests continued of suspects connected with the 7/7 and attempted 21/7 terrorist bombings in London. Before leaving for his summer holiday Mr Blair announced proposals for new measures to enable the government to deport Islamic extremists and to close down bookshops and Mosques where terrorism is being advocated. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia died, aged about 83; one of the 42 sons of the founder of Saudi Arabia, he came to the throne in 1982 but after a stroke in 1995 gave control to Prince Abdullah who succeeded him on the throne at the age of about 80. John Garang, the Christian vice-president of Sudan, died in a helicopter crash; he had led the southern forces of Sudan in a twenty-one year war against the Muslim central government in Khartoum until a peace deal was arranged in January 2005. Three days of riots in Khartoum followed Mr Garang's death. Ubekistan ordered the United States to leave its base at Karshi–Khanabad following Washington's criticsm of the killing of hundreds of demonstrators by forces under the control of President Islam Karimov; the base is one of those used by the United States for operations in Afghanistan. President Bush went ahead with the appointment of Mr John Bolton as US Ambassador to the United Nations despite the failure of the Senate to approve his nomination and criticism of Mr Bolton's publicly expressed negative views on the UN. In Japan, a Member of Parliament hanged himself out of shame after changing sides to support government plans to privatise the post office; the Japanese Prime Minister said that he would call an election if Parliament did not approve the privatisation.