UFO Info Week-End

It is the Liberal Democrats’ top target seat and they are confident of regaining it with just a 0

It is the Liberal Democrats’ top target seat and they are confident of regaining it with just a 0.15 per cent swing needed. Richard Livsey, who lost the seat to Mr Evans after a recount in 1992, is the Liberal Democrats’ man again, while Powys county councillor Chris Mann is standing for Labour. Both parties claim they are on target to win, but if John Major’s visit to Brecon last week in support of Mr Evans does not convince the voters, it seems likely that Mr Livsey will regain the seat.. President Bill Clinton has agreed to meet the leader of Hong Kong’s democracy movement, Martin Lee, later this week in a decision widely seen as signalling United States support for the continuation of political freedom in the colony after the end of British rule. But arrangements for the meeting have been fudged to make the occasion less than a full presidential reception for Mr Lee, a diplomatic compromise that illustrates the sensitivity of the Hong Kong issue for the Clinton administration. According to White House spokesman Mike McCurry, Mr Lee has been invited for “talks” with Vice-President Al Gore on Friday Mr Clinton will attend a portion of that meeting. In Mr McCurry’s words, “the President will be interested in his thoughts on the transition that will occur in Hong Kong”.
Although Mr Lee has enjoyed a high level of access while in Washington, including meetings with the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and senior members of Congress, a White House meeting had hung in the balance.

The invitation means he must amend his schedule to return to the US capital on Friday, rather than fly home to Hong Kong direct from Canada.While the form of the White House meeting is a little less than Mr Lee and his vocal supporters in Washington might have hoped for, they will find a sweet irony in the fact that Mr Lee’s official host at the White House will be Vice-President Gore. Mr Gore came in for strong criticism last month for omitting Hong Kong from his Asian itinerary and for ‘kowtowing’ to the Chinese.Eyebrows were raised by one episode in particular: Mr Gore’s participation in a champagne toast presided over by the Chinese Prime Minister, Li Peng, to seal a deal with the US Boeing Corporation. Mr Gore appeared surprised and embarrassed by the toast, prompting suggestions that it had been sprung on him by the more diplomatically adept Chinese.Mr Gore’s conduct and statements during his Asia trip were contrasted in Washington with those of the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, who visited the region shortly afterwards. Mr Gingrich made a point of emphasising US human rights concerns while in China, attended an Easter church service in Shanghai and included Taiwan and Hong Kong in his route without apparently incurring the explicit wrath of the Chinese.With less than three months remaining until the Chinese takeover, Hong Kong is becoming almost as delicate a subject for US foreign policy as Taiwan. It is fraught with the same difficulties of balancing trade considerations against the principles of political freedom and human rights, with the added complication that relations with Britain are also involved.Until recently, official policy appeared to be to remain on the sidelines and “wait and see”.

Increasingly vocal criticism of the administration’s silence, however, especially after Peking said it wanted to limit freedom of political activity in Hong Kong after the handover, may have contributed to Mr Clinton’s decision to meet Mr Lee.As if to drive home the point, the governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, contributed an article to yesterday’s New York Times commenting, more in sadness than in anger, on China’s apparent desire to limit free speech in Hong Kong.Results of a poll published in Hong Kong yesterday suggest that the popularity of Hong Kong’s future leader, Tung Chee-hwa, has dipped over his proposed curbs on civil rights.A telephone survey commissioned by the South China Morning Post showed Mr Tung had lost some public support after his office last week issued a plan to curb the right to demonstrate and ban foreign funding of Hong Kong political groups. More than 45 per cent of 586 respondents said they had “less trust” in Mr Tung safeguarding Hong Kong’s interests than when he was appointed as leader-designate by a China-backed committee in December.. “What we are talking about”, said Britain’s last Field Marshal, Sir Peter Inge, speaking just before he retired on 2 April, “is Britain’s ability to fight high-intensity war.” The next government will have either to maintain defence spending at its present levels and possibly increase it – which a Labour government would find difficult, though not impossible to justify – or cut something very big indeed If it is the latter, the Army is in the frame

Sir Peter was probably Britain’s last Field Marshal. The rank has been abolished in “peacetime” – and there will be no more “wartime”, because there will be no more big wars Let us hope so, anyway. Instead, we face a world of continuous engagement: in our own internal security problems – Northern Ireland; in peace-keeping – Bosnia and, possibly, Zaire; and in peace enforcement and limited war – as in the Gulf. But although a third of the Army is on active service (preparing to go or recovering afterwards), paradoxically it is the Army’s fast-moving, armoured cutting edge that is looking vulnerable.
Defence is not an election issue Yet there are huge issues to be addressed.

As we enter the 21st century, we are grappling with the prospect of cyber- warfare (to which our information-based society becomes more vulnerable every day), with changes in the role and status of the nation state, and the possibility that missiles fired from the Middle East may soon reach us.But, continually pressed for resources, military planners are also having to face the biggest defence choice in 90 years. Should we give up our commitment to high-intensity continental land war, a commitment shouldered in 1907? The next government will have to make some fundamental choices on Britain’s military posture in the world. That is not going to be easy.The Labour Party has criticised the Government for not spending enough, placing the “defence of the realm” at risk and leaving a massive hole in the defence budget, which is likely to become critical in around 2003. So you might think that, given the chance, Labour would actually spend more on defence Clearly, they will not. Major defence projects – the last to be announced was the purchase of three new nuclear submarines, costing pounds 2bn – are always counted in billions.

That would buy an awful lot of hospitals, and pay an awful lot of teachers.The MoD’s cash plans currently envisage spending about pounds 22bn a year. MoD officials privately believe the next Chancellor will want pounds 3bn from defence for other, more immediately pressing purposes – reducing this year’s budget to pounds 19bn, or pounds 18bn after receipts from the sale of married quarters are taken into account. To achieve that, something big has to go.Labour has committed itself to a strategic defence review, designed to look at exactly what tasks we are trying to do and what forces we need to do them. The plan is to complete it within six months of initiating the review in order to minimise disruption to the forces, which, any senior officer or civil servant will tell you, desperately need a period of stability. In practice, there will be unease and instability even before the review starts – there is now.