Portrait of the Week – 11 January 2003

The aircraft-carrier Ark Royal set sail for the Gulf and 1,500 reservists were called up. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said in a speech to a conference of more than 100 British ambassadors that Britain should remain the closest ally of the United States. ‘The price of British influence is not, as some would have it, that we have, obediently, to do what the US asks,’ he said. ‘But the price of influence is that we do not leave the US to face the tricky issues alone.’ He thought that the United States should listen to opinions on the Middle East, global poverty, global warming and the United Nations. Six men from North Africa were arrested in London under the Terrorism Act 2000, and some material recovered by police from premises in Wood Green, north London, was found to contain the poison ricin. A man was charged with the murder of three women after parts of bodies were found in his flat and in the street at Camden Town in London.