Portrait of the Week – 18 January 2003

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said at a press conference: ‘If there is a breach of the existing UN resolution I have no doubt at all that the right thing to do in those circumstances is disarm Saddam by force.’ He also said: ‘If there is a breach we would expect the United Nations to honour the undertakings that were given.’ The Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer followed the same line in a sudden flurry of interviews. A policeman was stabbed to death and four others wounded after they arrested three men at Crumpsall, north Manchester, in connection with the discovery of traces of ricin poison in north London. In a related operation, police arrested five men and a woman in Bournemouth. Eli Hall, the gunman whom police had surrounded at a house in Hackney, east London, for 15 days, was found dead after a fire broke out; he had an apparently self-inflicted fatal bullet wound to his head, and another from a police weapon.