Portrait of the Week – 24 April 2004

A referendum on the proposed constitution for the European Union will be held, the government conceded; the next argument was over the timing. ‘Parliament should debate it in detail and decide upon it,’ Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, told the Commons, ‘then let the people have the final say.’ After meeting President George Bush of the United States in Washington, Mr Blair said that they would seek a United Nations Security Council resolution to authorise a ‘central role’ for the UN in Iraq after America relinquishes nominal control on 1 July. In raids intended to catch terrorists, 400 police arrested six men and a woman in Greater Manchester, one man in Staffordshire, one in South Yorkshire and another in the West Midlands; those arrested were of Kurdish and North African origin. Eton appointed a Muslim tutor to care for Muslim boys. The government withdrew funding worth £120,000 from Sinn Fein after the Independent Monitoring Commission found that the IRA was still preparing terrorists for violence.