Portrait of the Week – 31 May 2003

Mr Peter Hain, the Secretary of State for Wales, who is the government’s representative to the convention that has published a draft constitution for the European Union, said, ‘If people don’t like what they get, they can vote against the government in the European elections next year’ (on 10 June). But the government shied away from Mr Hain’s remarks, lest they seemed an endorsement of a popular right to ratify the constitution. The opposition called for a referendum. The constitution provides for direct election of a president and foreign minister for the European Union, and takes central control of economic policy, employment, foreign affairs, defence, trade, agriculture, fisheries, transport, energy, immigration and social policy; it would also create the post of European public prosecutor. Major Re Biastre, a US army reservist, high-school counsellor and part-time traffic policeman, admitted that he had witnessed none of the acts of which in a sworn statement he had accused Colonel Tim Collins, commander of the first battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, such as hitting an Iraqi with his pistol and shooting a lorry’s tyres to stop looters.