Martin Walker

Gunning for Kofi

Washington Two of the world’s most impressive spin machines are locked in deadly combat. On the one side is the mob that Hillary Clinton once called ‘the vast right-wing conspiracy’, a bunch of conservative US senators and congressmen, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and his New York Post, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and the National Review, all calling for the head of United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan. Kofi must go, they thunder, because Saddam Hussein was allowed to trouser over $20 billion in the UN’s oil-for-food scandal which happened on Annan’s watch. This is a serious matter and there is a great deal of blame to go around a large number of people — and the UN administration that Annan runs.

Never glad confident morning again

Washington The process is drearily familiar from the plots of countless tawdry novels. Opposites attract: two unlikely people begin a passionate affair. Friends all warn them that it cannot last. The friends are ignored as the lovers stand magnificently alone against an uncomprehending world. Then the first trace of an unfamiliar lipstick is found on a collar, and breezily explained away. Someone else's earring is found in a suitcase after a business trip and laughed off as a colleague's practical joke. But suspicions have been roused. Doubts creep in. Headaches are pleaded. What was once charming starts to irritate. Never glad confident morning again.