ZARA PHILLIPS, daughter of the Princess Royal, becomes the first of the
younger royal generation to assume a public role after her appointment as the
president of the junior members' club at Cheltenham racecourse.
From October, Miss Phillips, 19, will lead Cheltenham's drive to boost its
younger following through a series of events for what the course calls Club
16-24. She is expected to hold the unpaid, honorary position for at least three
years.
In a statement released by the course yesterday, Miss Phillips said that she
could not wait to get started. She said: "Cheltenham is an experience you can't
forget and I couldn't have asked to be associated with a better organisation
than Cheltenham for my first public role."
Having left Gordonstoun last year with three A-levels, Miss Phillips is in her
gap year. Despite the occasional sign of a mildly rebellious streak - such as
having her tongue pierced when she was 17 - she has made it clear that she
wishes to follow her parents' example and pursue a career to do with horses.
She has been competing in three-day events this season and has unspecified
plans to study equine physiotherapy. Already a regular at social events in the
racing world she has been romantically linked with Richard Johnson, the
leading National Hunt jockey.
"She was delighted when we invited her to do this and is keen to get the show
on the road," said Rebecca Morgan, 21, Cheltenham's commercial director,
who approached Miss Phillips. Such a high-profile president should help
Cheltenham to reverse the decline in its junior membership which has dropped
to 300.
The Princess Royal, meanwhile, is keeping a low profile as she approaches
her 50th birthday next Tuesday. Official photographs will be released before
the occasion but there is to be no public celebration.
~*~
Russia accuses Diana's charity of
aiding rebels (UK Times)
FROM ALICE LAGNADO IN MOSCOW AND RICHARD
BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR
RUSSIA'S intelligence services
accused a leading British charity
yesterday of training terrorists in
Chechnya, provoking a row
between London and Moscow.
The accusation, made only two
days after a terrorist bomb
ripped through a crowded
underpass in the heart of
Moscow killing eight civilians,
prompted angry denials from
the Halo Trust, the world's
leading landmine charity, which
was supported by Diana,
Princess of Wales.
The Federal Security Service (FSB) accused the Halo Trust
of entering Chechnya illegally with the help of Aslan
Maskhadov, the Chechen President, and of training more
than 100 saboteurs to detonate mines and carry out
surveillance. It said that the trust smuggled communications
equipment and military equipment for rebel armies.
The FSB named four men - Charles Emms, Matthew
Middlemis, Nicholas Nobbs, and a Zimbabwean, Thomas
Dibb - as Halo employees "engaged in spying and subversive
activities against Russia in Chechnya". It alleged that a Halo
member was a "military intelligence officer" who led a team
of 15 based in the village of Starye Achkoi in November
1999 that collected Russian arms and ammunition used in
Chechnya to pass on the information to a Halo Trust office in
Scotland. The Halo Trust was also collecting military and
political intelligence through close contacts with Mr
Maskhadov and other rebel leaders, and a network of local
informers, the FSB said.
Guy Willoughby, the director of the Halo Trust, denied the
allegations yesterday and insisted that his organisation had
carried out valuable and dangerous work in Chechnya until
fighting forced it to suspend operations last year. He said that
all Halo work in Russia was conducted with the approval of
the Russian authorities. Most of the staff named by the
Russians had resigned some time ago, Mr Willoughby said.
Yesterday's attack on Halo was the third by the Russian
authorities since the group began work in Chechnya in 1997
after the first war. The timing of the FSB outburst, just as
Moscow is grappling with a new terrorist threat, has caused
great unease at the Foreign Office, which immediately
contacted the Russian Embassy in London and the Foreign
Ministry in Moscow to reject the allegations.
Halo, which operates in nine countries around the world, is
supported by donations from the British Government, as well
as Germany, Finland and Ireland. "Halo does very valuable
work around the world and this sort of speculation
endangers the safety of their staff," a Foreign Office source
said.
Senior Kremlin figures, however, seem to believe the
allegations. Sources in the office of Sergei Yastrzhembsky,
the presidential spokesman on Chechnya, insisted that the
only mine-clearing work in Chechnya was by Russian
sappers and that Halo had helped to train rebel forces in the
use of explosives.
The accusations came as the Russian authorities struggled to
make progress in investigating Tuesday's Pushkin Square
bombing. Beyond detaining two men, one Chechen and one
Dagestani, and quickly releasing them, investigators have not
named any suspects. The timing of the allegations against the
Halo Trust was regarded by observers as an attempt to
direct attention from the lack of progress to a foreign
organisation about which most Russians know nothing.
~*~
Landmine cause boosted by the
Princess
BY ALAN HAMILTON
LANDMINES became a major issue in 1997 when, in
the last few months of her life Diana, Princess of Wales,
visited two highly infested areas - Angola and Bosnia.
She was the most potent image of concerned care that
any charity could have wanted, focusing more attention on
the issue than had years of worthy ministerial meetings. In
Angola she symbolically detonated a mine, one of 10
million estimated to be still in the country, which had been
found by Halo Trust workers.
Money poured in to anti-landmine charities. Shortly
before the Princess's death in 1997 her staff were
discussing with Red Cross officials a possible visit to
Cambodia, but it was cancelled on the ground that it
would be too dangerous. Instead the Princess went on her
last fateful holiday with Dodi Fayed.
Wider attention for the issue oiled the wheels for the
Ottawa Convention, outlawing landmines as weapons of
war because they kill and injure more civilians than
soldiers.
In 1998, almost a year after the Princess's death, the
Army invited observers to Salisbury Plain to see it destroy
a token batch of 1,000 of Britain's stockpile of one
million.
The Princess was persuaded to support the anti-landmine
campaign by the British Red Cross, of which she was a
patron. Since her death, the Diana, Princess of Wales
Memorial Fund has given substantial sums to the Halo
Trust. Her role in the campaign has been taken by David
Ginola, the French footballer who plays for Aston Villa.
Last year the Fund gave a grant of £153,712 to the Trust
to help with its work on landmine clearance in Cambodia
and Afghanistan. It had not, officials said yesterday, given
any grants specifically for mine-clearing in Chechnya.