Or, perhaps when an election starts, they’ll oversee the election. That would be deemed a larger role.” For his part, Mr Chirac said that he could not envisage sending French troops to Iraq, but he did not rule it out in the long term. “As things are now, there is no situation where I can imagine that France would send troops to Iraq,” he noted But, he added: “Everything could change I don’t have a crystal ball.”. ‘The deadly combination of outlaw regimes, terror networks and weapons of mass murder is a peril that cannot be ignored or wished away,” he said.Among those in the audience were Ahmed Chalabi, this month’s president of the Iraqi Governing Council, and President Jacques Chirac of France, who has called for quick symboblic transfer of civilian control to the Iraqis, with full control being handed over within six to nine months.

Polls show increased concern in the US over continued casualties in Iraq and the mounting costs of reconstruction. These polls also have shown a decline in the president’s overall approval ratings.President Bush returned to the threat which had been posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, even though none have yet been found.”The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction. The Security Council was right to vow serious consequences if Iraq refused to comply. “Governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery,” President Bush said..

The plant-hire group Ashtead yesterday announced a sharp drop in group revenues for the first four months of this year, and predicted little improvement. Rental rates had shown some signs of improvement and Sunbelt had continued to take market share, he added.The group’s results for the UK were less encouraging, with a 13 per cent drop in overall revenues and a 6 per cent drop over the previous year on a same-store basis. The UK division has closed 19 branches in the past year.Although Mr Staunton said in the statement that the company would “continue to review the cost base” in the UK, the chief executive, George Burnett, said that large-scale rationalisation was not high on the agenda at the moment and added that the company was in the shape they wanted to be in going forward.The group has had a torrid time over the past 18 months. In July it reported a pre-tax loss of £42.2m for the year to 30 April and also announced the departure of Sunbelt’s chief executive, Bruce Dressel, following the discovery of alleged accounting manipulation. Mr Dressel has yet to be permanently replaced.The company has said that Mr Dressel was not believed to be responsible for the accounting problems.Nick Walker, an analyst at Evolution Beeson Gregory, said that although the outlook for the group was better than six months ago he remained “fairly negative” about the prospects. Some improvement in the US construction market should help it but the hire market tended to lag six to nine months behind any upturn.Mr Walker added that the loss of Mr Dressel was a major blow as he had been “a driving force” and “by far the best thing about the business”.Mr Walker said management in the UK had been “very slow to react to three years of deterioration”.