But many Poles are worried that the long-running dispute has seriously damaged the country’s international standing and possibly hampered its aspirations for membership of Nato and the European Union.”For the benefit of short term tactical gain, both sides have been risking our long-term goals,” said Piotr Stasinski, head of the political desk at the daily Gazeta Wyborcza. “The interests of state have been sacrificed to personal ambition.”The root of the crisis lies in the ambiguous division of powers laid down in Poland’s constitution. According to Mr Walesa, this gives him full control over appointments to the ministries of foreign affairs, defence and the interior.Mr Pawlak believes such a prerogative belongs to the government.In the first year of Mr Pawlak’s premiership, there was an uneasy “cohabitation”, based on the Prime Minister’s acceptance of Mr Walesa’s appointees. That was shattered in November when the President himself engineered the dismissal of the Defence Minister, Piotr Kolodziejczyk.Since then, the post has remained vacant, with Mr Pawlak consistently refusing to endorse Mr Walesa’s nomination and vice-versa. To complicate matters, Andrzej Olechowski, Mr Walesa’s choice as Foreign Minister, resigned earlier this month, saying his position had been undermined by Mr Pawlak.According to one school of thought, the main architect of all the confusion is Mr Walesa, who is deliberately seeking to discredit the government and tar it with an anti-reform brush in order to improve his chances of re-election in November.

According to the French report, conveyed by Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Coward, a UN spokesmanin Sarajevo: “As a result of [the Bosnians] walking into the warning shots, or of ricochets, four were hit.”

UN sources said three soldiers were hit in the legs while one had a chest wound.
Peace-keepers normally have the right to fire only in defence of themselves, their colleagues or their property, at those attempting to hinder their mandate, or to stop forces entering a UN “safe area” in Bosnia or UN Protected Area in Croatia. The United Nations in Sarajevo is investigating the shooting of four Bosnian soldiers by French peace-keepers patrolling the demilitarised zone around Mount Igman, an incident that prompted questions among UN staff at the legality of the operationand political unease at this unusual use of force. A French patrol spotted around 30 Bosnian soldiers infiltrating the DMZ on Saturday, ordered them in vain to leave, and then, it was reported, fired warning shots. His administrationis hanging by a thread and if the centre disintegrates and the right picks up 10 or 20 extra deputies, Mr Fini and Mr Berlusconi will be able to decide exactly when to push him..

“It seems a bit premature to talk about Fini, but maybe in a little while.”For centre parties like the Northern League and the Christian Democrat Popular Party who are trying to decide whether to swing to the right or left, Mr Fini, not Mr Berlusconi, has become the man to negotiate with.The Popular Party’s leader, Rocco Buttiglione, made overtures to Mr Fini in a speech to the National Alliance’s congress, to the fury of many of his parliamentary colleagues who are threatening rebellion if any deal between the two is struck.Meanwhile, a dissident fraction of the League has threatened to go back to the Fini/Berlusconi fold in defiance of their leader, Umberto Bossi.The Prime minister, Lamberto Dini, won his final vote of confidence in the Senate yesterday. His ally on the far right, National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini, has stolen much of histhunder, particularly since the Alliance ditched its neo-Fascist heritage at its inaugural congress last weekend.Yesterday Mr Berlusconi’s spokesman, Jas Gawronski, said the media mogul now regretted going into politics at all, and was not interested in taking back the prime minister’s office.”[After last year's elections] he was the only one who could do it, but not any more,” Mr Gawronski told the Rome daily Il Messaggero. It was the Milan pool which announced in November that Mr Berlusconi was under investigation fortax bribery, thus precipitating the fall of his government after just seven months.The suggestion of further judicial trouble for Mr Berlusconi only confirms a growing impression that he is losing hold of the political supremacy he once enjoyed. Magistrates have already alleged that Milan paid 10bn lire (£4m) or more under the counter for Lentini via oneor more secret bank accounts in Switzerland.
The chief prosecutor in Milan, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, neither confirmed nor denied the reports but said more details might be forthcoming in a few days. Leading newspapers all reported that the names of Mr Berlusconi, his brother Paolo, who was questioned by magistrates for two hours yesterday, and a Fininvest tax expert, Salvatore Sciascia, had been entered on an investigative register by the Milan poolof anti-corruption magistrates, on suspicion of fiddling Fininvest’s books. The allegation appeared related to the acquisition by Mr Berlusconi’s football club, AC Milan, of the international forward, Gianluigi Lentini. Italy’s former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, already under investigation for allegations of tax fraud, headed for further trouble yesterday as magistrates in Milan were reported to be checking new allegations of financial irregularities within his indebted Fininvest business empire.

A flood in December 1882 resulted in a peak flow rate in the river of 4,680 cubic metres a second, equivalent to about three Olympic swimming pools full of water.The same flood a hundred years later would have occurred three days earlier and resulted in a peak flow of 6,400 cubic metres a second, or more than four swimming pools.. He said better draining, tarmac roads and removal of hedges and trees increase the speed with which rainfall enters a river. Canalisation, when a river is straightened, also increases the overall flow rate downstream.”So, instead of the lower reaches of the river having to transport a certain volume of water over several days, it may have to do it in several hours and it may not have this capability.”The scientists calculated that the medium-scale floods that affected the Rhine region in the 19th century would cause major floods today. “I would be extremely surprised if anyone could show any correlation with such an event.”He said southern England had experienced even heavier rainfall in December 1989 and there was no Nino that year.The speed and extent of the flooding in North-west Europe have been made worse by the development of the land within the catchment area of the Rhine and its tributaries, according to scientists at the Institute of Hydrology at Wallingford in Oxfordshire.Mark Robinson, a hydrologist at the institute, said: “Land use has not caused this flood, but it has probably made it far worse.” In its natural state, land in a river catchment acts like a sponge, holding water for many days after heavy rain, releasing it into the river system and slowing down the effect of a flood.

Nor does he agree with attempts to link Europe’s weather to el Nino, the periodic reversal of ocean currents in the Pacific off the coast of Peru. You can’t waken up one morning and say, `This is it.’ ”

As Professor of Meteorology at Reading University, Dr Hoskins takes global warming very seriously. He has completed a scientific paper which predicts that the storm track over north-western Europe “could be more invigorated” as a result of the world’s changing climate.
But, he warned, there is no evidence that the past fortnight’s rainfall and flooding is correlated with global warming. Brian Hoskins, one of Britain’s leading meteorologists, let out a quiet sigh and said: “Global warming just isn’t like this.