Mr Blair a day earlier held talks in Rome with Italy's new prime minister, Romano Prodi, about the Italian troop withdrawal from Iraq, which Prodi has said will be completed this year.

Mrs Blair met the Pope in April, when she took part in a Vatican conference on children, which he addressed.

Mr Blair was expected to tell the Pope that moderate religious leaders must work together to tackle extremism and terrorism.

A Downing Street spokesman earlier said the two men had "lots to discuss".

"The Vatican is an influential player on the world stage and, through all the Catholic communities around the world, has a significant influence on international opinion," he said.

"The Prime Minister will be interested in the Pope's views on key foreign policy issues.

"In particular he will want to discuss with the Pope inter-faith relations and how best inter-faith dialogue can help with conflict resolution and how the moderate voices of the world's main religions need to work together to tackle and confront extremism and terrorism."

Blair and Benedict, holding talks for the first time since Benedict's election last year, spoke privately in the Pontiff's study for about 40 minutes, a Downing Street spokesman said.

"The prime minister and the Pope talked about the challenges of globalizations and the importance of dialogue between the faiths to battle extremism and terrorism," he said.

"One of the themes of discussion was how the moderate voices in all the world's major religions need to stand up to religious extremism in all its forms," he added.

He said Blair, who is Anglican, "underscored that the Roman Catholic Church is a very important partner in the dialogue".

A Vatican statement said both sides "underscored the contribution that common values among religions can make to dialogue, particularly with moderate Islam, above all in the areas of solidarity and peace."

The British media reported before the meeting that Blair might invite the Pope to visit Britain. John Paul made a visit in 1982.

Official British government sources said there already was an "open invitation" for Pope Benedict to visit Britain but would not speculate on when such a visit could take place.

The British spokesman said they also discussed Africa "at some length" and China, where the communist government does not allow the local Catholic Church to recognize the Pope. The Vatican said they also discussed Northern Ireland.

Blair, who held talks on Friday with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, later had talks with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

After the private part of the audience, the Pope met Blair's wife, Cherie, who is a practicing Roman Catholic.

Before leaving, the Blairs paid their respects at the tomb of the late Pope John Paul, who died on April 2, 2005.

Concern over dialogue with Islam is a common theme that has linked Benedict and Blair recently.

In speeches in Britain, the United States and Australia recently, Blair has stressed the role religions, inter-faith dialogue and global alliances can play in making cultures understand each other better in a post-September 11 world.

Senior Catholic officials, too, have spoken recently with growing frankness of their concern about Islam, which immigrants have made the second-largest faith in many European states and radicals invoke to justify suicide bombings and other violence.

In its search for better relations with the Islamic world, the Roman Catholic Church is turning a spotlight on the role that culture can play in fostering understanding between peoples of different faiths.

In March, Benedict gave his culture minister, Cardinal Paul Poupard, the additional responsibility of heading the department for dialogue with non-Christian religions.

BC's Ministry of Education and Ministry of the Attorney-General agreed to review the province's curricula to ensure that the issue of homosexuality is included in all so-called 'social justice' discussions - such as those involving racial inequality and women's rights. The decision was the result of a settlement reached with Murray and Peter Corren, who launched their formal human rights complaint in 1999, which alleged "systemic sexual discrimination" in the classroom.

However, a key element in the Corren complaint was the attempt to ensure that the courses teaching positively about homosexuality are mandatory, and that neither students nor parents are able to opt-out. Speaking at the time of the launch of the human rights action, last July, the activists' legal council, Tim Timberg, said, "The second issue is there's an opting-out provision in the curriculum that where a subject is deemed to be sensitive, the school teachers are under an obligation to in advance advise parents that they'll be raising a sensitive issue in the classroom."

Coquitlam teacher Murray Corren told the Vancouver Sun today that the settlement will also make it more difficult for students and parents to opt out of lessons dealing with sexual orientation.

Attorney-General Wally Oppal said Wednesday that the province was indeed shaping a new 'social justice' course that will incorporate the homosexual issues. "I think it's a fair settlement," he claimed. "We listened to their [the Correns'] complaints and we decided there was some merit in what they were suggesting." Oppal added that he hoped British Columbians were a "mature enough society" to accept "that there is an understanding that there is a place for this in our curriculum."

A press release from the BC Government notes that in addition to revamping the provinces educational curriculum to ensure it "reflects inclusion" for the homosexual lifestyle, the province is commencing immediately to offer an elective grade 12 course on "justice and equality" which will address "sexual orientation.

Corinna Filion, spokesman for the Ministry of Education told LifeSiteNews.com that the agreement included provisions to bar some parents and students who had been opting for home education or other arrangements on topics of sexuality. While the province will still allow parents and students those alternative options when it comes to sex education (health and career courses), students will be forced to remain in classes dealing with sexual orientation outside of sexual education in spite of any objections students or their parents my have.

The research, reported in Nature science journal, was based on radar data of the city compiled in the three years before Katrina.

It found that the city was sinking on average 6mm a year, but up to 29mm a year in areas near the city's levees.

Tim Dixon of the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and atmospheric Science, said: "What we found is that some of the levee failures in New Orleans were places where subsidence was highest."

'Death traps'

Scientists said the rate of subsidence explained why some areas of New Orleans were so badly affected by the hurricane - as the ground sinks the level of protection offered by the levees lowers.

The city's Mississippi River Gulf Outlet has sunk by more than a metre since its construction 30 years ago, which explains why water poured over the levee and part of it failed.

Dixon said that the the subsidence in some areas was so bad he did not think that they should be rebuilt.
"I think those areas are death traps. I don't think those areas should be rebuilt," he said.

Reasons unclear
It is not clear why the subsidence rate has risen so rapidly.
Some scientists said it could be natural seismic shifts, while others blame overdevelopment and drainage of the city's marshlands.
Regardless of the causes, scientists said the rapid rate of subsidence should be taken into account by authorities rebuilding the city's flood defences.

More than 1,300 people died and damage estimated at billions of dollars was caused when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in August.

The study comes as US military engineers are to release a report on the alleged engineering and design failures that led to the disaster.

The 6,000-plus page report by the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET) will examine engineering details and failures before the disaster.

Russian President Vladimir Putin however acknowledged growing "competition" to a new Central Asian security organization led by Moscow and Beijing while Chinese President Hu Jintao said the new group had become an "important force" for peace and stability in the world.

In the first meeting of its kind, parliamentary leaders from the six countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) met Tuesday in Moscow to discuss ways to harmonize their laws and begin building a legislative dimension for the grouping.

The SCO parliamentary leaders, including U Bango, chairman of the standing committee of the Chinese legislature, held a meeting at the Kremlin with Putin, who said involvement of national legislatures in the organization would "enrich the partnership" of its member states.

Led by China and Russia, the SCO, founded five years ago, also includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Other key countries in the region -- India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan -- currently have observer status and have also expressed interest in becoming full members.

The United States however is not a member and, according to sources, is growing increasingly uneasy at the direction and purpose of the organization, which has been described by experts as the foundation of a new Eurasian counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

A report in the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta on May 13 speculated that even Iran could be asked to participate in the new US-inspired grouping.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alekseyev however said Tuesday that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was among the leaders who had confirmed his attendance at an SCO summit scheduled to be held in Shanghai next month, ITAR-TASS news agency said.

Meanwhile, speaking in Beijing, the Chinese president sought to reassure Washington that the SCO was not aimed at subverting US interests in Central Asia.

"Since its founding, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has not been a close, exclusive organization," Hu said in remarks carried on Chinese state television.

"It is aimed against no country whatsoever," he said, adding that the organization had become "an important force for promoting peace and stability in the region and throughout the world."

"Theoretically as well as statistically, there is a very large possibility that tectonic activities trigger or increase volcanic activities," said Syamsulrizal, who works at Indonesia's national vulcanology office.

Quake activity near a dormant volcano may "switch it on", while already active volcanoes could see more intense rumblings, said the head of the office's department for disaster-risk evaluation.

Since Saturday's 6,3-magnitude earthquake, seismologists have noted increased flows of lava and heat clouds at Merapi, just north of the temblor's epicentre.

Authorities had already issued a red alert ahead of a possible eruption and shelter camps were set up to house more than 24 000 people evacuated from its slopes.

Most of those have since returned home to tend flocks and crops as attention has switched to the humanitarian crisis to the south where 5 400 were killed, thousands more injured and 200 000 left homeless by the quake.

There are fears that an eruption could further devastate the area and strain the stretched quake relief effort.

"Because a volcano's activities are linked to its system of fluid dynamics, any temblor would certainly have an effect," said Gede Suwantika, who heads the quake monitoring section of the vulcanology office in Yogyakarta.

He said the high magma pressure inside the volcano could rise further as one of the two tectonic plates that meet under the Indian Ocean south of Java slides under the island, as happens in a quake.

"Statistically, this rising activity is already shown by the much higher frequency of heat clouds emitted by Merapi during the post-earthquake period," he told Agence France-Presse from Yogyakarta, just 30 km south of Merapi.

Earthquakes are caused by movements, often very slight, of parts of the earth's crust. The movements release energy and produce the shockwaves which cause the earth tremors.

Volcanic activities occur when fluid magma finds its way to the surface.

In the early hours of Tuesday, Merapi sent out 10 heat clouds and 120 lava trails, some of them two kilometres long, said Tri Yani of the vulcanology office in Yogyakarta.

Plumes of smoke were seen rising about 900m into the air -- nearly double the height seen the previous day.

After calming down for a few days, Merapi belched significant heat cloud torrents shortly after Saturday's temblor.

On Monday, Merapi sent out 186 lava trails and 88 heat clouds, Yani said.

Suwantika said Indonesia's volcanic and tectonic channels followed the same lines along the boundaries between different tectonic plates, perhaps explaining why Merapi would become more active following the earthquake.

Scientists have warned that the main danger posed by Merapi is the deadly heat clouds, which can travel about 100km an hour with sustained temperatures of up to 600ºC, incinerating everything on their path.

Merapi, one of the most active of the 130 volcanoes considered dangerous across the Indonesian archipelago, killed 66 people in its last major eruption in 1994.

Its deadliest eruption in recent times occurred in 1930, when more than 1 300 people perished.

The volcano's relative period of calm last week prompted many of the 22, 00 people evacuated earlier in the month to return home. Only 2 000 people remained in temporary shelters around the peak on Tuesday

The referendum would ask Palestinians whether they accept a document that was drawn up by Fatah and Hamas leaders imprisoned in Israel and that endorses a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The document would amount to a recognition of Israel's right to exist, a major stumbling block for relations between the Hamas-led government and the United States and European Union.

Hamas, elected to power in January, has refused to recognise Israel, and the US and EU have cut aid until Hamas reverses this stance, gives up armed struggle and accepts past deals signed between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

Since Hamas took office in March, Israel has frozen tax revenues to the Authority, amounting to $52 million a month, and has closed Palestinian borders, leading to shortages in food and medicine and a halt in exports.

Salaries for about 130,000 Palestinian public servants have gone unpaid.

The police originally said that the group of the Temple Faithful could visit the holy site without its leader, Gershon Solomon. Authorities later denied the entire group access after Moslem leaders called on Arabs to swarm the Temple Mount in protest.

Merkel said that, in the age of globalisation, people wanted political arrangements which reflected their values. She said that it was wrong that Germany, the EU's largest economy, should once again violate the EU's Stability Pact by running too high a budget deficit. Merkel also committed her government to reducing EU bureaucracy, while at the same time saying that EU integration and harmonization would have to continue and that states would have to get used to abandoning their sovereign powers.

She said that EU citizens wanted security and that, since terrorism and fundamentalism were the new threats, a common EU policy would have to be developed to counter them. She said that the EU had not acted swiftly enough in the Balkans and that lessons had been learned from these past failures. Europe has learned to intervene before it is too late.

This was the reason why an EU force was being sent to the Congo for the elections there. The Chancellor also said that clear borders had to be drawn, a veiled reference to her view that the enlargement process had to come to an end at some point. Merkel is known for her state's opposition to the accession of Turkey. We will not be able to admit all the states which want to become members, she said. It was for all these reasons, the Chancellor argued, that Europe had to able to act.

We need the Constitutional Treaty, she said. Merkel said that the Constitution outlined clear powers and that mixed competences always create a democracy deficit because people did not know who was responsible for what. She said that the EU was made able to act for the first time by the Constitution and that Germany would use its presidency in the first half of 2007 to tackle the issue of the Constitution.

On the other hand, she did not say exactly how she proposed to solve the EU's institutional impasse. She also warned against making any hasty decisions on the matter. In the ensuing debate, the various opposition parties attacked the coalition government generally for not doing enough to tackle the EU's outstanding issues. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 May 2006]

Commentators agree that Merkel's plans for the Constitution remain unclear. Even the government statement has not explained just how Germany expects to make progress with the Constitution. Instead, the speech was notable mainly for its repetition of old chestnuts about how the EU creates peace, together with the new line about how it will in future intervene militarily wherever it likes.

Merkel even tried to square the circle of saying she wants less bureaucracy but more integration by saying that less Europe can also be more. The difficulties of Germany's announced plan to rescue the Constitution are compounded by the fact that France is holding its presidential elections in May 2007, just one month before the end of the German presidency.

This is no doubt why the Chancellor wants to avoid saying too much now about the various possible courses of action. These include new referendums on a revised text, the partial adoption of sections of the old Constitution by executive decision at a summit or a new decision on institutional reform and decision-making. Despite this lack of clarity, Europe experts in the German government are onfidently predicting that there will be a clear plan, with a timetable, by around this time next year.

Imagine we had a really bad government. I mean morally bad, wicked: a government that wanted to do something terrible, like abduct children from their families or introduce euthanasia of disabled babies. It couldn't happen, right? We wouldn't let it, would we?

This Government isn't morally bad. For all its frequent cock-ups, our ministers are well-intentioned, trying to do right by their own lights. Just now they find themselves caught out in the secular equivalent of simony, the sale of offices and indulgences for cash.

But simony is the natural vice of politics: in the cant phrase, it goes with the territory, where power and money meet. Indeed, the purchase of contracts and peerages used to be part of the normal business of politics, in tim es when human relationships counted for more than abstract individual merit.

We may think this is wrong, but we cannot think it is new.

The real fault of this Government is not its shady dealings, the tennis parties at Michael Levy's house where "Tony" "drops in".

The proper crime, the actual innovation in turpitude, is happening in plain view - like Poe's purloined letter, it is there before us on the mantelpiece, in the laws that Labour is passing.

Tyranny is sidling in. It is entering with face averted, under cover of a host of laws whose ostensible purpose is the reverse of their actual effect.

The Human Rights Act, for instance, was presented as a means of defending the individual against oppression by the state. Similarly, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, whose stealthy insinuation into British law the Government is conniving at, gives us all entitlements to social and economic "protection".

But these charters comprise sweep ing generalisations whose confusion gives judges the power to create legal precedents ex nihilo; and though they may occasionally be used to frustrate the Government's wishes, their effect is to swell the remit and responsibilities of the state.

The old principles of equity and tort law, by which private individuals could accommodate their interests to each other in a natural and rational manner, is giving way to a system of arbitrary and artificial power.

The same inverted logic applies to the ID card scheme. The Home Office minister Andy Burnham, in a letter to the Observer yesterday, asserted that the cards are there "as a protection", to stop "identity theft".

Never mind that the system will use cheap chip-and-pin technology, which has already shown itself vulnerable to fraud. Ministers evidently believe our identities can be protected only if they are owned by ministers themselves.

For ID cards will not belong to us, but to the state: the Home Se cretary will be able to revoke any individual's card at any moment, by the touch of a Whitehall button, rendering him or her a non-person, cut off from all the transactions in which freedom consists.

It is not exaggeration to say that the National Identity Register will give the government both knowledge of, and control over, your life. A photo of your face, your fingerprints and a scan of the back of your eye will be recorded, as well as 49 separate pieces of information, including your residence and your religion.

Every outpost of the state, and every outlet that operates under licence from the state (including shops selling cigarettes and alcohol), will have access to the register.

You will be required to acquire and carry a card proving your identity. The scheme will be compulsory, by the sly device of making us get one when we renew our passports: people will be banned from travelling abroad unless they register.

But even within Britain, it will soon be impossible to live a normal life without an ID card. Labour's horrible inversion of logic means that if something can be done, it will be done.

Shops and restaurants selling cigarettes and alcohol will find themselves required to demand ID to prove they have not sold to minors, and to log the sale. Banks will jump at the chance to tap into our doings, compiling exhaustive records of our spending habits that they will then sell on to other companies.

The alternatives will soon be submission to this corporate Leviathan, or setting up a barter economy on a Hebridean island.

And then there is the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, which is presented as a means of repealing red tape and therefore restricting the reach of the state.

But the Bill, quite simply, gives any minister of the Crown the power to "make provision amending, repealing or replacing any legislation", meaning "any public general Act", or indeed "any rule of law".

It cannot be used to impose taxation or create criminal offences bearing a prison term of more than two years, and there is also a cursory requirement for debate in committee.

But given that the Bill has been nodded through by pliant MPs - even the Conservatives let it by without a murmur, imposing only a one-line whip on the second reading - we cannot place much trust in the vigilance of our politicians.

For the final twist of the Bill's logic is that it will apply to itself: ministers may use its powers to remove its own limitations, and enable the government to make or repeal any law whatever.

The Regulatory Reform Bill is an Enabling Act, identical in spirit to the one the Nazis passed in 1933. On that occasion, Hitler promised that "the government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...

The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is a limite d one." Our Government says much the same about the legislation it is passing today.

But our concern should not be with today or tomorrow, but with the day after tomorrow, when different, nastier politicians might be in power, and the habits of decency and common sense have been even further eroded.

We have already seen how officious policemen have used legislation designed to deal with terrorists to arrest protesters armed with nothing more lethal than placards.

Perhaps I was wrong when I said our Government isn't morally bad - that it wouldn't abduct children or enforce euthanasia of disabled babies.

Already there is legislation going through Parliament to set up state nurseries - "children's centres" - for under-fives. And a Royal College is actively campaigning to let babies born under 25 weeks die, rather than receive costly intensive care.

Both ideas are bad enough. But it is only a small step - a twist of logic of the sort this Government is adept at, and which its laws will make perfectly possible - to make state nursing compulsory, and extend infanticide to babies born with defects.

"Surely some revelation is at hand." Yeats's rough beast is moving its slow thighs, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

Asked in an interview with the Guardian if he was comfortable with the teaching of creationism in schools, Dr Rowan Williams said: "Ah, not very."

However, he said this did not mean that it should not be discussed.

A spokesman for the Department for Education said creationism was not taught as a subject in schools.

He said: "Neither creationism nor intelligent design are taught as a subject in schools, and are not specified in the science curriculum.

"The National Curriculum for science clearly sets down that pupils should be taught that the fossil record is evidence for evolution, and how variation and selection may lead to evolution or extinction."
Dr Williams said: "I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories.

"Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it's not a theory alongside theories. It's not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said: 'Well, how am I going to explain all this... I know: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'.

"So if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a jarring of categories. It's not what it's about."

Asked if it should be taught, he said: "I don't think it should, actually. No, no. And that's different from saying - different from discussing, teaching what creation means.

Darwinism

"For that matter, it's not even the same as saying that Darwinism is - is the only thing that ought to be taught. My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it."

The National Curriculum Online website says for science at Key Stage 4 (GCSE level): "Students should be taught how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence (for example Darwin's theory of evolution)."

Classes should also cover "ways in which scientific work may be affected by the context in which it takes place (for example, social, historical, moral, spiritual), and how these contexts may affect whether or not ideas are accepted."

OCR, one of the three main exam boards in England, recently announced that creationist theories were to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England.

Theory

The exam board said candidates needed to understand the social and historical context to scientific ideas both pre- and post-Darwin's theory of evolution.

A spokesman said: "Creationism and 'intelligent design' are not regarded by OCR as scientific theories. They are beliefs that do not lie within scientific understanding."

The area is contentious, with critics claiming that inclusion of creationist or intelligent design theories in science syllabuses unduly elevates them.

In England, the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, sponsored by Christian car dealer Sir Peter Vardy, has been criticised for featuring creationist theories in lessons in the three comprehensives it runs.

'Faith position'

Sir Peter has said the schools present both Darwin's evolutionary theory and creationism.

In 2003, he said: "One is a theory, the other is a faith position. It is up to the children."

In the United States, there have been court cases over what schools should teach.

Last month scientists there protested against a movement to teach intelligent design - the theory that life is so complex that it must be the work of a supernatural designer.

In December, a judge in Pennsylvania said it was unconstitutional to make teachers feature the concept of intelligent design in science lessons.

Shamsul Gani sits in his home, in the northern English city of Leeds, a proud father cradling his six-month-old son.

I ask him about the three young men from Leeds who carried out the London bombings last year.

"You'd have left your house keys with them and gone away for a year," he told me.

For many people, what motivated the bombers is still a mystery.

But Shamsul grew up with the three - all British Muslims from Pakistani families. (The fourth was a Caribbean convert to Islam.)

Shamsul admires the courage of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the group, even though he condemns what he did.

France has betrayed the young people of the suburbs. When you're called Ali you can't get a job - Ali, 24, from France

Khan left a videotape explaining his action as a response to Western policy in Iraq and other parts of the Muslim world.

"I have no reason to doubt the credibility of that tape," Shamsul told me.

"What you have to understand is his belief in what he was doing. He was prepared to put his life on the line for that."

Voices of alienation

My visit to Leeds marked the beginning of an odyssey in search of the roots of Muslim anger.

Western Europe is now home to some 15 million Muslims, most of them under 30.

Is a new angry, alienated generation of European Muslims now being drawn to radicalism?

That's certainly a widespread fear.

The London bombings were followed a few months later by the Paris riots. And then, more recently, the controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. All these have reinforced that fear.

In the suburbs on the northern rim of the French capital, I found young Muslims, from Arab and African families, who feel excluded by the French state.

When during the riots President Chirac belatedly intervened, telling the people of the suburbs they were all sons and daughters of the French republic, many of them saw it as a bad joke.

France, unlike Britain, tries to keep religion out of public life. Everyone is supposed to be equal, regardless of cultural background.

Try telling that to Ali, who is 24 and unemployed.

"France has betrayed the young people of the suburbs. When you're called Ali you can't get a job. The French don't accept Islam. Politicians promise us mosques and so on, but at the same time they smear us and call us terrorists."

A double culture

I visited Clichy sous Bois, where the riots began after the accidental death of two teenagers during a police chase.

At a youth club, an audition was under way for budding stand-up comedians.

Fifou, a lively young French-Algerian student, did a sketch poking fun at the "double culture" in which she and her friends live.

At home they must be good Muslim kids; but outside they want the good life, just like their non-Muslim friends.

For a moment, I forgot about those thousands of cars, and hundreds of buildings, destroyed in three weeks of rioting last year.

But not for long.

Sitting in the youth club was Samir, a young activist who has set up a group to keep alive the memory of the two dead teenagers.

I asked him what his aim was. His answer: "To give voice to the pain."

There have been riots before, and nothing changed. This time he wants the message to get through.

Spiegel Online reports in a preview of the Spiegel weekly printed edition that conservatives from Germany, France and the European Parliament are plotting a scheme for reviving the EU constitution which was rejected by French and Dutch voters in referendums last year.

According to the plans, the charter should be reduced to its first two parts, setting out the EU's competences and the charter of fundamental rights of the union.

These core parts should be boosted with the addition of a political declaration and be put to a fresh poll in bot h France and the Netherlands.

The remaining third part of the text, detailing the EU's policies, should be ratified by the French and Dutch parliaments, completing the ratification of the entire constitution as it has been approved by 14 member states so far.

The operation to resuscitate the charter would be started under the German EU presidency in the first half of 2007.

Franco-German rapprochement? Der Spiegel's report is in line with earlier reports from Berlin, but raises questions about Paris' position on the issue.

Ms Merkel earlier proposed attaching a declaration on the "social dimension of Europe" to the failed EU constitution, in a bid to save the charter in its entirety.

The non-binding declaration would call upon the EU institutions consider the social implications of EU internal market legislation more thoroughly and is seen as being designed to soothe French voters' fears over the alleged neo-liberal character of the union.

But French conservative politicians in favour of the constitution seem reluctant to put the charter to voters a second time - instead preferring the adoption of single elements of the treaty.

British media reported last month that president Chirac would like to see a stronger role for Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, who would be asked to effectively operate as the union's foreign minister as envisaged in the EU constitution.

But Mr Chirac's recent statements have mainly indicated an interest in new EU action in concrete policy areas under the union's existing treaties, instead of new constitutional designs.

Mr Chirac's main political rival, French interior minister and presidential-hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, favours a more institutional approach.

Mr Sarkozy last month proposed a three-stage plan for a better-functioning union on the basis of the ideas of the EU constitution.

According to Mr Sarkozy, the EU could implement a number of propo sals in the constitution enjoying a "large consensus," such as the new system of voting weights, a limiting of the national veto, creation of an EU foreign minister and increased checks against over-regulation by national parliaments.

Referring to the negative outcome of last year's French referendum on the constitution, Mr Sarkozy said "I will not be the one who will tell the French that they have misunderstood the question."

But supporters of the constitution hope that the French 2007 presidential election will change the political landscape and pave the way for a fresh referendum on the constitution.

The move will "create antagonism and conflict within Taiwan and across the strait," China's ruling Communist Party and government said in a statement. Mr Chen announced on Monday that the National Unification Council and its guidelines would "cease to function" due to China's "military threat". China said Mr Chen was pushing Taiwan towards formal independence.

China and Taiwan have been governed separately since a civil war ended in 1949, but China still sees Taiwan as its territory and has threatened to use force if the island moves towards declaring independence. The US, Taiwan's closest ally in the face of this threat, has made clear that it supports the status quo. The US State Department said on Monday that it would take Mr Chen at his word that his latest move meant no change to the situation.

"It's our understanding that President Chen did not abolish it, and he reaffirmed Taiwan's commitment to the status quo," spokesman Adam Ereli told Reuters. Mr Chen took care to use the phrase "cease to exist" rather than abolish when he made the announcement, possibly because he promised in 2000 that he would not abolish the council or its guidelines. China dismissed the diffference as a "play of words".

No military threat

In a joint statement carried by China's official Xinhua news agency, the ruling Communist Party and the cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office said Mr Chen's determination to push for independence "will only bring disaster to Taiwan society". The comments did not include any threat of military action, or say what sort of disaster Beijing was predicting.

"We will continue to uphold and promote peaceful and stable development of cross-strait relations? and strive for the prospect of peaceful unification," the statement said. Chinese newspaper editorials on Tuesday also slammed Mr Chen's decision.

The official China Daily newspaper said his actions were "risky and provocative" and threatened "to destroy peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region". Despite China's reaction, Mr Chen signed the documents which officially disbanded the council on Tuesday. Taiwan complains that China has been building up its military offensive capability across the Taiwan Strait, and has at least 700 ballistic missiles targeting the island.

Mr Chen's wish to get rid of the Council and its guidelines has long been known. Last week he reaffirmed this view when he told visiting US Congressman Robert Simmons that the National Unification Council and its National Unification Guidelines were "absurd products of an absurd era". "It deprives the Taiwan people's rights to freely decide on cross-strait relations and the future direction of our country," he said.

The National Unification Council was set up in 1990 as an attempt to convince the Chinese authorities that Taiwan was committed to reunification, and it helped kick-start landmark talks between the two sides in the early 1990s.

Discrimination against religious Jews who wish to visit the Temple Mount continues. A group was turned away today, as non-Jews passed freely through.

A small group of Jewish tourists from Los Angeles attempted to ascend to Judaism's holiest site this morning, after immersing in a mikveh and taking the other Halakhic precautions. They were stopped at the entrance, however, and told they could not enter because they did not have identification.

"The most frustrating part," said their tour guide, Yossi Maimon, "was that lots of other tourists, clearly not Jewish, were allowed up without even being checked." Maimon said he asked the local police commander about the discrimination against Jews, and was told that this is in fact the official policy.

Long-time Holy Temple activists Rabbi Yosef Elboim of Jerusalem and Yehuda Etzion of Ofrah said that this policy is a long-running one.

"Not only are there different rules for religious Jews and others," Rabbi Elboim told Arutz-7, "but the police treat the religious Jews with tremendous disrespect. Recently, a large group of students from the Birkat Moshe yeshiva in Maaleh Adumim wished to ascend [to the holy site], and the police took aside the Rosh Yeshiva [dean], who is not a young man, and totally checked every part of him. Would they ever treat a priest or a kadi that way?"

"A sheikh can call for world-wide Moslem rule from the Temple Mount," Rabbi Elboim continued, "but if a Jew whispers Yibaneh HaMikdash (a prayer that the Holy Temple should be rebu ilt), they immediately take him away for questioning and restrict him from visiting the site again. Where are we living?!"

At present, religious Jews are permitted to enter the Temple Mount, if they are approved, from 7:30 to 10:00 Am, and for another hour beginning at 12:30.

Etzion said that a special booth has been set up at the Mugrahbim Gate entrance to the Temple Mount, adjacent to the prayer area of the Western Wall, for the purpose of checking religious Jews. "The way they check Jews, under their yarmulke and all over the body, for any type of prayer, is simply humiliating," he said.