The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 7

EUROPEAN NEWS I 7 Th Ouardlan Thursday April 24 1997 Socialists are debating a tactical shift to exploit popular fears about the Gaullists' campaign platform, writes Paul Webster in Paris French left leans to Eurosceptic line civil service and transport strikes of autumn 1995 that united protesters across the party system against welfare cuts intended to help France qualify for monetary union. Suspicion is strong, and there will probably be disap pointment with Mr Jospin if he fails to give clear guidance on the limits of his pro Europeanism when he opens the left's campaign today at Sarcelles. a working class Paris suburb. His speech will reflect a rare level of unity within the Socialist Party, where former rivals such as Michel Rocard and Laurent Fabius both Jospin on what he called a positive re-evaluation of his thinking on Europe One of Mr Jospin's severest critics. Jean-Pierre Chevene-ment, who left the Socialists to set up the Eurosceptic citizens' movement, agreed that Mr Jospin had adopted a tone on the single currency that was "more resolute than what we are used If the poll forecast is reliable, Mr Jospin will have to take more account of widespread distrust of Europe on the left if he is to retain unity and rally a wider electorate.

Political parties are still drawing lessons from the former prime ministers an1 involved in deciding how to respond to Mr Chirac's decision to put Europe at the centre of the election campaign. The party has so far decided to concentrate attacks on Alain Juppe, the prime minister and one of the most unpopular leaders of the Fifth Republic, who is expected to call for sacrifices to meet the single currency deadline if he is re-elected. A further indication of the Socialists' re evaluation of Kuroscepticism was given by Dominique Strauss Kahn. who would probably be finance minister in a leftwing A FRENCH opinion poll showing a Gaullist led government victory in the May snap general election is expected to reinforce opposition to the European single currency among leftwing parties. Yesterday's survey in Le Parisien newspaper forecast that the conservative coalition would lose about 150 seats but would still have a clear majority, with more than 330 seats, in the national assembly.

Socialists, Communists and Greens were credited with 221 seats (more than double the which could worsen unemployment and poverty. While party strategists decide whether to step up Euro-scepticism, the normally pro-European Socialist press secretary. Lionel Jospin, forecast that a hardline budget was planned by the Gaullist-led administration to further Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and he promised to oppose the move if the price was too high for the average worker. The Communist Party national secretary. Robert Hue.

whose movement believes EMU to be a capitalist conspiracy, congratulated Mr present number) and the extremist National Front with only one. But the first poll since Jac ques Chirac announced elections for May 25 and June 1 gave a clear indication of weaknesses that could be attacked by the left. More than 80 per cent of those asked said they saw the move as a political manoeuvre by the president, while 68 per cent said they feared further budget austerity. Leftwing leaders trying to draw up a joint strategy have warned of further cuts in state spending, to ensure entry into a single currency, government Saying the electorate would pay a heavy price it Mr Juppe were returned, he accused the prime minister of planning to deregulate on a large scale and reduce social protection in a move towards hardline capitalism Mr Strauss Kahn said Socialists wanted a single currency but would impose conditions to ensure it would be used to create jobs and favour growth "We don't want a single currency to do nothing with it." he said. Italian KMU furor, peg 2 Lionel Jospin: EMU warning Fresh blow for Kohl as talks on tax collapse lHjj ABBBB Ian Traynor in Bonn CHANCELLOR Helmut Kohl's campaign to modernise Germany's economic and welfare systems and to meet the terms for the single European cur rency suffered another serious setback yesterday when a tax reform summit with opposition leaders collapsed in acrimony.

The government is to push ahead with its plans to streamline the complicated tax system. It hopes to achieve DM30 billion (11 billion) in tax cuts by submitting a reform bill for its first reading in parliament tomorrow. But its hopes of getting the bill into law by the summer recess have been dashed because the opposition Social Democrats, who control the upper house, can block parts of the legislation. The stalemate will force arbitration. This will probably mean the bill will be watered down and that it will be passed much later than the government planned.

Cabinet members blamed the opposition for refusing to compromise. But Oskar Ui-fontaine. the combative Social Democrat leader, said Mr Kohl had instantly made clear there would be no deal. The talks collapsed in the chancellery within an hour of being convened. A Kohl-Lafontaine deal would have been a tonic for business and investor confidence.

Although the tax cuts are not scheduled to take effect until 1998-99. the collapse of the talks could hamper growth prospects this year and make it harder for the government to cut spending further in the frantic race to qualify for the euro. The government bill aims to implement DM30 billion in cuts by reducing corporate taxes, slashing the top rate of income tax from 53 per cent to 39 per cent and the lowest rate to 15 per cent from almost 26 percent. The Social Democrats largely agreed to the corporate and lower income tax rates for the poor but baulked at the personal tax cuts for the rich. They also wanted to couple the tax reforms to reductions in social insurance contributions.

While the government is united behind Mr Kohl, who has declared he will run for re-election next year. Mr La-fontaine is at odds on the tax reform issue with Gerhard Schroeder. the prime minister of the state of Lower Saxony who is Mr Lafontaine's main rival to become the Social Democrats candidate next year for chancellorship. ter day in the Berlin police calendar since 1987. when hundreds of young anarchists rioted all night in the rundown West Berlin district of Kreuzberg.

Two supermarkets were set alight and dozens of shops were looted. The campaign against gen trification in Kreuzberg included hurling bags of manure into expensive res taurants and threatening shopkeepers with arson. But the district's Green Party mayor. Franz Schulz. is determined that.

10 years on. the May Day demonstration should stay well clear of Kreuzberg The latest compromise route lies between Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg. running through Berlin's old Jewish quarter. The demonstration will be led by two banners, one read ing "Against Oppression and Exploitation But the second banner, bearing a quotation from the 19th century anarchist writer Emma Gold-mann, may offer a more accu rate reflection of the mood of many demonstrators as they march past Berlin's Techno clubs: "If I can't dance here, it's not my revolution." multinational force in Albania Vlore after painting Hellas (Greece) on their mess hall wall Nimbys spoil May Day party Two Greek soldiers with the Prai iH octo r.or Pfifihn a oar' I 'Butcher of Mons' humiliates beleaguered Belgian police A study finds organised criminals are abandoning balaclavas and guns for suits and pens. Stephen Bates reports from Brussels Denis Staunton in Berlin anti-yuppie protest planned in Berlin on May 1 is under threat as leftwing groups from east and west argue over where to hold it.

Both have been affected by a last-minute outbreak of nimby-ism not in my back yard. Westerners want to demonstrate in the eastern district of Prenzlauer Berg while eastern activists want to move further west Iast year's May Day demon stration ended in a pitched battle with police at Kollwitz-platz, a square in the bone mian quarter of Prenzlauer Berg. Thousands of police officers made more than -100 arrests but failed to prevent DM1 million (.300.000) in damage to shops and businesses. Members of Berlin's anarchist Autonomen, or autono mous groups, claim that Prenzlauer Berg has become a prime target for developers eager to boost property values through gentrification. But local activists say that last year's riot damaged the district's poor residents more than rich property sharks.

May Day has been a red let Stephen Bates in Brussels BELGIUM was anxiously waiting last night to discover whether the country's much-criticised police force had caught a gruesome serial killer who has scattered the severed remains of several women in supermarket bags around the southern city of Mons. The police refused to eon firm unofficial reports that they were questioning a man in connection with the "Butcher of Mons case which is vying with the country's unfolding paedophile scandal to give Belgium an unsavoury reputation as the macabre murder capital of Europe Severed arms, legs, feet, a torso and a head have been found in neatly tied bags around Mons over the last few weeks. The killer appears to have a grim sense of humour, since the bags have turned up in locations such as Worn' Street and Deposit Street. Police think they may have found parts of the bodies of up photograph difther endlicher to six women, some of whom appear to have been killed as long ago as two years and stored in a refrigerator. The killer seems to have been quietly taunting police by leaving some body parts conspicuously in locations the have just searched.

The authorities believe that the man may have anatomical expertise because of the neat way the limbs had been severed A police spokesman said: "This is clearly the work of a highly intelligent, ritual psy chopath, as you can see from the way the body parts are cut, the vvav they are wrapped and the places in which they are deposited." Investigators were able yes terday to claim one small breakthrough by announcing they had identified one of the killer's victims, whose head thev i'ound in a plastic sac week But most of the bodies remain unidentified. The police have issued the description of a fair-haired man with a white van, seen near the site of one of the discoveries. Fig. 9. How lo curl celery for garnishing 800 make themselves at home in Mr Inglis said: "There is clear evidence that determined fraudsters deliberately and cynically manipulate the different regulatory and monitoring regimes across the EL'.

"The problem must be tackled on an international basis, as purely national measures will merely have the effect of transferring the fraud from one location to another. By encouraging nations to bring their own legislation into line it should be possible to reduce the total incidence of fraud." He was backed by John Tomlinson, a British Labour MEP who recently chaired a committee researching transit fraud: "This challenges politicians who say yes to the single market and then are paranoid about anything which gives rise to transnational co-operation." Western Sahara The UN is frustrated at the lack of progress in resolving an issue that has soured relations between Algeria and Morocco. Rabat controls most of the territory and says it is part of Morocco. Polisario took up arms in 1976; the UN brokered a ceasefire in 1991. Reuter.

quell a fresh wave of violence. Rioting erupted after the arrest of independence activ ists. Reuter. Now mum at 63 A woman lied about her age to receive fertility treatment and was actually 63 when she gave birth to a girl last year in Los Angeles, doctors have revealed, making her the world's oldest new mum. AP.

Examples outlined by the report include an Interpol estimate that nearly 90 million worth of forged currency was seized in 1995 more than 30 million worth of lire in Italy alone in the previous three years and an assessment that mobile phone cloning may be costing 25 million a year just in Britain. More than 40 per cent of British fraud cases are reckoned to have an international aspect and a quarter of Britain's 19 million annual credit card frauds occur abroad. While there is evidence of organised crime in some sectors, such as cigarette smuggling, there is also much freelance activity. Two-thirds of the loose tobacco used in Britain is thought to have been imported clandestinely from Belgium, where duties are only a quarter as high. In Portugal, an estimated 1,000 lorry-loads of cigarettes go missing each year, at a cost of 700 million in lost duties.

'Russian role1 in gas attack A FORMER member of Aum Shinri Kyo, the doomsday cult accused of a lethal nerve gas attack on Tokyo's underground railway, testified yesterday that blueprints for the cult's gas plant came from a former Russian security official. Kyodo News reported. Yoshihiro Inoue reportedly said the former secretary of the Russian security council, Oleg Lobov, had been paid 150,000 for the blueprints. Cult members are being tried for murder, attempted murder and other crimes related to the sarin gas attack in March 1995, which killed 12 people and made thousands ill. A spokesman for Russia's federal security service dismissed the report as "total AP.

CROSS-BORDER fraud in the European Union may be worth at least 42 billion a year and fraud within individual countries probably more than doubles the total, according to an independent report. Deloitte and Touche, the accountancy firm which conducted the study for the European Commission, estimated that three-quarters of international fraud, from illegal credit card use and mobile phone cloning to counterfeit banknotes, may directly affect businesses and individuals rather than governments. Will Inglis, the forensic accountant who drew up the findings, admitted that no one knows the true cost of a crime sector that has burgeoned because of technological developments and the opening of the EU's internal frontiers. The villagers, travelling towards Kisangani, said there had been a pitched battle between rebels and refugees during the slaughter on Tuesday at camps near Kasese village. "The (rebell army went to the camp at 8am yesterday.

They killed many, many refugees hundreds. There was lots of shooting all morning," Alphonse Soku, a farmer, said. He said the rebels had used a mechanical digger to bury the bodies. The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said it was checking reports that all 55.000 refugees had fled the camps after a rebel military operation on Tuesday and attacks by villagers. The Hu-tus.

who fled Rwanda in 1994, are accused by Tutsis of genocide in Rwanda. Reuter. Mr Inglis, a Briton who specialises in company fraud cases, said: "Organised criminals are devoting more of their efforts to fraud. The man in the balaclava with a shotgun has realised that he will get a lower sentence and more money if he goes dressed in a suit and armed with a pen instead." The accountants say that most fraud is white-collar, perpetrated by senior management or made possible by their incompetence or their inability to keep track of transactions. The report is directly relevant to the British election campaign.

The Conservatives say the fight against fraud is one of their key achievements in the EU, while maintaining they will oppose attempts to harmonise court systems which the report says would help counter cross-border crime. UN envoy visits THE United Nations envoy for Western Sahara, James Baker, arrived in Morocco yesterday on a fact-finding mission on the disputed territory His visit follows threats last month of renewed war by the Polisario Front, which seeks independence for the Western Sahara. Clashes kill 65 in Nigeria Five more people have been killed in communal clashes in Nigeria's oil-producing Warri area, bringing deaths in the past two weeks to 65. Reuter. French Quiana riots French police flew into French Guiana yesterday to World news in brief refugees 'f lee slaughter' Rwandan Hutu ZAIREAN villagers said yesterday that Tutsi dominated rebels had slaughtered many Rwandan Hutu refu SAVE MO UP TO 00 OMORE gees at camps south of Kisangani, and aid workers said they had reports that up to 55,000 refugees had fled.

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