Over the past 30 years, it has almost vanished.Few jobs have arrived to take the place of the thousands lost. The liveliness and tasteful restraint of “happy” French towns is absent.In the tiny heart of the city, the broad square and official buildings with their tall, dark and narrow facades, have something of old-style Belgium.The rest is a mish-mash of grid streets lined with old terraced houses, a couple of new-ish hotels – with high metal fences around them – and patches of recent, high-density housing in what are only theoretically pedestrianised areas.In its heyday, Roubaix was known as the “city of a hundred chimneys” and was the hub of the French textile industry. It has the look of every unhappy French city.There is a profusion of graffiti and litter; listless gatherings of poorly dressed young people, many of them brown, fewer black and white; streets of boarded-up shops; elderly people scuttling along the inside edge of the pavement with modest bags of shopping.There is abundant evidence of regeneration efforts, most for the short term and done on the cheap: gaudy metal frames and buildings set at jaunty angles, incompatible with what survives from the past What does survive from the past is dirty and neglected. After years of neglect, Roubaix had become a national concern.The usual approach to Roubaix from Paris is by the recently completed tramway from Lille. From there, it is hard to believe everything that is said about the town: there are landscaped parks, broad green verges and large houses, reminiscent of solid Victorian suburbs in Britain.However, as the tram reaches its terminus, two minutes’ walk from Roubaix’s central square and town hall, it is evident all is far from well. Last weekend, though, as competitors formed up for this year’s race, Roubaix’s image for tough but honest sporting endeavour was eclipsed by a quite different and far less inspiring image.
Three weeks before, the city hit the headlines with a chain of events that began with a car bomb outside police headquarters and ended with a chase, shoot-out and hostage-taking in Belgium.In between, there had been a siege and gunfight in the city’s grim backstreets in which four men were killed, two policemen injured and a house gutted. Automatic weapons and grenades, along with fundamentalist Islamic literature, were found in the ruins.To Roubaix’s detractors, who already regarded it as the distillation of almost every French ill – industrial decline, unemployment, immigrant ghettos, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, drug trafficking, violence – here was proof.But the first response from the authorities was soothing, along the lines of: “Just a spot of gangsterism; it’s all over now.”The second response evinced anxiety verging on panic: links between this violence and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism could not entirely be ruled out, said Jean-Louis Debre, the Interior Minister.

Until recently, the city of Roubaix was known across France for one thing: the annual Paris-Roubaix cycle race, which is contested for 50 of its 250 kilometres over the uniquely tiring cobbled surfaces of northern towns and villages. Mr Bourke’s three-year minimum, with holiday time, will be up in September and there are rumours in Whitehall that his assignment will end soon after.. He also repeated Britain’s position that Mr Bourke would not be recalled.Governors generally stay a minimum of three years but their assignment is open-ended “at Her Majesty’s pleasure”. The previous governor was in the TCI for six and a half years. The local government and opposition, uniting for the first time, accused him of damaging tourism and investment prospects and demanded he be recalled.It was Sir Nicholas Bonsor who rejected that demand earlier this month, when a Turks and Caicos Islands delegation visited Whitehall.Reiterating their demand, the local politicians told Sir Nicholas: “We were left utterly dismayed by Her Majesty’s Government’s handling of the people’s petition and more so by HMG’s actions in this matter, including attempts at portraying the leadership and people of the TCI as violent and lawless, resulting in the deployment of a British warship off the TCI.”Sir Nicholas reportedly insisted that the vessel, believed to be the frigate HMS Brave, was in the area for reasons unconnected with the crisis over the Governor.

Asked about the prospects for the return of King Priam’s gold to Berlin, Mr von Studnitz replied gloomily: “I am not optimistic.”. Local politicians in the Turks and Caicos Islands have accused Britain of threatening the Caribbean islands with military intervention and reiterated their demand that the British Governor, Martin Bourke, be recalled. At a meeting on the island of Grand Turk, the local government and opposition, united against the Governor, told visiting Minister of State at the Foreign Office, Sir Nicholas Bonsor, they would refuse to work with Mr Bourke.
In a letter handed to Sir Nicholas, Chief Minister Derek Taylor and opposition leaders criticised Britain for reportedly sending a warship off their coast after portraying the islanders as “violent and lawless”.”We ask that all threats of military intervention be called off,” the politicians said, adding that Britain should pay compensation for any money lost in tourism or investment as a result of recent negative publicity, which they blame on the Governor.The crisis broke in February when Mr Bourke, a 49-year-old career diplomat who has been Governor of the British dependent territory since 1993, spoke in an interview of drug-trafficking, police corruption and growing crime. It is known as King Priam’s Treasure because its discoverer in 1873 – Heinrich Schliemann – was convinced it belonged to Priam, the King of Troy who featured in Homer’s Iliad. Experts have since dated it to long before Homer – some 2500BC.Yesterday, Germany’s ambassador to Moscow, Ernst York von Studnitz, was putting on the bravest face that anyone could be expected to wear, given that he was contemplating billions of pounds worth of sparkling treasure – from basket-shaped gold earrings to a solid gold gravy boat – that his country lays claim to.”I think it is a step towards normalcy that these things are now, after 50 years in hiding, finally surfacing again,” he said, “But I would not say this is a matter for rejoicing.”The German embassy was a little more forthright. More than 250 pieces unearthed by a German amateur archaeologist will go on display in Moscow for the first time, despite repeated German claims that the treasures belong to them and ought to be given back.
The Trojan gold, a tiny fraction of the many thousands of works of art which the Soviet Union seized at the end of the war, have become the focal point in a row over wartime booty that has marred Germany’s otherwise friendly relations with the Kremlin.The collection’s existence in Russia only became known in 1993, when the Pushkin Museum astonished the world by revealing that it was in its possession.

They have devoured the wealth of this nation and are thirsting for more’May 1995`I don’t believe in a parliamentary democracy. Nobody can speak the truth in a party-based system’January 1995`It may reach a stage where there are two options – get a green card and emigrate or stay here and fight’22 February 1996. To the considerable irritation of Germany, the Russians will today unveil one of the most breathtaking archaeological finds in history – a collection of gold from ancient Troy, which the Red Army seized in Berlin at the end of the Second World War. Just because I’ve built a hospital and led Pakistan to a World Cup win, they think I’m the one. It shows how desperate people are’April 1995Politicians are corrupt to the core. I don’t want to get mixed up with politics’February 1995`Right now, Pakistanis are looking for a saviour.

Now her jeans have been replaced by traditional shalwar-khameez while a dupatta covers her head at all times.Ramola TalwarImran in his own words`I thought the campaign against me in the British press about ball- tampering was bad, but it was nothing compared to this onslaught’On politics in Pakistan, April 1995`This assumption that I want to be Prime Minister is complete nonsense. She conversed at the dinner table with guests like Hubert Humphrey and Henry Kissinger.As president of the Oxford Union 1976 she drove a yellow MGB sports car: Bhutto wore Anna Belinda dresses and describes her years at Lady Margaret Hall as “the best years of my life.” She had a number of British boyfriends.Saks on Fifth Avenue has her measurements: As a little girl, her clothes were bought from the New York store. He soon discovered that “The lady’s not so fragile.”Greatest betrayal: The opposition from her mother and brother Mir. She feels this has damaged the political struggle in Pakistan.Her husband Asif Zardari is referred to as Mr Ten Per Cent: He was detained for over two years on charges, since abandoned, ranging from fraud to murder.Bhutto’s father mapped out her life: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was executed in 1979, advised her on what to read and how to behave. Commentators suggested he had political motives as he toured the country and raffled his Mercedes to help pay for a cancer hospital.Ben SummersBenazir Bhutto: a lifeBorn: 21 June, 1953 Found it politically necessary to have an arranged marriage In 1987 she married Asif Zardari. During her pregnancies, fundamentalists said she should remain at home with her children.