If this is what it takes to get promoted within Sussex police, then it’s a disgrace. We are demanding, not asking, that the Home Secretary orders an inquiry into this force and I hope he has the courage to do it.”The family is also planning a civil action against Sussex Police. Caroline Courtland-Smith, Mr Ashley’s fiancee who was in bed with him at the time of the shooting is distraught at the development, her mother Toni Roberts said yesterday.She added: “This makes me feel sick and Caroline feels the same way. How can Siggs and French have earned promotion when they have been suspended – that is, not working – for three-and-a-half years?”The aim of the raid was to seize cocaine alleged to have been delivered to Mr Ashley’s flat, arrest another man, and recover a large cache of weapons and drugs.Another report, by the Metropolitan Police’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Barbara Wilding, discovered police knew that two of the flats in Ashley’s block were occupied by innocent members of the public but no plan of the building had been obtained before the raid.Officers taking part in the operation were warned that Mr Ashley had a previous conviction for attempted murder and had shot someone. Neither was true, although he had been convicted of manslaughter after a man he punched later died.The intelligence on which the raid was carried out was “determinably false”, concluded the report. The search warrant was also deficient and should have been modified before a raid was carried out.The officer who fired the single shot that killed Mr Ashley, PC Christopher Sherwood, was cleared of murder and manslaughter in April, after an Old Bailey judge ruled that the prosecution had failed to show he had not acted in self-defence.. An international hunt to find a stolen portrait by Lucian Freud of his fellow artist Francis Bacon begins today, backed by a giant poster campaign and £100,000 reward.

An international hunt to find a stolen portrait by Lucian Freud of his fellow artist Francis Bacon begins today, backed by a giant poster campaign and £100,000 reward.
The aim is to recover the work – only the size of a large postcard but worth at least £1.2m – in time for a retrospective of Freud’s work at the Tate Britain gallery in London next year, when the artist is 80.”Would the person who holds the painting kindly consider allowing me to show it in my exhibition next June?” Freud requested in a statement yesterday.Nothing has been heard of the painting since it was stolen from a British Council exhibition in Berlin in 1988. Andrea Rose, the council’s director of visual arts, described the theft as “the worst moment of my professional career”.Freud designed the “wanted” poster, and 2,500 copies of it will be splashed across Berlin from today. Although the work could be anywhere, Ms Rose said it might still be in the country. A statute of limitations in Germany means no one can be prosecuted for a crime after 12 years.A private donor has offered a reward of up to £100,000 for information leading to the return of the painting, which had been borrowed from the Tate.William Feaver, Freud’s biographer and the curator of next year’s show, said it was the most important small portrait of the 20th century and one of the three crucial paintings of Freud’s early career.It was painted in 1952 and bought by the Tate the same year. It was the only portrait Freud painted of Bacon, who had been his friend since 1944. “It’s an extraordinary painting, one of the 20th century icons,” Mr Feaver said.Ms Rose said it was uncommon when paintings disappeared to advertise the fact because they frequently reappeared within two or three years. This case was unusual in that there had been no word since the theft.The retrospective was the spur to see whether publicity could now help.

“It is an Anglo-German collaboration to recover for the nation a major picture of international significance,” she said.The British Council is indemnified by the Government when it borrows works for foreign tours, but no insurance claim has been made to the Treasury because no comparable work with which the Tate could replace it has come on the market.. Europe’s security chief, Javier Solana, flew to Macedonia last night in a last-ditch attempt to salvage a vital political deal and prevent the country from sliding into civil war. Europe’s security chief, Javier Solana, flew to Macedonia last night in a last-ditch attempt to salvage a vital political deal and prevent the country from sliding into civil war.
Mr Solana met leaders of the Slav majority and Albanian minority parties in a final push to clinch agreement on a crucial package of measures before a deadline expires on Monday.The intervention followed the apparent collapse of talks on Wednesday when the Macedonian president, Boris Trajkovski, said negotiations were deadlocked, and claimed Albanian negotiators wanted to “block the talks completely”.EU diplomats remain optimistic about the prospects of securing a package of measures in time for Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg – which Europe has laid down as a deadline. But they are aware there is a narrow window of opportunity and one senior European official said that the two sides are “very close to civil war”.Both the Slav and the Albanian parties have called for Nato intervention and, on Wednesday, the alliance agreed in principle to send about 3,000 troops to Macedonia to help disarm the rebels. This, however, is conditional on the two sides first signing up to a political deal, which provides concessions to the Albanians, and on the National Liberation Army rebels agreeing to disarm.Nato wants to make a decision as early as next Wednesday on whether its conditions have been met. That means a breakdown in talks over the weekend could spell the end of a consensus within Nato to send troops.Concerns about the operation were underlined yesterday when the alliance’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Joseph Ralston, highlighted the dangers facing a military mission in Macedonia, including landmines and accidents in rugged terrain.General Ralston argued that “no military operation is ever totally risk-free”, and added: “You are concerned about landmines, you are concerned about accidents, you are concerned about the infrastructure. The general added that a “detailed study of the terrain” showed “very rugged terrain, very rugged mountains” which posed particular difficulties.Nato is aware that several Macedonian soldiers and police have died in mine explosions while trying to flush ethnic Albanian rebels out of their mountain position.The alliance is still working up its military plan for Macedonia, and the issue of who would fix weapons collection points – the alliance, the Macedonian government or the insurgents – remained to be settled.

It was unclear whether their weapons, which include heavy machine guns, mortars and rocket launchers, would be destroyed or stored. The physical process of disarmament may be time-consuming, fuelling fears that Nato deployment will be unable to withdraw in the time span expected.But the bulk of the work over the weekend will be negotiations over the finer points of a political deal. The present blockage arises from a demand from the ethnic Albanian parties which want to lay down a series of policy areas within which they would have a veto. That is opposed by the Slav parties and western diplomats who argue that similar arrangements in other peace plans have led to political paralysis.Last night, Zehir Bekteshi, the spokesman for the ethnic Albanian Party for Democratic Prosperity, said international mediation would be crucial, adding that “the talks cannot be considered off until after a meeting with Solana”.Mr Solana will spend today in the Middle East but will return to Skopje on Saturday in the hope of clinching an agreement between the parties.

If there is a deal, Brussels is ready to step in with hefty financial assistance to underpin key elements of the package, such as an Albanian language university at Tetovo.And, if the progress is good, the Macedonian Prime Minister, Ljubco Georgievski, is expected to fly with Ms Solana to Luxembourg to present the package of measures. At the same gathering, EU foreign ministers may appoint a permanent official to stay in Macedonia to represent Mr Solana, with the former French defence minister, Francois Leotard, the main contender.. Moves to extradite Slobodan Milosevic to the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague gathered pace yesterday after Yugoslavia’s pro-reform leaders abruptly withdrew an extradition draft law from parliamentary consideration. Moves to extradite Slobodan Milosevic to the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague gathered pace yesterday after Yugoslavia’s pro-reform leaders abruptly withdrew an extradition draft law from parliamentary consideration.
Analysts said that Belgrade might opt for a solution that would directly implement the statute of the UN court, paving the way for the immediate extradition of the former Yugoslav president and others accused of war crimes.