Clinton praises Brown, Cabinet meet on Sept. 8

By OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT

London

Aug. 5: Former US President Bill Clinton, who is a close friend of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair, has come to support of the beleaguered Premier.

Advising Mr Brown to use his "big brain and good heart" to work through Britain’s economic problem, Mr Clinton told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, "I wouldn’t predict Gordon’s demise too quickly. I think he is just in a period where circumstances have got the British people appropriately concerned about how to get from day to day, week to week."

Refusing to predict Mr Brown’s removal from power, Mr Clinton said, "I think anybody would find it difficult to maintain a very high level of popularity when average people are having the problems they are having today in the UK and the US with the soaring price of gasoline and the cost of living going up."

"The only advice I would give him," the former US President said, "is that he has got a big brain and a good heart, he just needs to apply them both to working through these issues as best he can and trust the politics." Mr Brown, the Downing Street has announced, will hold a special Cabinet meeting outside London. The Cabinet meeting after the summer break will be held on September 8 and is likely to be held in the West Midlands.

Meanwhile, in a major embarrassment, Mr Brown was compared by his former Cabinet colleague John Prescott, to the captain of doomed Titanic.

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Prez office to take over control of secret service

Paris, Aug. 5: French President Nicolas Sarkozy plans to restructure the country’s secret services and place them directly under presidential control, the Le Monde newspaper is expected to report in its Tuesday edition.

Diplomat Bernard Bajolet, 59, is tipped to take over the newly created post of secret service coordinator, the report seen on Monday said.

Bajolet has worked as French ambassador to Iraq and Algeria.

The coordination of France’s assorted secret services used to fall under the PM’s office.

In Mr Sarkozy’s recently published white paper on military reform, the President stressed that the work of the secret services would become more important, especially in the fight against terrorism. There are some 12,500 people employed in the various branches of the French secret service.

—DPA