Blair visits Barroso

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to visit Portugal this week for a meeting with his opposite number, Durão Barroso, and President Jorge Sampaio. Top of the agenda is the fight against terrorism. As Blair prepares to visit, the Portuguese press has been pondering the front page of a recent edition of the Economist magazine. This features the four ‘main’ western leaders involved in the attack on Iraq: Blair, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, American President George W Bush and ex-Spanish Prime Minister José Aznar, whose party was defeated at the Spanish polls this month. The caption, under an illustration that depicts them as aces in a pack of cards, reads: “One down, three to go?” The daily Correio da Manhã newspaper notes that the front page does not mention the Portuguese Prime Minister, who hosted the pre-war summit in the Azores and has staunchly supported the war on Iraq. “Given that a pack of cards only has four aces, which card would be attributed to Durão Barroso?” asks the paper.