Exclusive: Germany plays pivotal role in potential eurozone rescue package for Greek debts

The eurozone has agreed a multibillion-euro bailout for Greece as part of a package to shore up the single currency after weeks of crisis, the Guardian has learnt.

Senior sources in Brussels said that Berlin had bowed to the bailout agreement despite huge resistance in Germany and that the finance ministers of the 'eurozone' – the 16 member states including Greece who use the euro – are to finalise the rescue package on Monday. The single currency's rulebook will also be rewritten to enforce greater fiscal discipline among members.

The member states have agreed on 'co-ordinated bilateral contributions' in the form of loans or loan guarantees to Greece if Athens finds itself unable to refinance its soaring debt and requests help from the EU, a senior European commission official said.

Other sources said the aid could rise to €25bn (£22.6bn), although it is estimated in European capitals that Greece could need up to €55bn by the end of the year.

Germany, the EU's traditional paymaster, but the most reluctant to come to the rescue of a fiscal delinquent in the current crisis, has played the pivotal role in organising the rescue package, the sources added.

'There have been quite intensive preparations under the eurogroup. We have the ways and means to do it,' said the senior official, asking not to be named because of the subject's sensitivity.

'It will be a co-ordinated approach of bilateral contributions [between EU governments] … A bilateral contribution can be a loan or a loan guarantee. The guarantees will facilitate the kind of funds potentially needed in this context.'

The rules governing the operation of the single currency proscribe a bailout for a country on the brink of insolvency. Berlin, in particular, has been worried that any bailout of Greece could be challenged in its constitutional court.

The senior official said the agreement – which will not involve any contribution from the UK taxpayer – had been tailored to respect the bailout ban and avoid a supreme court challenge in Germany.

Alongside the financial relief package for Greece, the European commission is rushing through tougher rules for the eurozone, using powers conferred by the recently enacted Lisbon treaty to try to establish a system of rigorous 'budgetary surveillance' of all 16 participating countries. The aim is a new regime of 'reinforced economic policy co-ordination' in the EU.

'This is the essential lesson that has to be learned from the Greek case,' Olli Rehn of Finland, the new commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, told the Guardian (and four other European papers).

'The Greek case is a potential turning point for the eurozone,' said Rehn in the interview. 'If Greece fails and we fail, this will do serious and maybe permanent damage to the credibility of the European Union. The euro is not only a monetary arrangement, but a core political project of the European Union … In that sense, we are at a crossroads.'

While ready to bail out the Greeks if only on terms of 'rigorous conditionality', European leaders are hoping that the rescue will not be needed, that the draconian package of austerity measures announced by Prime Minister George Papandreou will be enough to calm the markets and stabilise the euro.

EU leaders are to rule next week on whether Papandreou is doing enough to slash the 12.7% budget deficit by four percentage points this year, part of his ambition to cut the deficit by 10 points over three years.

Rehn said he would unveil new proposals next month, enshrining a new single currency regime of 'rigorous surveillance of national budgets' and that Eurostat, the EU's statistical agency, would need to be given formidable new auditing powers over the books of eurozone member states, a demand that may be resisted by EU governments.

'That's the hard core of our proposal. [The surveillance] should be automatic,' said Rehn. 'We have an immediate corrective instrument for the Greek case, plus another framework to prevent new Greek crises.'

Inside the commission, officials are confident that Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, supports the tough new regime being plotted. Schäuble, who uses a wheelchair and is currently in hospital, and will not attend key meetings in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday.

Schäuble enjoys a longstanding reputation as a European integrationist and is said to have played a central role in shaping the Greek bailout plans despite widespread hostility to any such moves in Germany.

Over the past week, he has sparked a major debate by calling for a European Monetary Fund to underpin the currency, and yesterday stoked more controversy by proposing that serial sinners in the eurozone could be expelled from the single currency club.

The EMF concept is for the long-term and a new rule enabling expulsion from the euro club would require the Lisbon treaty to be re-opened, a nightmare for most after labouring over it for almost nine years.

While senior figures in Brussels believe that Chancellor Angela Merkel and Schäuble are intensely serious about establishing an EMF, they also suspect they are using the idea to assuage hostile public opinion in Germany and 'prepare a short-term fire brigade operation for Greece'.

Dozens killed as two suicide bombers try to blow up military convoy passing busy market

A bombing in the eastern city of Lahore has killed at least 43 people – the fifth terrorist attack this week as extremists in Pakistan demonstrate their continued ability to strike.

The bloodiest terrorist strike in Pakistan this year was carried out by two attackers wearing suicide jackets who walked into a busy market in a high security military district and blew themselves up. The target appeared to be passing military vehicles but most of the victims were civilians.

Shops in the market were ripped apart, with children crossing the road and people waiting at a bus stop among the victims. About 10 soldiers were killed and 100 injured, said the Lahore police chief, Parvaiz Rathore.

'There were about 10 to 15 seconds between the blasts. Both were suicide attacks,' a senior local government official, Sajjad Bhutta, said at the site.

'The maximum preventative measures were being taken but these people find support from somewhere.'

The bombers struck at 1pm, around the time of Friday prayers, in the cantonment area, home to the local army garrison and one of Lahore's most upmarket residential districts.

Lahore is the bustling cultural hub of Pakistan and had enjoyed several weeks of relative peace. It is the capital of the eastern Punjab province, Pakistan's most densely populated area and its political heartland.

The suicide bombings were followed in the evening by three smaller blasts in a residential area across town. They caused panic but damage was reported to be minor.

The authorities repeated their regular assertion that the Taliban and other extremist groups have been defeated. The provincial law minister, Rana Sanaullah , said: 'We broke their networks. That's why they have not been able to strike for a considerable time.'

But it was the second bombing this week in Lahore. A car bombing on Monday at a police interrogation centre killed 14 people. Other attacks this week included a gun and grenade assault on a US Christian aid agency's office in the north-west, killing six of its staff, all Pakistani nationals.

'They (the extremists) are trying to project their power, telling the government that they are still alive,' said analyst Imtiaz Gul, author of The al-Qaida Connection. 'They are still far from broken. It's going to be a long haul.'

In 2009 that Lahore was dragged into the bloody insurgency in Pakistan, which claimed around 3,000 lives last year, with a series of spectacular attacks including a gun assault on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team. The last major attack in Lahore was in December when a market was bombed, killing at least 49 people.

The launch of a military offensive in South Waziristan, on the Afghan border, the base of the Pakistani Taliban, in October last year was accompanied by a vicious spate of terrorist reprisals but the country had been relatively peaceful this year.

Socialists and Greens expect significant gains in regional elections as ruling party blamed for poor economic situation

Nicolas Sarkozy faces an embarrassing setback at the polls over the next week as France votes in elections that look likely to hand a significant victory to the opposition Socialist party.

Although not officially on the ballot for the regional elections, whose first of two rounds will be held on Sunday, the embattled leader is expected to be punished indirectly as voters shun his rightwing UMP party in favour of leftwing and green alternatives.

With opinion polls showing the Socialists – who won control of 20 of the 22 mainland regions at the last vote in 2004 – will consolidate their 'pink tide' or even increase it, commentators say the predicted defeat will reflect voters' dissatisfaction with Sarkozy.

Today, Sarkozy attempted today to distance himself from his party's impending drubbing, insisting local elections had little to do with national politics. He told Le Figaro Magazine: 'The vote … is a regional vote: its consequences will therefore be regional.'

However, because the significance of the poll – which elects regional presidents and assemblies – is limited, many are predicting it will be seen as an unofficial referendum on Sarkozy's leadership. The president is more than halfway through his five-year term, and this is the last major electoral exercise France will see before his mandate expires in 2012.

Opposition parties have urged voters to use the election as a means of expressing their dislike of the president, whose approval ratings, according to a CSA poll this week, are at 36% – the lowest since he came to power in 2007. The Socialist leader, Martine Aubry, said at a campaign rally: 'The left must win in all regions to beat UMP and force Sarkozy to backtrack on all his projects.'

Amid rising unemployment and concerns about how the country will recover from the recession, frustrations with the ruling centre-right party have been mounting among both its opponents and its traditional supporters. A series of reform setbacks, a damaging nepotism row surrounding Sarkozy's son and a poorly orchestrated debate on national identity have deepened those concerns.

According to pollsters, the UMP looks likely to fall victim to the changing dynamics of French politics. While the first round is expected to be close, it is unlikely to fend off the combined force of the Socialists and the Europe Ecologie (EE) party in the second round on 21 March.

For Sarkozy and UMP chiefs, the worst-case scenario would be to then see Corsica and Alsace fall to the PS, and Aubry's dreams of a 'grand slam' in all 22 mainland regions come true. That, however, would involve a victory for Aubry's bitter rival, Ségolène Royal, in her region of Poitou Charentes.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the head of France's burgeoning green movement, believes his allies have succeeded in making his party the third political power in France. After an unexpectedly strong showing in last year's European elections, the EE are now the kingmakers, he claimed at a triumphant party rally this week. 'Without us, the Socialists won't win any region,' he said.

The impact of other parties on the result is expected to be limited. Despite the candidacy of Marine Le Pen in the region around Calais, the far-right Front National run by her father is not predicted to fetch more than 9% of the vote. Meanwhile, the centrist Modem party of Francois Bayrou- the 'third man' of the 2007 presidential vote – is polling at a mere 4.5%.

Karl Rove is proud that the US used water torture to break the will of prisoners and foil terror plots

A senior adviser to former US president George Bush has said he is proud that the country used waterboarding to elicit information from terrorism suspects.

Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist for much of his presidency, defended the interrogation approach authorised during Bush's tenure, saying he was 'proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists'.

Last year President Barack Obama banned waterboarding, stating: 'I believe that waterboarding was torture and, whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.'

However, in an interview for the BBC's Newsnight programme, Rove stood by its use. 'I'm proud that we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots such as flying aeroplanes into Heathrow and into London, bringing down aircraft over the Pacific, flying an aeroplane into the tallest building in Los Angeles and other plots,' he said.

'Yes, I'm proud that we kept the world safer than it was, by the use of these techniques. They're appropriate, they're in conformity with our international requirements and with US law.'

Rove, who resigned as White House deputy chief of staff in August 2007, added that US soldiers were subjected to waterboarding as a regular part of their training.

The practice of waterboarding at Guantánamo Bay was sanctioned by senior Bush-era lawyers in controversial memorandums dating from 2002. Last month an inquiry by the US justice department reprimanded two senior lawyers who approved the torture.

Rove's importance to Bush's 2000 election was neatly summed up by the US columnist EJ Dionne, who wrote that if the adviser did not exist, 'George Bush would not be president of the United States'.

Since leaving politics, Rove has appeared as a contributor on Fox News and written a memoir, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, in which he defends the Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq.

Catholic church investigates 170 allegations in Germany; justice minister cites Vatican 'wall of silence' set up by Benedict

Pope Benedict XVI has for the first time been drawn into the Catholic sex abuse scandal in his home country of Germany.

His former archdiocese of Munich has acknowledged that, while he was in charge, it dealt with a suspected paedophile priest by transferring him to a different parish where he went on to commit sex offences against children. The revelation has drawn attention to Benedict's handling of abuse claims, both when archbishop and later as a prefect of the Vatican office dealing with such crimes, a position he held until becoming pope in 2005.

Yesterday, the head of the German Catholic bishop's conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, revealed he was investigating more than 170 allegations of abuse in the church's institutions. The scandal broke in January when it was alleged that, over a period of 30 years, priests found to be abusing children had been redeployed to other parishes rather than dismissed.

Zollitsch reported that Benedict had expressed 'great dismay and deep shock' when briefed, but had encouraged the bishops to continue searching for the truth. Hours later however, the Munich archdiocese admitted it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was archbishop.

The archdiocese said the chaplain, identified only as H, was given therapy for suspected 'sexual relations with boys' but then moved to nearby Grafing. He was suspended in 1985 following fresh accusations, and convicted of sexually abusing minors the following year.

Last night, a Vatican spokesman stated that it was the Munich vicar-general who had approved the transfer and he took 'full responsibility', while the Munich archdiocese said Benedict did not know about the transfer. However, an American charity expressed disbelief. 'We find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Ratzinger didn't reassign the predator, or know about the reassignment,' said Barbara Blaine, of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

The pope has also faced criticism for a letter he sent from the Vatican in 2001 advising all bishops that all cases of abuse were subject to pontifical secret and must be forwarded to his office. Germany's justice minister cited the document as evidence of a Vatican 'wall of silence' around abuse cases.

Clean-up crews given compensation ultimatum as only 10,000 of 70,000 will be covered by $657m payout

Glen Klein's desire to earn a little extra money on the night shift after a divorce was what saved his life. He opted to work in his New York police Swat team from 4pm to midnight on 11 September 2001; had he done the morning shift he would probably have been among his 14 colleagues who died trying to rescue people in the Twin Towers.

More than eight years later, he carries with him the trauma of that day and of the weeks and months that followed. He takes pills for post-traumatic stress disorder, and has had a range of health ailments, ranging from stomach cramps to scarred lung tissue, which he links to the more than 800 hours he spent on the rubble pile at Ground Zero.

Now Klein is among 10,000 Ground Zero rescue workers who have been offered compensation as part of the first major federal health settlement to arise from 9/11. As part of a deal agreed on Thursday night, and put to judicial scrutiny in a series of Manhattan court hearings that began today, he would be entitled to part of a $657m (£430m) federal pot.

Along with his thousands of co-plaintiffs, Klein has 90 days to agree to the deal. Unless 95% of them do so, dropping any threat of legal action, the deal will be off.

But Klein is in no mood to be browbeaten into accepting. 'Right now I've got a lot of questions about this settlement and I'm signing nothing until they're answered,' he said.

The cause of his scepticism lies in his experiences after the 9/11 attacks. He worked 16-hour days, digging in the rubble, looking for body parts and driven on by thoughts of his 14 dead colleagues.

'We knew how important it was to find bones or bits of flesh so families could lay to rest their loved ones. Whenever we found a bone it made you feel good, as you were able to give somebody closure.'

In those early days, Klein and his fellow emergency workers were lauded as national heroes, but he says the atmosphere soon changed. 'A year later people didn't want to know anymore. I imagine it was a bit like how the Vietnam vets felt when they came back from the war.'

He is convinced that he and his colleagues were lied to by official bodies who assured them that the air quality at Ground Zero was safe. When he took rest periods in an adjacent school, he remembers seeing clouds of dust in the air and over the food the emergency workers ate. He blames that for the pre-cancerous colon polyps he has had removed, and the excruciating stomach pain that has put him in hospital five times. He has also been diagnosed with nodules on one lung and scar tissue on the other.

The settlement, thrashed out between lawyers acting for those sickened by Ground Zero dust on the one hand and New York city and private construction companies on the other, would force the plaintiffs to drop lawsuits that had been due to come to trial in May. In return, they would each receive compensation varying from a few thousand dollars to $1m or more in the most extreme cases.

Several key players have praised the settlement as the best available, including the lead lawyer for the injured workers, Marc Bern, and New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who called it 'fair and reasonable'.

But groups campaigning on behalf of sick and injured rescue and recovery workers point out that 70,000 people were involved in the Ground Zero clear up, spending hours engulfed in a toxic soup of pollutants, yet only 10,000 would be covered by the settlement.

Claire Calladine, who runs 9/11 Health Now, said the average compensation of $65,700 was 'ludicrous when you consider that many of the plaintiffs' health is in ruins, with a large percentage completely disabled, and with cancers and other serious diseases also surging.'

Klein also has doubts. He volunteers for the Fealgood Foundation, a group that works with sick 9/11 workers founded by John Feal, a demolition supervisor who was himself injured at ground zero. Through the group Klein befriended many workers who had contracted cancer, some of whom have died.

'Even if you get the top whack of $1m, how far does that go? By the time you've paid for chemotherapy and tests and hospital care, it could be used up in six months – and when you die what's left for your family? Nothing.'

Klein and the Fealgood Foundation would prefer to see the passage of a bill currently before Congress. The James Zadroga bill, named after a police officer who died in 2006, would guarantee full health care for life to Ground Zero workers.

'I know a lot of my colleagues will be thinking 'Wow, here's a chance to get three or four thousand dollars',' Klein said. 'But they need to think long term: will there still be healthcare available to them in 10 or 15 years time?'

Site wrangle

While compensation for ground zero workers has been mired in legal wrangling, the rebuilding of the site itself has fared no better. Key parties in the reconstruction of the World Trade Centre are still fighting. The good news is that No 1 WTC stands at about 20 storeys. The bad news is that the other three towers conceived are the subject of in-fighting between developer Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who cannot agree on who pays. A compromise was due to be imposed last night if an agreement could not be reached by both sides. Ed Pilkington

Moscow signs agreement that will see Russia help construct up to 20 atomic plants

India and Russia today signed a nuclear co-operation agreement, which paves the way for the building of about a dozen nuclear reactors in India, with Russian help, over the next few decades.

The agreement came at the end of talks between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, in New Delhi.

'We are building a strategic partnership with India in the nuclear sector,' Putin told business leaders in a video conference earlier.

No exact figures on construction of nuclear reactors were immediately available but last December Russia's nuclear energy chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, had said Moscow would build up to 20 reactors at three sites in India.

Singh said the two sides had completed several important defence co-operation projects, emphasising that ties between the cold war allies remained close. 'We regard Russia as a trusted and reliable strategic partner,' he said.

The two countries signed a $1.5bn (£1bn) deal for Russia to sell MiG-29K aircraft carrier-based fighter jets to India, with the first deliveries to begin in 2012. The leaders also agreed to intensify their consultations on Afghanistan in tackling the challenges posed by terrorism and extremism in the region, Singh said.

Earlier, Putin told the business leaders that the activities of extremist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan were a 'matter of worry for the entire region and the whole world'. 'Parts of Afghanistan's soil continue to be used by terror groups. We understand the concerns of India regarding the activities of banned outfits in Pakistan,' he said.

Other agreements signed Friday included one on the production of satellite navigation systems and others relating to hydrocarbons and the energy sectors, officials said.

Putin also held talks today with India's President Pratibha Patil and ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi.

Discussions between Putin and Singh focussed on strengthening the decades-old bilateral ties between the two countries and examined ways to take them forward as India's burgeoning economy is courted by other players.

India remains one of the world's biggest arms importers and a top Russian arms client, with Moscow supplying nearly 70% of New Delhi's military hardware. Putin said Russia was pursuing technical military co-operation with India that included joint work on a next-generation fighter jet. The two sides further signed a series of agreements marking the end of a protracted dispute over the cost of refurbishing a Soviet-built aircraft carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov, for the Indian navy.

Records compiled from investigations after golfer's car crash raise fresh questions about his account to journalists

Fresh questions have been raised about Tiger Woods' account of the car crash outside his home that led to the unravelling of his private and sporting life, after revelations that the ambulance crew refused to allow his wife, Elin Nordegren, into the ambulance because they thought it was a case of domestic violence.

Records compiled from investigations by the Florida highway patrol, released last night, show that when paramedics collected Woods 'one of the crew stated that [his] wife could not go in ambulance because this was a domestic'.

In the few public statements Woods has made about events on the night of 27 November, he has consistently denied that he was attacked by his wife. When he delivered a public apology last month for the multiple affairs that emerged following the crash, he said: 'Some people have speculated that Elin somehow hurt or attacked me on Thanksgiving Night. It angers me that people would fabricate a story like that. She never hit me that night or any other night. There has never been an episode of domestic violence in our marriage. Ever.'

The highway patrol documents confirm Woods was found lying beside his SUV car outside his Florida home, having hit a tree and fire hydrant. The rear window of the car was smashed – apparently by a golf club, and he was seen by a neighbour lying on the ground and snoring.

The documents show police retrieved two small bottles of Vicodin, a moderate painkiller, from the house. Nordegren said Woods had taken some medication earlier in the evening, though not Vicodin.

A police officer at the scene, Jason Sipos, is recorded in the documents saying he never heard Woods or his wife make any reference to domestic violence. Woods has not played professional golf since.

Winnie Mandela claims 'he let us down' story in Evening Standard was 'fictitious' but paper stands by story

Nelson Mandela's ex-wife has denied criticising the former South African president in a newspaper interview over his decision to accept the Nobel peace prize.

The Evening Standard ran an interview with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela on Monday in which she accused Mandela of having 'let us down'.

She went on to condemn his decision to accept the 1993 Nobel peace prize alongside FW de Klerk, the president of South Africa in 1990 who took the decision to release Mandela.

The remarks were noted in South Africa, where the country's governing party, the African National Congress, announced on Wednesday that its leaders would talk to Madikizela-Mandela when she returned to the country.

The story took a new turn today when the 73-year-old rejected the inflammatory comments attributed to her.

'I did not give … an interview. It is therefore not necessary for me to respond in any detail to the contents of a fabricated interview,' she said in a statement distributed by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

'I will in the coming days deal with what I see as an inexplicable attempt to undermine the unity of my family, the legacy of Nelson Mandela and the high regard with which the name Mandela is held here and across the globe.'

Madikizela-Mandela was travelling abroad when the interview, conducted by Nadira Naipaul – wife of the Nobel literature laureate VS Naipaul – was published this week.

The Evening Standard released a statement this afternoon saying it 'cannot understand' Madikizela-Mandela's version of events.

'Nadira Naipaul is a distinguished journalist who visited Winnie Mandela at home and spoke to her at length about her experiences,' the statement read.

'Nadira and her husband, the writer Sir VS Naipaul, are photographed with Winnie Mandela and this picture was printed with the article.

'We cannot understand Winnie Mandela's denial of an event and conversation which clearly took place.'

In the article, Madikizela-Mandela was quoted as calling Archbishop Desmond Tutu a 'cretin' as well as criticising her ex-husband.

'Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks,' the Standard quoted her as saying.

'Economically we are still on the outside. The economy is very much 'white'. It has a few token blacks, but so many who gave their life in the struggle have died unrewarded.'

The quotes continued: 'I cannot forgive him for going to receive the Nobel [peace prize in 1993] with his jailer De Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed, and our struggle was not a flash in the pan, it was bloody to say the least and we had given rivers of blood. I had kept it alive with every means at my disposal'.

Madikizela-Mandela said she had spoken to Archbishop Tutu about the Evening Standard story and would be speaking to Mandela and his wife, Graca Michel.

'Finally I repeat that I did not give Ms Naipul any interview,' she said.

'Any further questions about the content of that fictitious interview should be addressed to her.'

Head of supreme council says Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law group is likely victor based on preliminary results

The political grouping headed by Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, today began preparing negotiations for a new coalition government after edging ahead in the latest counts of Sunday's general election.

The poll's outcome is still unclear but Maliki's State of Law group is growing in confidence after preliminary results gave it victory in at least two southern provinces.

Only partial counts have been released from six of Iraq's 18 provinces, excluding Baghdad. Results today from a quarter of votes cast in Maysan province, which borders Iran, showed State of Law trailing to the Iraqi National Alliance, the Shia coalition that includes followers of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

But Iraqi officials who have seen nationwide results said Maliki's coalition appeared to have a narrow lead. The head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Ammar al-Hakim, said that Maliki's coalition appeared to be winning – the first statement of its kind by high-ranking official since polls closed.

Abbas al-Bayati, a member Maliki's coalition, told Associated Press the alliance had created a committee to open talks with other blocs. Bayati said he expected State of Law would need two or three other coalition partners to form a government.

Iraqiya, the coalition of Maliki's main rival, Ayad Allawi, the former secular Shia prime minister, continued to claim that the election was marred by fraud.

Rend al-Rahim, an Iraqiya candidate, said the group had lodged 32 separate complaints with election officials, including undelivered and dumped ballots.

Results released yesterday showed Allawi and Maliki's rival groups were leading in two provinces each.

Coalition talks are expected to be lengthy and fractious. A credible ballot is considered to be crucial to a planned US troop withdrawal. It follows elections in Iran and Afghanistan, where results are widely considered to have been illegitimate.

More partial results from Iraq's 14 other provinces are expected on Sunday.

Campaigners demand David Cameron identifies member who killed bill protecting developing world from vulture fund bankers

Pressure is growing on David Cameron to identify the mystery Tory MP who deliberately scuppered a landmark anti-poverty bill that could have stopped 'vulture' bankers profiteering from the developing world's debt burdens.

Debt campaigners have reacted in fury and disbelief to the killing of the bill and Labour MP Sally Keeble, one of the bill's backers, has accused the Conservatives of 'duplicity' by pretending to back the legislation and then sabotaging it at the last minute.

Campaigners are now calling on the leader of the opposition to clarify his view of the bill and asking whether the MP concerned will be identified. The international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, has sent a letter to Cameron demanding an explanation.

The frustration has been compounded by the secrecy surrounding the events in the Commons last night. During the reading, three Tory MPs were seen to huddle together on the benches before one shouted the word 'object!', which under parliamentary procedure effectively stopped the bill passing.

Three Conservatives were in the chamber – Christopher Chope, Andrew Robathan and Simon Burns – but none has admitted intervening. The Tory treasury spokesman, David Gauke, who was on the committee that debated the bill, insisted the Conservatives had wanted to see it go through and that the MPs, two of whom are Tory whips, did not have the support of the frontbench. He said he did not know which one had made the objection. 'We have our suspicions,' he added. 'It is a pity. Our view was let's go with the bill but that was not to be. Everyone recognises that this was a rushed process.'

But Keeble said that there had been plenty of time to debate the bill, both for two hours in the chamber and at committee stage. 'All concerns that had been raised had been dealt with and the bill had been watered down already as a compromise to the Conservatives,' she said.

'It's blatantly obvious that this was duplicitous behaviour by the Conservatives whose commitment to international development is deeply suspect. The three men went into a huddle and then no one can see who actually objects. It's disgraceful behaviour.'

Nick Dearden, director of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: 'It is an outrage that one MP has taken it upon himself to effectively kill a bill which has the support of the vast majority of the house. His move will mean many of the poorest countries in the world will continue suffering at the hands of reckless and unethical investors.

'This action has destroyed the hopes of many people across the developing world that we might put an end to the appalling practice of vulture funds.'

Vulture funds buy up the debts of poor countries, often at a fraction of their face value, and pursue them through the international courts, in many instances despite agreements by other creditors to give the country debt relief.

Campaigners wanted the legislation to apply retrospectively, because it could help countries such as Liberia, which lost a £13m case in London against two vulture funds late last year. The Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has urged parliament to pass the new law. The scuppering came a day after the former Tanzanian president, Benjamin William Mkapa, backed the bill, saying: 'I hope the international community joins hands to put an end to these deplorable activities of the vulture funds.' The bill also has the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Andrew Gwynne the Labour MP who proposed the bill, said: 'It is staggering the Conservatives are still unwilling to support even the most basic legislation.'

Cheats such as Mark Owen don't 'love' women, as they often claim. If you trick women and lie to them, you must hate them

I feel devastated. Every time I think about it, I feel sick. Mark Owen of Take That is a love rat. Speaking to the Sun – always the best way to confront your intimate problems – married Owen has confessed to multiple affairs. In his defence he says that the final tryst happened before he was wed to his partner of five years. Except that they were married only five months ago. It always tickles me to hear liars' justifications, the sliding scale of the cheat's charter of values: cheating on girlfriend, wonderful; cheating on wife, awful.

Yes, Owen looked virginal, but he was not. Expelled from Cupid's embrace, perhaps he can visit a gentlemen's club? There, he and other serial, simultaneous-multiple-victim cheats such as footballer Ashley Cole and golfer Tiger Woods can cry big fat crocodile tears while fiddling with abject women so far beneath them in status, power and confidence that should their stories ever come to light, they won't have any leverage.

They say that only the insecure cheat. That's probably true. But then insecurity lies behind most human endeavour, from an artist striving to create a masterpiece to a man so eaten up by jealousy that he murders his ex. The expression of the insecurity is gendered, played out through the power dynamic that already exists in the world. Insecure women harm themselves and slander and betray other women. Insecure men abuse women. They are not punished either by the mysterious forces of karma or by the people they are surrounded by, the employers, supporters, colleagues, friends.

Mark, Tiger and Ashley – and what a great team of roving provincial strippergrams they'd make, with names like that – don't 'love' women, as compulsive male cheats are often forgivingly said to do. They hate them. If you spend years playing women, tricking women, duping women, lying to women, you are an abusive man.

It's hardly a complicated issue. If you're a famous chap and want to sleep with many women, stay single. Life will provide countless opportunities for sexual adventure. Take every one, it sounds fun! But don't, at the same time, pretend to be a really nice decent guy, or let your partner live her life thinking happily that she got a great catch.

I've met dozens of philanderers and they're all the same. They're always the 'really nice guys' who pay lip service to feminism in public and viciously betray women in private. Their abusiveness is protected by their reputation for niceness.

There's the bestselling novelist who namechecks his partner and mother in interviews. The writer who often pens cute columns about his wife and kids. The wild-haired publisher whose wife has no idea what he does when he comes down to London. The street poet with the soulful eyes and funky trainers. They all use the same line: 'I wouldn't mind if my partner was shacked up with some guy right now.' Always, that partner is at home tending the kids, the house and her own career and would be devastated to discover what her one true love was doing.

At least this kind of deliberate, serial, mass, long-term cheating makes the perpetrator's true nature obvious when it finally comes to light. Why would any woman seek to salvage something from the final dregs of this pathetic game? Having been tricked by someone who lied throughout, she would naturally realise that his apology and pledges of future fidelity were lies too.

Having pretended to be devoted, he would then pretend to be remorseful, when in fact he was merely embarrassed. A traitor's gifts are nothing more than lavish bribes, his promises weightless confetti cut from a tissue of lies. No doubt a woman who's been played finds her adoration change instantly to disgust and sheer gratitude that he's out of the picture. The yearning to see him, no doubt, becomes overwhelming relief that he is no longer in her life.

No doubt? Owen and Woods have children. What do their partners do now? Cheating is not just a betrayal but a type of blackmail, the ultimate lose-lose. Walk, keep your dignity and principles, break up the family home? Or stay, lose your pride, sleep beside the one who backstabbed you, but keep the hearth-fire burning for the bairns?

What would I do? Would I stand by my man, as the song goes? Hell no. Cheats don't change. I'd write a new ditty and the chorus would go: take out the trash, ladies. Just take out the trash, because it stinks.

Benedict XVI's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, suggests 'tenacious' plot to implicate pontiff in cover-up

The pope's spokesman has launched a vigorous counter-attack against a report linking Benedict XVI to a sex abuse cover-up while he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981.

Father Federico Lombardi appeared to suggest in an interview on Vatican Radio that the pope, who also has strong links to the city of Regensburg, was the victim of a plot.

'It's rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched – with notable tenacity – in Regensburg and Munich for elements to personally involve the holy father in the question of the abuses,' Lombardi said. 'To any objective observer it's clear that these attempts have failed.'

The Vatican has been appalled in recent days by a flood of allegations of priestly sex abuse in Germany, Holland, Austria and even Italy.

Today, the pope's former diocese rushed out a statement to pre-empt a story in tomorrow's edition of the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. It said that when Joseph Ratzinger was the city's archbishop he had agreed that a priest from another diocese should undergo therapy at a rectory in his own.

The records suggested that 'it was known then that this therapy should probably be carried out due to sexual relations with children'. But instead of sending him for therapy, the statement said, the diocese's then vicar-general, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a parish where at least one child was subsequently abused.

'Gruber takes full responsibility for the wrong decisions', the diocese said.

The church's attempt to bury the affair was immediately challenged by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (Snap), which tomorrow is holding 'sidewalk vigils' in more than 30 US cities in support of European victims.

David Clohessy, Snap's national director, said: 'As a high-ranking church official for decades, if Ratzinger knew of one reassigned paedophile priest, the odds are he knows of others, possibly dozens. German secular authorities should do in Munich what Irish secular authorities did in Dublin: launch a thorough secular probe of clergy sex crimes and cover-ups.'

The latest front was opened in Austria where two newspapers reported cases of abuse among choirboy in Fügen and Vienna. Today a newspaper in the predominantly German-speaking Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen recounted the story of a then 15 year-old boy who said that in the 1960s he was coerced into providing sexual services to local friars.

Look to Keynes for a way to rebalance the world economy – force surplus countries to spend money in deficit countries

How is the global economy to be rebalanced? Is there a distinction worth making between Chinese and German mercantilism? One can argue that China's astonishing growth has sucked in other countries' imports while lifting millions out of poverty. But growth continues to be export-led, and the Central Bank of China has accumulated the world's largest stash of dollar-denominated assets. Germany runs an even larger current account surplus, but much of it is recycled into buying companies in the US and elsewhere.

Is exchange rate adjustment the answer? While the US Congress seems to believe so, a large revaluation would in practice serve nobody's interests. Chinese export-driven growth rate would slow, and Americans would find themselves poorer in real terms having to buy dearer goods at Wal-Mart.

In the EU, things are slightly different because the euro has appreciated strongly against the dollar. But appreciation has had only had a marginal effect on Germany's surplus; Germans have accepted slower wage growth as a price worth paying for the prize of being the world's leading exporter. By any measure, exchange rate adjustment – even allowing for lags – seems to have done little to rebalance the world economy.

The financial crisis has complicated matters, with fiscal deficits growing alarmingly. The German response to resulting downward pressure on the euro has been to insist that all countries should balance the books like Germany. But as Martin Wolf correctly observes: 'Germany is in a trap of its own devising. It wants its neighbours to be as like itself as possible. They cannot be, because its deficient domestic demand cannot be universalised'.

In macroeconomics, the basic savings identity says that the sum of the private sector surplus (of savings over spending) and of government's fiscal deficit must equal the current account (or external) balance. Thus, if a country is in approximate external balance, but an external shock like the credit crisis leads to a sudden increase in the private sector surplus, this must be mirrored by a similar increase in the fiscal deficit. In plain English, as the private sector pays off its debts by spending less, this is reflected by an increase in public sector spending.

There are only two ways out: the first is getting the private sector to start spending again and the second is for net exports to expand rapidly. The problem with the first solution is that, by definition, private consumption falls in a credit crunch; in consequence, business confidence falls dragging down private investment.

The problem with the second solution is slightly more complex and involves what philosophers call the 'fallacy of composition'. While one country may be able to boost its exports, all countries taken together cannot. Because my exports are your imports, everyone trying to boost their exports simultaneously by means of, say, currency devaluation leads to a 1930s style 'beggar my neighbour' result. This is broadly the logical flaw of those who argue that Britain was fortunate in not joining the euro and retaining its own currency.

What of the weaker members of a currency union, eg Greece and the 'Club Med' countries? The German solution, currently dressed up as a debate about the merits of a European Monetary Fund (EMF), is for all countries to adhere to strict fiscal discipline and slash the public deficit. The EMF in its present guise is simply another version of the EU stability and growth pact. This 'solution' only works through cutting the real wage and driving down national income to such a degree that the private sector surplus falls and imports contract drastically – ie though expenditure cutting rather than expenditure switching. The rub is of course that were a number of eurozone countries forced to adjust in this way, Germany's current account surplus would contract.

Is there another answer? John Maynard Keynes proposed a perfectly sensible solution at Bretton Woods in 1944, namely, forcing surplus countries to spend their extra money in deficit countries, thus both their private spending and export capacity. The 'Keynes solution' as is has been dubbed by the US economist Paul Davidson, was unfortunately vetoed by the Americans. In fairness, one must add that America rechannelled part of its surplus at the time into the Marshall Plan, thus enabling Europe to grow and to overcome its deficit.

Under such a scheme applied to the eurozone, the EMF would use the German euro surplus to create new sources of income and jobs in the Club Med countries, thus raising their ability to buy future German exports. In the absence of an EMF, a new eurozone economic structure which provided it with a Federal Treasury could capture such surpluses and direct them towards an 'extended' solidarity fund.

Too idealistic? Not at all. Just as Keynes and Marshall recognised that the failure to reflate Europe after the war might be catastrophic for the west as a whole, so Germany should draw the same lesson today – just as China now seems to be recognising that the new mercantilism leads nowhere. Recycling trade surpluses is a win-win game. Alternatively, insisting on budgetary balance will almost certainly lead to prolonged recession with high social costs.

In Texas conservative Republicans are rewriting the textbooks to be used in the state's schools to fit their political agenda

When people worry about the US economy being surpassed by the likes of India and China, it's often slipping educational standards that are identified as a possible cause. With that in mind, consider the worrying events in Texas, where Republicans on the state's Board of Education enforced party-political changes to the state's curriculum. As the New York Times reports:

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

Why does it matter? As the Houston Chronicle notes: 'The often contentious process has been watched closely across the nation, particularly this week as the board gathered to debate and vote on the proposed standards. Because of Texas' size, decisions by the board on what should and should not be included can influence publishers whose textbooks may be adopted by other states.'

Many of the hundreds of line-by-line changes are tiny but carefully considered: this graphic shows how Richard Nixon's 'role' in opening relations with China is to be changed to the more positive 'leadership'.

The leader of the Republican effort is a dentist named Don McLeroy, who has previously justified his attempts to add qualifications to evolution into science textbooks by saying: 'Somebody's got to stand up to experts'. You can enjoy that on video right here:

So what were some of the latest changes? The NYT reports:

In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word 'capitalism' throughout their texts with the 'free-enterprise system.'

'Let's face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,' said one conservative member, Terri Leo. 'You know, 'capitalist pig!' '

As Eliot Spitzer left office and David Paterson became governor, New Yorkers almost breathed a sigh of relief. It didn't last long

When Eliot Spitzer bucked the New York Democratic establishment and selected Senate minority leader David Paterson as his running mate in 2006, many people thought Spitzer was crazy – and Paterson, too. Paterson was in line to become the Senate majority leader if the Democratic party took control of the state Senate, and Spitzer had enough problems within the party that he didn't need the backlash – which included the powerful and then-well-respected congressman Charlie Rangel sarcastically anointing him the smartest man in the world. But the two men sailed into office, and the history books.

When the combative Spitzer left office embroiled in a prostitution scandal, Paterson became the first African-American governor of New York, and only the fourth in the history of the United States, and New Yorkers almost breathed a sigh of relief. Paterson, who was known for his consensus-building style in the Senate was expected to bring that to the Governor's Mansion as well, and the legally blind, married, nice-seeming Paterson was considered unlikely to have much in the way of political baggage.

That impression of Paterson lasted about five minutes, until allegations of cocaine use and marital infidelity immediately surfaced. Paterson (accompanied by his wife) admitted that he and his wife hadn't always been faithful, and New Yorkers hoped that would be the end of it. Of course, it wasn't – but Paterson's ineffectiveness at governing overshadowed his personal peccadilloes for a while. His utter inability to force any consensus among legislators while serving as governor was apparent with nearly every single political initiative he started and watched die, but was most glaringly obvious when a showdown in the Senate over same-sex marriage and the budget led two Democrats to caucus with Republicans and reverse the Democrats' control of the Senate.

Paterson's constant push for a vote on same-sex marriage didn't just have implications for Senate control. Rather than using his (ever-dwindling) political capital to push for consensus and twist a few arms, Paterson relied on public pronouncements and pressure on legislative leaders to get his vote on same-sex marriage in the state, despite evidence that more than a couple of Democrats might not vote for the legislation. The vote for same-sex marriage in one of the most liberal states in the country – home to the city with the largest number of LGBT residents in the country – spectacularly failed to accord marriage rights to same-sex couples, killing what hope of a legacy Paterson might have had.

Now, the legacy of the first African-American governor of New York is permanently tarnished. Allegations that Paterson pressured the ex-girlfriend of a favoured aide to drop efforts to prosecute the aide for abuse have filled the news for weeks, sparking calls for his resignation. A lengthy investigation is to take place. The state police, already in trouble for spying on former state senator Joe Bruno for then-Governor Spitzer, intervened in the aide's domestic abuse case, leading to the sudden retirement of Paterson's hand-picked state police chief and the loss of Paterson's own deputy secretary of public safety, who resigned in disgust. Women from around the state, once firmly in Paterson's camp for his support of legislation to end the practice of shackling inmates while they give birth, are increasingly turning against him as it looks more and more like he helped a favoured staffer with a history of violence against women cover up at least one incident while he moved up in the ranks.

New Yorkers, once, had a dream: that the first African-American governor could help New York move past the Spitzer scandal and enact the progressive agenda they had elected the duo to bring to the state. Instead, they got one man who unsuccessfully attempted to bully legislators in his own party and resigned after the world discovered he was hiring high-priced prostitutes, and they got another who allegedly used his position to intimidate a victim of domestic violence and failed to enact much of anything for the state. Next up to lead the state: the Democrat who accused President Obama of 'shucking and jiving' and tried to deny that there was anything racist about that. No wonder New Yorkers elected George Pataki three times.

A selection of the best images from around the globe

Progress can be achieved through open engagement without preconditions – and that includes Hamas

I returned last week from a visit to Gaza as part of a parliamentary delegation from the Britain-Palestine All-Party Group.

Knowing that no political delegations were getting in via the Erez border crossing (the Irish foreign minister was turned away last month), we opted for the longer route through Cairo and Rafah, entering from the Egyptian side.

To smooth our passage we thought a letter from the Foreign Office (FCO) would assist. This is what they provided:

'The Rafah crossing is closed for an indefinite period ... We have strongly advised them to avoid all travel to Gaza. We believe that it would be reckless to travel to Gaza at this time ... we believe that terrorist groups continue to maintain the intent and capability to kidnap foreigners.'

Despite this bucket of cold water, entry and exit proved straightforward for us, though it continues to be almost impossible for the 1.6m Gazans who have been locked down for four years.

If you do get in, however, the FCO added, you might want to raise the issue of Paul Martin – a diplomatic conceit that shows once again the ambivalent relations western governments have with Hamas. Contact between the FCO and the Hamas government began almost immediately they took control of Gaza in June 2007 after the bloody fighting with Fatah. That secured the release of Alan Johnson, the BBC journalist who had been held by one of Gaza's powerful clan families for four months. Johnson's detention got far more publicity than Martin's and Hamas moved swiftly to ensure his release – as it did on this occasion.

The Hamas leadership appears bemused by the willingness to talk to it behind the scenes – as even representatives of the Bush administration did (we were told) – while maintaining an uncompromising attitude to formal negotiations.

There is now a procession of delegations into Gaza – most notably the 60 European parliamentarians who visited last month. Gerald Kaufman MP, who led that group and held a joint press conference with prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, has become one of the strongest voices speaking out for Palestine in the UK.

But although the UK government does not class Hamas as a terrorist organisation as do the EU and US, there is no sign of a willingness to engage. Indeed, since the appointment of Ivan Lewis as FCO minister of state with responsibility for the Middle East last year the line on Hamas appears to have stiffened and the willingness to condemn Israeli policy has become noticeably more muted.

Time and again, the Hamas leadership – in Syria as well as Gaza – has given signals that it is prepared to compromise on or abandon the policies cited by Israel and its supporters as barriers to dialogue. The release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held in Gaza for four years, removal of objectionable clauses from the Hamas founding charter, an end to all violent attacks on Israeli citizens and soil, and an acceptance of a two-state solution on 1967 borders.

The Israeli or Quartet response that such matters are preconditions to talks causes hollow laughter in Gaza. Hamas has watched while concessions from the Palestinian Authority presidency of Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Arafat before him have been taken without reciprocation before more demands are made.

The uncompromising Israeli position leads Hamas to conclude Israel is no longer interested in agreement on any reasonable terms.

So what should we read into the release of Paul Martin, with little fanfare or rhetoric, at a time when prospects for talks are their worst for many years and no trust exists between the parties?

Martin was detained in Gaza on 14 February by de facto security forces as he arrived to testify at the trial of Mohammad Abu Muailik, a former member of the Abu Rish Brigades, a Gaza militant group linked to Hamas's political rival, Fatah. He was initially held for 15 days but it was announced on 2 March that Martin would be held for a further 15 days.

The primary purpose of our visit, which was hosted by the UN, was to see the effects of the blockade and the continuing effects of the Israeli invasion that left 1,400 dead and almost all public buildings, private industry and thousands of homes as rubble. But while there we scheduled meetings with the Hamas government as well as representatives of the Fatah opposition.

Last Sunday afternoon we were supposed to meet a small private government delegation. This turned out to be about 20 MPs, ministers and party officials, with enough press and TV waiting outside to cover the Oscars.

As privately as possible we raised Paul Martin's detention with Faraj al-Guol, Hamas justice minister, as well as deputy foreign minister Dr Ahmed Yousef. Yousef is Haniyeh's right-hand man, and when we met again later in the day at a round table meeting of Gaza's great and good he told us he would deal directly with the security services holding Martin and hoped he would be released on Thursday as 'a gesture of goodwill towards the delegation'. This proved to be the case.

Some may say this is an easy gesture to make and no more than self-generated PR. Hamas is no slouch at media stunts – they told us without irony that they had copied the Labour Party pledge card idea for use in the next elections. But their wish to engage with wider public opinion is one of the few positives at present.

I took the Martin episode as an indication that they are willing to respond to any open engagement, but not to make unforced concessions in the current climate.

Meanwhile, Israel appears to hold a veto over any engagement with Hamas.

A whole generation is growing up in conditions that are a breeding ground for intolerance and aggression, as we saw last week. One way to break the deadlock is to negotiate without preconditions with those who have a mandate and a willingness to achieve progress. From my experience now on several visits to the region in the past three years, this includes Hamas.

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With four in 10 working women in public sector jobs, redundancies will make a work-life balance even harder to attain

The key election debate will be about the speed, scale and scope of spending cuts. This is a bit strange. It is the recovery of growth that will make the biggest contribution to reducing the deficit by getting tax revenues flowing again. Polls report just as much support for tax rises as spending cuts. But the test of economic virility has become the size of your spending cuts.

And virility is the right word here as spending cuts will hit women harder than men. So far men have been bigger losers in the recession job-loss stakes. This is not because women's jobs are inherently more secure – indeed the chances of losing your job are about the same for men and women in hard-hit sectors such as retail, manufacturing or finance. But because those sectors that have suffered the most redundancies employ more men than women, the net result has been more male job losses.

But the public sector is different. Big spending cuts and job losses here will hit women, as they are twice as likely as men to work in the public sector. Indeed four in 10 women work in public-sector occupations. This has been particularly important in areas hit hard by private-sector unemployment such as the North East, Yorkshire and Humber and the West Midlands. In these regions male unemployment is more than 10%, and many families will now depend on a public-sector woman's wage. If public-sector jobs are axed, many families could find themselves without anyone in work.

Women often work in the public sector because it offers relatively secure work, flexible working patterns and a chance to build up a decent income in retirement. The gender pay gap is smaller and the public sector offers more opportunities to combine a proper career with caring responsibilities. Spending cuts would inevitably threaten this – and thus set back the cause of gender equality.

Women's pensions would be hit particularly hard. Those public-sector pensions of tabloid fury go largely to women. Two thirds of current public-sector pensions are being built up by women.

Cuts would also make the public sector a less woman-friendly place to work. While it is right to look to increase public-sector efficiency, unplanned job cuts will mean fewer workers doing the same amount of work, leading to stress and pressure to work even longer hours.

Politicians will battle hard for women's votes during the election. Child tax credits already look set to be a battleground and both parties are keen to show their flexible working credentials. But it will be a policy that perhaps few would immediately associate with gender that will make the biggest difference to working women. The size and shape of the parties' cuts packages does matter.

• A different article was mistakenly published yesterday under the author's name and subsequently removed. Comments on the original piece have been lost – apologies to those concerned

Will the Democrats pass healthcare reform? We'll find out next week if Nancy Pelosi can deliver the votes she needs

There have been so many twists and turns in the struggle to pass healthcare reform that anyone watching could get dizzy. But the endgame is near. The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, on Friday gave a press conference that suggests she expects movement by the end of next week:

I'm delighted that the president will be here for the passage of the bill. It's going to be historic.

Obama today postponed his overeas trip to help the final push on HCR until 21 March – a smart move, because now it really comes down to he and Pelosi's tag-team pinning down the Democratic waverers. For fans of the West Wing, this is fascinating stuff, a real-life episode of arm twisting and last-minute deals.

So where are we? The only plausible option open to the Democrats is for the House of Representatives to pass the version of the healthcare reform bill the Senate approved back on Christmas eve, as well as the House passing another, separate bill that amends HCR using the budgetary reconciliation procedure. (I'll spare you the details.) Then, President Obama signs the first bill into law and the Senate then passes the second (reconciliation) bill to amend it. Confused? You're not the only one.

The first step in the process I've just outlined will be the hardest: getting the House to pass the Senate bill. Why? The Senate bill differs from the version that the House itself passed: it is more limited, for example, and doesn't include the anti-abortion funding 'Stupak amendment' that won it some votes from conservative Democrats.

Can Nancy Pelosi pull together enough votes to get the healthcare bill through the House? Let's put it another way: over the next few days we'll find out whether Nancy Pelosi is one of the more astute parliamentary managers of Congress's modern era. It's going to be tough but my money's on Nancy Pelosi for the simple reason that so far she has done an almost flawless job in getting the Obama administration's agenda through the House.

Obviously it helps that the House has no equivalent of the Senate's filibuster and has a more substantial Democratic majority. That gives Pelosi more to play with. More importantly, Pelosi has already shown that she can steer the passage of contentious legislation through the House. With the additional firepower of the White House, it's a good bet that she can get the 216 representatives she needs to say 'yes'. What's the hold up now is the Democratic House leadership ironing out exactly what amendments are needed – and to assauge fears that the Senate Democrats will somehow renege on its side of the deal by accident or design.

In the meantime, expect to see many articles such as this, as representatives send messages to their voters back home or attempt to secure concessions. Washington will be agog with such speculation. But until the Speaker actually calls for a final vote – which she won't do until she's confident she has a majority – everything else is just posturing. Because nothing counts until they count the votes.

Disciplinary procedures are already in place to deal with staff with discriminatory views – there's no need for a BNP ban

It goes without saying that schools should be places that promote tolerance and understanding, and that there is no room for racist views in such organisations. However, the decision of the government not to ban teachers who are members of the British National party (BNP) or other groups that may promote racism is a welcome glimmer of common sense in an otherwise increasingly frustrating political landscape.

School are havens of fairness and inclusivity and only a handful of cases have come to light of teachers with BNP membership or extremist views. It goes without saying that young people should not be subject to racist views in the classroom, but a blanket ban surely falls into the category of sledgehammer to crack a nut.

The vast majority of teachers and staff have no hidden agenda, put the interests of their students first, and concentrate on teaching and providing a role model for widely accepted standards of behaviour.

Schools already do an excellent job of making sure that those who hold discriminatory views are not welcome. Each school has a set of values and a strong ethos. In many cases these are explicitly set out in a policy or document which includes reference to all staff having a commitment to treat all members of the school community with tolerance and respect and to promote community cohesion more widely. As part of recruitment processes, a school will use this policy to check that prospective employees agree with its ethos and to screen out those who are not able to support it.

Likewise, the general injunction that schools and teachers should not promote particular positions – political, religious, or discriminatory – continues to work well, as do the powers schools have to enforce it.

Disciplinary procedures are in place to deal with teachers or other staff who are overtly or covertly racist, and schools can dismiss staff for this when appropriate. In the case of teachers, dismissal is followed by referral to the General Teaching Council and can lead to the person being barred from teaching. There is no reason to change processes that work well and can be used to deal with the rare cases where trust is betrayed.

Of course it is right that teachers and others should be forbidden in schools to promote any contentious position. However, open discussion of difficult topics must be possible.

The aim should be genuinely to challenge young people to think for themselves and to form their own opinions, rather than to promote a particular ideology. Students should not be made to feel that their identity is under threat or that they are being attacked or belittled. With those provisos teachers should feel that they can tackle difficult issues without being accused of misbehaviour.

As in all areas of society, there is some racism in schools but very rarely on the part of school employees, who in almost every case take pains to project and live by values based on respect, tolerance and the intrinsic value of every human being.

At a summit in Dubai, scholars and clerics are gathering to destroy the Somalian rebels' religious credibility

Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has been busy of late. This weekend he is attending a summit in Dubai, along with an international cast of scholars and clerics, to refute the ideologies of groups that 'abuse the name of sharia by imposing their own literal, ill-informed interpretations onto others'. Organised by the Global Centre for Renewal and Guidance (GCRG) the summit will clarify the orthodox position on jihad and takfir – judging a Muslim to be outside the fold – and analyse the religious motivation of group of violent Islamists in Somalia, known as al-Shabaab. The meeting will result in a fatwa condemning them.

Several thoughts spring to mind. It should not take a summit to state the obvious and it will take more than a fatwa to end the chaos and destruction wreaked by al-Shabaab. Previous Cif blogs have attracted a variety of opinion on the success or otherwise of fatwas against terrorism. So where does this leave the summit? According to Anna Rader, of the Royal United Services Institute, Somalia is a deeply religious country but most citizens are appalled by al-Shabaab's extreme interpretation of Islam and that the cultural strictures it seeks to impose are onerous to say the least when the country is struggling with poverty and insecurity. Other Islamist groups in the country – such as al-Ittihad al-Islami and the Islamic Council Union – have balanced the implementation of sharia with law, order and attempts to address social welfare issues. Al-Shabaab, she adds, has made no effort to connect its form of 'justice' to broader issues, 'calling into question whether it really has any clear programmatic goals or any sense of what a truly Islamic state would look like for Somalia'.

Both al-Shabaab and the Somali president use religious rhetoric to establish legitimacy and authority in the eyes of the international and domestic community. Both lay claim to being the true guardians of Islam. It could be that, by allying himself with people such as Salman al-Awadah, the Saudi Arabian scholar who set up Islam Today, and Abdullah Omar Naseef, president of the Muslim World League, that the Somali president is more interested in bolstering the transitional federal government (TFG) than trying to influence al-Shabaab, which has made it clear it is not interested in winning support among Muslim leaders.

Sharif's efforts may backfire and strengthen anti-TFG feeling among other Islamist groups or strengthen opposition to al-Shabaab. It is difficult to assess how effective a fatwa will be in a country where material, rather than spiritual, resources are so sorely lacking. The GCRG has invited me to Dubai to report on the conference, so I hope the assembled dignitaries will be able to shed some light on the motivation for a religious strategy, rather than a political one.

By refusing to bar BNP members from the classroom, the government is allowing these vile people to spread their hatred

The BNP's march into the mainstream moves forward. Fresh from their top-table seat on the BBC's Question Time (which marked International Women's Day with an all-female audience; it marked last year's Black History Month with an invite to Nick Griffin), party members have now been told that it's OK for them to teach our children.

In a review which will shock many members of the teaching profession, not to mention ethnic-minority parents, Maurice Smith, former chief inspector of schools, concludes: 'I do not believe that barring teachers or other members of the wider school workforce from membership of legitimate [sic] organisations which may promote racism is necessary.'

He reaches his decision because, in the last seven years, only four teachers, and two governors, have been found to be BNP members, and only nine incidents of teachers making racist remarks or holding racist materials have been uncovered. Banning BNP members would, he says, therefore be a 'taking a very large sledgehammer to crack a minuscule nut'.

Two things here are breathtaking: one is that a man who held such a senior position in the running of Britain's schools has such a one-dimensional and uninformed view of the issue of racism in our education system. Is he not aware of the underachievement statistics for many of Britain's racial minorities, widely believed to be party fuelled by low teacher expectations? Is he not aware of the massive rates of exclusions and disciplinary procedures against black boys?

Does he really believe that racism is all about making offensive remarks, rather than promoting, openly or covertly, a system of inequality and injustice? If that's the case, then, with people like him in charge, no wonder so little has been achieved in improving these statistics over the years.

He lists a number of bureaucratic 'safeguards' to prevent racism in schools, but this is utterly unconvincing. Schools equal-opportunity policies are notoriously ineffective in making real differences, merely satisfying the box-ticking mentality which pervades the education system. And the 'duty to promote social cohesion' is equality easy to subvert, the term often being used as a cover for anti-Muslim propaganda.

The second shocking development here is that his recommendations were immediately accepted in full by the schools secretary, Ed Balls.

Actually, given that all three parties are crawling over each other to win the votes of the 'white working class' – whom they now subconsciously equate with racism and bigotry – it shouldn't be a surprise.

Let's be clear: the BNP is a racist party. It is anti-migrant and defines those of non-white racial origin as permanent second-class citizens, regardless of whether they were born here. It has been forced against its will to admit ethnic-minority members, but that doesn't mean it's suddenly become a party of race equality. In fact, the handful of minority members the party may attract will be fellow Muslim-hating extremists.

So when Ed Balls, in his reply to Smith, begins, 'There is no place for racism in schools', he shows himself to be a complete hypocrite by then going on to agree with BNP teachers.

If he's OK with the party in the classroom, then he should be honest at least and say: 'Yes, there is a place for racism in schools.' And, to black and Asian families in particular: 'Yes, parents, when you leave your five-year-old at the school gates, we don't care if you're handing them over to someone who despises your race, despises your faith, and who wants to terrorise you and run you out of the country. As long as they don't say it so anyone can hear.'

The complacency, as the BNP gains council seats and could possibly even gain its first MP this year, is staggering.

It is often said that for evil to flourish, all it takes is for good people to do nothing. As the BNP's message of hate moves onwards, it is time for good people to take a stand.

Judge agrees with human rights watchdog that British National party's rewritten criteria for joining are still racist

The British National party was plunged into chaos yesterday, weeks before the general election, when a court ordered it to remove central beliefs and policies about race from its constitution.

In a landmark injunction at the Central London county court, a judge found that the BNP's membership policy remained discriminatory, even after a direct whites-only clause was removed last month.

The judge, Paul Collins, ordered the BNP to remove two clauses from its constitution as they were indirectly racist towards non-white would-be members.

The party also remains banned from signing up new recruits until it satisfies Collins it has changed the constitution, although it said last night that applications to join were being processed again.

In a further blow to the party's election hopes, it was ordered to pay an estimated £60,000 in legal costs. The bill could rise to £100,000 when its own legal fees are included.

While one offending clause is largely an administrative matter – a requirement that all new members agree to a vetting visit from BNP officials, something the judge found could intimidate non-white applicants – the other spells out core beliefs.

This is a requirement for members to believe in the 'continued creation, fostering, maintenance and existence' of an indigenous British race and action towards 'stemming and reversing' migration.

The BNP last month voted to remove a direct bar on non-white members after a legal challenge from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The government equalities watchdog then challenged the revised constitution on the grounds that ethnic minority Britons could still not subscribe to the party's beliefs without 'denying themselves'.
Collins ruled in favour of the commission, ordering the BNP to remove the offending clauses by Monday afternoon or face potential legal penalties.

The EHRC head of legal enforcement, Susie Uppal, said: 'Political parties, like any organisation, are obliged to respect the law and not discriminate against people who wish to become members.'

The BNP's leader, Nick Griffin, said the decision 'opens a very dangerous door. It's a huge change to the unwritten constitution of Britain. The judgment has given a government-appointed, taxpayer-funded quango the rights to change the aims and objectives of political parties.' The costs award would 'have some effect' on the BNP's election campaigning, but it would not be significant, he added.

Griffin said he had already amended the constitution so the clauses were removed from membership criteria. He insisted, however, that the beliefs about immigration and race would remain, even if members did not have to officially sign up to them. 'It won't make any practical difference to us. But it's hugely symbolic,' he said.

A spokesman for the anti-fascist campaign group Searchlight said: 'This judgment is a personal humiliation for Nick Griffin. The BNP has been proven in court to be as racist and extremist as ever.'

The millionaire Asian businessman Mo Chaudry, who had said he would apply to join the party to 'fight them from the inside', welcomed the ruling. He said: 'This was the only decision that could have been made today. There was no alternative.'

The decision follows weeks of wrangling over the legality of the far-right party's membership criteria. After the EHRC challenge last year, BNP members voted at an extraordinary general meeting a month ago to scrap the whites-only clause. BNP critics argue the party has no genuine interest in recruiting non-white members and is doing the minimum to avoid legal action and court costs.

An internal BNP memo seen by the Guardian this week told members that the party had not 'gone soft'. It continued: 'We don't expect any more than a handful of people of ethnic minority origin to apply to join the party nationally, and we will not let this deflect us from our political objectives of saving Britain and restoring the primacy of the indigenous British people.'

More than half a million travellers to be hit by strikes on successive weekends from 20 March

Muslims in the west need to find their own expression of the universal teachings of Islam

The death last month of the Swiss-born British Muslim Charles le Gai Eaton provided a reminder of the surprise that sometimes greets Europeans who have made the decision to convert to Islam. Eaton could be seen as a curiosity because he chose a faith not traditionally associated with his ethnicity. However, a defining aspect of Islam, from its inception, has been that it is race-blind.

There are three important aspects of Islam, as explained in the Qur'an. One is the specific Islam: that of the followers of the prophet Muhammad. The second is the general Islam, or submission to the will of God, described as being the path of the first humans and of all the great teachers and prophets, including Abraham, Moses and Jesus. The Qur'an also explicitly mentions that there were many other religious figures whom it does not name: 'We sent a messenger to every nation.' Islam in this sense is the original teaching of all the major world religions, and can be seen as the teachings upon which they all agree. Alongside this is the universal aspect of Islam seen through harmony with Nature, for 'everything in the heavens and the earth glorifies God'.

Understanding and living Islam properly needs an awareness of all of these levels, and more. Contrary to the adversarial picture of Islam fed by the actions of extremist groups and the publicity they garner in the media, notions of an ummah – nation of believers – apply not only to those who call themselves Muslims today, but to all who have faith in the one divinity and try to lead the goodly life in harmony with other creatures. In the same way, there are general and universal readings of sharia, as a law that seeks to protect and promote the fundamental principles of justice and compassion – principles that are again agreed upon by different religions and traditions.

A favourite slogan at Islamist marches and demonstrations, in which I used to participate as a young man, is: 'No east, no west – Islam is the best!' This is a typical political subversion of the true Qur'anic teaching that 'East and west belong to God: wherever you turn, there is the face of God.'

An authentic western Islam, understood at many levels and incorporating 'eastern' wisdom and spirituality, has attracted thousands of European converts and impressed many others such as Goethe, Florence Nightingale and George Bernard Shaw. Islam, of course, was a major force in Europe for centuries, with both the Andalusians in the west and the subjects of the Ottoman empire in the east at the same time Muslim and European.

One of the problems that Islam and Muslims now have in Europe is that we are often too eastern: from visibly different dress to traditional gender roles to a lack of emphasis on democracy and human rights. Eastern Islam does not sit well in the west, and is often rejected as alien and foreign. Racist individuals and groups can also easily hide their prejudice, pretending that they are upholding western values and ideals. Muslims often still speak about 'Islam and the west,' whereas we should be speaking about 'Islam in the west.' There are too many of us trying to replicate Saudi, Iranian, Pakistani, Egyptian or Syrian Islam in Europe and North America. What we need is simple: an authentic and organic expression of the universal teachings of the Qur'an in our various societies and contexts. The good news is that this is already happening, and is providing a powerful counterbalance to extremism and fundamentalism.

Terry Sanderson paints the Catholic bishops' pre-election statement as a cliche-ridden 'damp squib'. Judge for yourself

The question: Should religious leaders tell us how to vote?

The National Secular Society's Terry Sanderson thought the Catholic bishops' pre-election document a 'damp squib ... an extended and more than usually platitudinous Thought for the Day'. Why,'even we wicked non-believers could sign up for it', he declared.

Now I've told Terry before – it was on TV; I was in Jerusalem; Terry was objecting to Christmas – that Christians like me don't think he is especially wicked; not, at least, more wicked than most of us. But we do think what he says is silly.

He thinks that because the bishops did not threaten to excommunicate politicians or order cowering flocks to vote this way or that, they must have been saying nothing at all. This, essentially, is the secularist case against religion in politics. Either it is pernicious, and should be banned; or it is trite and irrelevant, in which case it need not be taken seriously.

What Terry cannot do is tell you what the bishops actually said. Choosing the Common Good, he informs us, 'didn't really have a political message at all'.

You judge. Here goes my summary – which, if you compare with the document itself, you'll find straightforward and accurate. As you read, ask yourself two questions. First, is it fair of Snderson to say that this is not political? Second, is the case the bishops are making one that Sanderson and other secularists would be happy to sign up to, as he declares?

1. The current economic and political crisis is essentially a crisis of institutions, a consequence of the loss of trust in and within them. In civil society, on the other hand, there are large reserves of goodwill and compassion and trust. The challenge of the current political moment, therefore, is how to renew our institutions by unleashing those reserves.

2. The key to doing this is to recover the proper role for civil society. The state and the market have grown too big. Relationships of contract – bureaucratic and financial – have come to dominate, eroding the relationships of gratuity and reciprocity which are the engine of civil society. The fruits of this erosion are to be seen in the decline of solidarity and the rise of an erroneous view of human beings as commodities whose relationships are limited to self-interest.

3. What holds communities together is 'social capital' – namely, relationships of trust and reciprocity. Social capital is built up in churches, mosques, associations, trade union branches, schools and other such places. A society's health may be judged by the strength of this social capital, which needs to be fostered and encouraged.

4. Trust will be rebuilt by encouraging the cultivation of virtue, beginning with an ethical reform of our institutions. Virtue in public life means a government which works for the common good, meaning the good of society as a whole. This starts with reducing and eliminating abortion, euthanasia, child poverty, infant mortality and all that erodes the value of life; it means putting in place proper care of the elderly and working to overcome entrenched poverty and inequality. It means opposing unjust discrimination , and ensuring that the cost of economic recovery is not borne by those who have least. It means ensuring that the asylum and immigration system does not sacrifice human dignity and the inalienable rights of migrants. It means politicians not playing one community off against another for electoral gain. It means working to reduce environmental damage and discouraging reckless consumerism.

5. The strength of civil society is built first of all in the family. Government policies should support marriage and stable relationships through access to affordable housing and employment which recognizes family commitments.

6. One of the bedrocks of civil society is faith. Religious institutions and charities contribute to the common good in countless ways. It is not just freedom of worship which needs to be respected but freedom of religion. Communities of faith have a right to operate in the public forum through, for example, partnerships with the state, and to witness to the convictions which nourish them. The state threatens them when it fails to protect their freedom to operate, placing obstacles in their way, or restricting their right to contribute to political debate.

'I had no way of reaching him, and had to face the truth – if Getu was alive, he'd have found me'

Ten years ago, we landed at Heathrow on a grey morning. Just months earlier, our lives had been so different. My father had a successful business in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, we had a lovely home and went to a good school. I was 16, and had a boyfriend I adored. Everything was mapped out: Getu and I would marry, have children and grow old together.

But the war with Eritrea changed everything. My parents were from there, so overnight they became the enemy. My father was imprisoned and we were ordered to leave. My six older siblings fled to the countryside. My mother took my nine-year-old sister and me into hiding. Soon after, she announced we were leaving the country. I wanted to tell Getu and rang his neighbour, but he wasn't home. I cried all the way to the airport; it was only then I found out we were heading for the UK.

For three weeks we lived in a hostel in London. I was desperate to call him, but we were penniless and phone cards cost a fortune. By the time we were moved to Manchester, my mother had sunk into a depression. It was up to me to sort out benefits and education. Virtually every penny went on food and bus fares, but eventually I scraped enough for a phone card. 'Getu's left,' his neighbour told me.

I had no way of reaching him, and had to face the truth – if Getu was alive, he'd have found me. I grieved in secret; my mother had enough to worry about, as we feared deportation and longed for news of my father. I threw myself into my studies, becoming fluent in English and working as an interpreter. Then we heard my father had died while being deported to Eritrea; he'd had health problems, and was treated badly in prison. He was 49. With him gone, there was nothing for us back home.

I started going out with a fellow student. We married in 2002 and Maysoun arrived two years later. But, deep down, I knew the marriage wasn't working. Much as I tried to deny it, I'd never stopped loving Getu. Four years later, we separated.

By now I was managing a refugee centre. Helping vulnerable newcomers gave me huge satisfaction. As a single mother, I didn't get out much, so after tucking Maysoun up I'd spend hours on Facebook, joyfully rediscovering friends who'd fled Ethiopia. When my old schoolfriend Saada popped up on screen, now in Australia, I squealed in disbelief. Minutes later, my computer pinged. 'Sysay,' came her reply, 'I've just been home and you'll never guess who I met? Getu – he's fine, and he's never stopped looking for you,' she said, adding his phone number.

I started to laugh, then cry – Getu was alive. It took a couple of days to pluck up the courage to call, but impulse soon took over. I punched the last digit and held my breath. It rang, and then I heard his voice for the first time in eight years. I got as far as saying his name before I began crying. 'Sysay?' he asked incredulously. 'Is that you?' Then he was crying, too. We began to talk; an hour flew by. We phoned regularly after that and emailed constantly. We were desperate to see each other and started saving furiously.

Last April, Getu was granted a temporary visa. I was so nervous waiting at Heathrow. The last time I'd been here was as a frightened teenager; now I was a 26-year-old mother. The arrivals door opened and a figure broke free from the crowd. My heart gave its familiar leap at the sight of his face. Oblivious to the crowd around us, he got down on one knee. 'I've wanted to do this for so long and I'm not waiting a minute longer,' he said. 'Sysay, will you marry me?' All I could do was nod. A ring flashed as he put it on my finger and applause broke out.

Those first few months weren't always easy: we were embarking on a relationship that was so different from the one we'd had as teenagers. He was suddenly dependent on me; I was working, fluent in English and used to Britain. But we were determined to make it work.

Last July – 20 years after we first met – we finally married. A traditional Ethiopian song played as I walked up the aisle, but our vows were in English – this is our home now. After, we had a small party back at home. It was all we wanted, and needed. When you've been separated as long as we were, what you appreciate most is time together. We never take it for granted.

• As told to Fiona Duffy

French president says Britain needed 'bang in heart of Europe' and tells Cameron he doesn't understand Tory euroscepticism

Coming from opposing ends of the ideological spectrum, Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown aren't supposed to be political brothers in arms.

However, at a Downing Street press conference yesterday the French president chose to lavish praise on the prime minister, coming close to siding with him on the issue of Europe and saying Britain was needed 'bang in the heart of Europe', while expressing regret at David Cameron's decision to quit the European People's Party.

'If you ask me whether I would prefer the Tories to remain within the EPP, the answer is yes. The EPP is a good bunch of people. Opening up to others is a very good thing,' Sarkozy said.

He went on to meet the Tory leader later at the French ambassador's residence in London, but the Conservatives said he only pressed the point of their decision to quit the EPP in passing. The meeting between the two sides had been very warm, the Conservatives said.

Brown and Sarkozy said they had made progress on bridging their differences on the future regulation of off-shore hedge funds, and they hoped a compromise agreement on a directivecould be reached in time for an EU finance ministers meeting next Tuesday.

The Americans are opposing adirective that means US hedge funds – or funds operating from London, but registered for tax outside Europe – would need authorisation from each of the EU countries. Sarkozy spoke warmly of the prime minister, saying: 'I have found in Gordon Brown a convincing and convinced reformer, and hand in glove we have tried to find the right answers when the economic and financial crisis almost swept us all away.'

He added: 'I know we have differences: he is British and I am French. He is a socialist and I am not. That is not as serious as the first point. We have always worked in a spirit of partnership and trust.'

The French have been building contacts with the shadow cabinet in a series of meetings, but remain perplexed by Tory scepticism, saying they cannot find the intellectual basis for this criticism.

By its continued settlement expansion, Israel makes the two-state solution ever harder to realise

Politics is ultimately about interests. Morals and highfalutin principles have their place, but a more reliable truth is that governments and countries usually act in their own self-interest. Usually. The way Israel greeted the visiting US vice-president, Joe Biden, this week offers an intriguing exception to the rule, a rare instance of a state acting in a way that brings itself almost no benefit and delivers a huge amount of self-inflicted harm.

Instead of embracing Mr Biden, Israel showed him the finger, choosing the very day of his visit to announce the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem. That counts as an in-your-face insult to a US administration that has demanded Israel freeze all settlement activity in the territories conquered in 1967, which include East Jerusalem. Little wonder that President Obama was said to be 'incandescent with anger', spending 90 minutes on the phone to his deputy drafting a statement of condemnation rare for its ferocity.

The Israeli press has been full of conflicting explanations for this extraordinary behaviour. Some suggest Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, was a fool, haplessly unaware that a lower-level planning committee was about to make the move. Others wonder if Mr Netanyahu was a knave, seeing some perverse value in advertising Israel's defiance, demonstrating to the world that it can, in the words of one senior European official, 'put sticks in the Americans' eyes' and get away with it. As one Israeli commentator has put it, neither of these possible explanations are very attractive: they are like choosing between plague and cholera.

The harm done to Israel's own interests is huge. It is bad enough to insult your most loyal ally, especially when that ally happens to be the sole superpower, with unique influence over the region. But it is positively reckless to insult the figure widely acknowledged to be Israel's greatest friend within the entire US administration, a man who proudly calls himself a Zionist.

Above all, Israel's move came just as the US was set to announce a new round of proximity talks with the Palestinians. Predictably, those have now been jeopardised. And yet what is the ultimate aim of those talks and the entire Middle East peace process? It is the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel. That scenario is the preferred outcome of a vast international consensus, but it is also, as most Israelis now recognise, in the best interests of Israel itself. By its continued settlement expansion, and its cack-handed treatment of its friends, Israel makes the two-state solution ever harder to realise. That is not just bad news for the Palestinians; it is bad for Israel.