The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 2

2 1 NEWS The Guardian Friday March 22 1996 Poll proposals called loppy and a dog's breakfast but ministers are confident of riding out boycott risk runs into flak 'one invited to the party Ulster plan Every Patrick Wlntour and David Sharrock Legislation for elections to 110 strong forum introduced at Easter Elections on May 30. Elections in 18 constituencies with voters putting one mark on ballot paper; seats distributed on list proportionally according to votes for parties within constituency. Extra 20 seats for top 10 parties, ensuring Unionist paramilitary involvement. Government unconvinced by call for referendum. Forum to meet alongside all-party talks.

Negotiators to all-party talks to be drawn from forum on equal numbers per party basis. Negotiators must commit themselves to Mitchell principles. IRA must reinstate ceasefire for Sinn Fein to be involved in talks. future stumbling blocks to the peace process. Mr Major reached his solution on the electoral system after he was unable to broker an agreement between Ulster Unionist support for elections on a constituency basis and SDLP-Democratic Unionist backing for all-province elections.

The Labour leader, Tony Blair, yesterday said that the electoral system was not ideal, but nor was the political situation. The Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ash-down, said that the system was "a dog's breakast, but the best dog's breakfast Irish government officials noted that while there had been much criticism of the plan, no party had committed itself to boycotting the election. chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, said the election was "complete anathema" to nationalists. However, Northern Ireland ministers are privately confident that the political parties will not boycott the elections, which have been crafted to ensure that all parties, including those linked to the Protestant paramilitaries, are represented. The elections, to an 110-member forum, will be held on May 30.

Eighteen constituencies will each elect five members. The electorate will vote for a party rather than individuals, and consistency seats will later be allocated proportionately. The remaining 20 seats to the forum will be allocated to the top 10 political parties, measured by the aggregate vote across the province. votes in the elections, but instead all parties will be given an equal number of seats. The talks are due to start on June 10.

Mr Major insisted that the system would not appear complex to voters since the ballot paper will require them to cast only one vote. Sinn Fein will be free to stand for the elections without an IRA ceasefire, but unequivocal restoration of the ceasefire of August 1994 will be required before they can take part in all-party talks. At the outset of the talks all participants will be required to sign up to the non-violent principles set out by the Mitchell Commission. A start to arms decommissioning will not be required at the beginning of the talks, something that infuriated Unionists yesterday and foreshadowed one of the biggest all-party talks, but only those elected will be entitled to participate in them. Seats at the talks will not be distributed according to the Fears grow of if she looked as if she'd spent the night in a shop doorway.

If the people of Northern Ireland really thought nothing should stand in the way of peace, they would vote for the Alliance, the only party committed to peace rather than victory. In fact, the Alliance will get around 10 per cent, which has always been the total vote for moderation in Northern Ireland. Oddly enough, the SDLP view was not presented by the Blessed John Hume, but by his side-kick, Seamus Mallon (Newry). While Mr Hume sits on the bench being saintly, Mr Mallon gets on with being very, very cross. The new forum had no support in the nationalist community, he said.

It was a Unionist-inspired, Unionist-dominated prototype of their preferred structure, even before negotiations began. "Will you accept there is no broad support in the nationalist community for this elective process? It is divisive and nonsensical, the Monster Raving Loony Election Proposal!" Messrs Mallon and Hume come from the misty border lands, where most of the populace feels far more Irish than British. They mistrust elections because all they prove is one uncomfortable fact that there are an awful lot of Unionists to the north and the east. Of course, if there weren't, there wouldn't be a problem. But the Irish problem is a set of interlocking vicious circles.

Mr Major lold Mr Mallon that he had "done himself no You can always tell when the Prime Minister is rattled, because, rather than answering the question, he accuses the other side of moral turpitude. Dennis Skinner said that the whole deal had been patched up to buy votes for the Government to keep them in office. Mr Major denied this, and I suspect he was telling the truth. The trouble is that nobody really believes anything this Government says any more. There was a time when, if a minister in a dark suit and a bowler hat told you it was safe to eat beef, you would believe him.

No you treat him like a double-glazing salesman who promises the aluminium frames won't buckle. renewed war in the Balkans Leader comment, page 16 On both sides, the ruling parties still dominate the media, making it hard to envisage the "free and fair elections" due to be supervised by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. With foreign ministers from the five-nation Contact Group meeting their counterparts from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia in Moscow tomorrow, concern is mounting sharply in both Washington and London about the future. Foreign Office sources say the Muslim-Croat federation is dangerously fragile, and the absence of a "peace dividend" for rump Yugoslavia is pushing Serbia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, eastwards to engage with Russia and China rather than the West. Carl Bildt, the co ordinator of the civilian implementation effort, has already asked Nato for help in providing security for the elections expected in September.

This means that original plans to start withdrawing the force in Juno would have to be shelved and increases the chances of the departure date being delayed. The White House fears any new throat of international disruption to President Bill Clinton's re-election campaign, after setbacks to his peacemaking claims in Northern Ireland and Israel. Dayton is the prime exhibit in his diplomatic showcase. Ed Vulllamy adds from Vu-kovar. Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the United Nations, came under a light hail of stones and a barrage of insults hurled by a Serb mob as she toured Vukovar in eastern Croatia yesterday.

The ambush cut short her walkabout, with nervous security officers insisting she leave. Nato chief fails to sway Russia, page 12 JOHN Major yesterday came under fire from every major Northern Ireland party after publication of byzantine compromise proposals for elections designed to open the way to all party talks. The nationalist SDLP claimed he had created "a monster raving loony electoral Seamus Mallon, the SDLP deputy leader, said the proposals, which are designed to reopen the path to all-party talks, were divisive, nonsensical and a sop to Unionists, as well as a diversion from the real task of all-party talks. The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, said Mr Major had bowed to a Unionist agenda, while the party's A reconstruction of one of the Modern peril seen in ashes of lost clan John Ezard DISCOVERY of the remains of one of the lost clans of Scotland provided a new text for doomsayers yesterday. The habitat in which they had flourished for millennia was destroyed within a few months by acid rain.

That was 3,000 years ago. The acid came from a periodic eruption by an Icelandic volcano. But at least the clan had time to get away. We may not be so lucky after the next eruption which is overdue, according to a vulcanologist. The finding of the big abandoned settlement, by archaeologists excavating a future Highlands road realignment, led to grim predictions that Europe-wide havoc could be caused in a 1995-style summer by carbon dioxide from Mount Katla in south-east Iceland.

One of Britain's leading Simon Hoggart FACED with the job of choosing between innumerable different forms of election for Northern Ireland, each passionately favoured by one party or another, the Government has got round the problem by electing everybody. Not quite everybody, of course, but almost anyone who would like to be elected can be. The deal seems to be that roughly half the people will take part in the forum, so the other half can be hired to stop them killing each other. The 110 people in the new forum will represent the population of Northern Ireland, which is l'i million. It's as if the House of Commons were to have 4,445 members.

(Not such a bad idea; at least they might fill the place now and again.) The Prime Minister explained the system. Every constituency will have five members. But there will be an extra clutch of seats for the other, minor, parties giving places to cranks and fringe groups such as Screaming Lord Sutch, the Conservative Party and so forth. The plan was accepted by most MPs, if somewhat grudgingly. Mr Ashdown said it was "a dog's breakfast.

But it is the only dog's breakfast on offer, and it may be the best dog's breakfast available. (Admiring his glossy coat and shiny nose, I have sometimes suspected that Mr Ash-down eats a vitamin-enriched dog's breakfast every morning.) Mr Blair sort of welcomed the plan, adding: "Nothing should stand in the way of peace. Iam quite certain that is the view of the people of Northern Ireland." This is the boilerplate language politicians feel obliged to use about Ulster, rather in the way that the Queen Mum was always described on tele-vision as even Balance tilted by Michael Billington Mary Stuart Lyttelton I NEVER thought I'd see the day: Schiller at the National Theatre. Long after Greenwich and Glasgow, the South Bank catches up with his famous 1800 romantic tragedy, Mary Stuart, in which two worlds, queens and religions collide. Although Howard Da-vies's production is far from perfect, I commend the evening to anyone who cares about the history of drama or the drama of history.

What is so impressive about Schiller's play is what George Steiner calls "the balance of doom." Mary Stuart, fettered in Fofherlngay and and propelled inexorably towards Catholic martyrdom, is a tragic figure. But so is her Protestant persecutor, Elizabeth 1, cocooned in power and forced to sacrifice her humanity in order to extinguish her rival. Even if their confrontation is one of history's great imaginary conversations, the play is still that rare thing: a dual tragedy. It doesn't, however, work quite that way in Davies's pro-i duction. Seductive on paper, Martin Walker in Washington and Ian Black In London THE United States and British governments warned yesterday of an explosion of renewed conflict in the Balkans by the year's end unless urgent action is taken to shore up the battered Dayton peace accord.

The grim predictions came amid signs that officials in Europe and the US are again preparing to blame each other if as they fear the Bosnian ceasefire collapses. "The overall strategic political goals of the former warring factions in the Balkans have not fundamentally changed," Lieutenant-General Patrick Hughes, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, told the US senate intelligence committee in a report written last month and declassified yesterday. "Without a concerted effort by the international community, including substantial progress on the civil sector to restore economic viability to provide for conditions in which national political stability can be achieved, the prospects for the existence of a viable, unitary Bosnia beyond the life of I-For the Nato implementation Force are dim." White House fears of a new eruption during the US presidential election have been fuelled by the failure of Islamic nations to provide funds to train and equip Bosnia's armed forces, and by European reluctance to keep troops there if US forces pull out as planned in the autumn. British officials are also gloomy, warning that after the Serb exodus from Sarajevo hopes for reconciliation are gone, and that prospects for elections, a key element of the Dayton process, are poor. roundhouses used by the clan, ago after an Icelandic eruption Each party will be allocated two seats.

The forum, which will have a maximum lifespan of two years, will not have a direct input into the which died off 3,000 years people to leave or starve," DrGribbensaid. Archaeologists found volcanic ash in the soil, together with SO Bronze Age roundhouses, tools, the remains of stone walls up to three feet high, hut-circles, grain samples and decorative banded ornaments. The senior archaeologist, Rod McCullagh, said: "We do not know what language they spoke, where they were from or what they were called. What we can say is that there was a settled, sophisticated and well ordered farming community in this glen which suddenly died off. "This site is very important because we are able to see the bigger picture and not just a few isolated burial cairns." advertising on Commercial Radio, Archaeologist Alan Duffy pieces together a clan burial urn of doom casting the casting of Isabelle Huppert and Anna Massey as the rival queens leads to a certain imbalance.

Huppert is a volatile, vixenish, and headstrong Mary, who acts with every inch of her expressive body. However, the combination of her verbal speed and heavy accent renders many of her speeches semi-comprehensible. Nothing in her life, however, becomes her like the leaving of it, and in her final exit into martyrdom, Huppert cuts a touching figure. Anna Massey, however, is a flawless Elizabeth. Even when surrounded by courtiers, she seems steeped in solitude.

And even though she is filled with the duplicity of despotism, she makes something overwhelmingly moving out of the scene where she is confronted by an imploratory letter from Mary. The other plus points in Davies's production include Tim Pigott-Smifh's Machiavellian Leicester, James Grout's honourable Talbot, and Jeremy Sams's translation, full of ironic intelligence. On the minus side, the mix of period costumes for the two queens and 19th-century rig for the chaps produces a bizarre stage-picture and William Dudley's set is a bit of a jumble. Award for Guardian man THE Guardian's Eamonn McCabe (right) was last night named picture editor of the year at the Nikon Press Awards at London's Grosvenor House Hotel. It is the third time that McCabe has won the award.

He previously took the title in 1 992 and 1993. The award Is based on nominations received from all photographers entered for the annual awards. The judges said McCabe was a clear winner. McCabe, aged 47, has been the picture editor of the Guardian since 1 988. Before that he specialised in sports photography for the Observer.

The last volcanic sulphur cloud to reach Britain came when the Laki Fissure, near Mount Katla, erupted in 1783, casting a hot, dry, suffocating and crop-blighting fog as far as Naples. The smell of sulphur was so strong that Christians feared hell had arrived on Earth. The writer and politician Horace Walpole spoke of "a constant mist that gives no dew but might as well be The poet Thomas Cowper wrote: "The sun sets with the face of a hot salamander and rises with the same complexion." Recently Dr Gribben, of the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, published a research paper which found that these volcanic emissions were concentrated by a zone of stable high pressure over Europe between late June and July, 1783. The pattern was similar to the persistent high pressure which caused last summer's long heatwave. The paper concludes: "The coincidence of a summer like 1995 with a large(ish) Italian or Icelandic volcanic eruption will have severe consequences for human health in urban environments." Dr Gribben added yesterday: "If the results are as severe as the Laki Fissure outpouring in 1783, crops will be ruined, fish will die in the rivers, a thick toxic fog will drift over the country and asthma sufferers ail over Europe will be in danger." contact your advertising agency.

vulcanologists, John Grib-ben, said yesterday: "The air quality in our major cities in these conditions is now so poor that the addition of several million tonnes of carbon dioxide could be catastrophic. We have made ourselves extremely vulnerable. Sooner or later we will have a major eruption somewhere which will coincide with low air quality. Katla erupts on a 50-year cycle." The 400-strong clan, which lived at a time when King Solomon was building the temple in Jerusalem, was destroyed when up to half a tonne of acid per acre fell on its three miles of land in the Glen Shin, Sutherland. "That made the soil infertile for years and forced For more Information about.