Mr Dole’s campaign manager Scott Reed made the urgent entreaty at an meeting with Perot in Dallas

Mr Dole’s campaign manager Scott Reed made the urgent entreaty at an meeting with Perot in Dallas. The results of the session were not clear last night, though an unnamed Reform Party source said in advance that it was unlikely Perot would end his candidacy.
A spokeswoman for Mr Perot said she was not aware of any Perot-Reed meeting but stated emphatically: “Mr Perot has no intention of quitting the race, no intention whatsoever.” The Dole campaign team was not available for comment.Whatever the outcome, the plea was evidence of the deep frustration within the Dole campaign as the 1996 campaign entered the final 12 days with Mr Clinton ahead by 15 points or more in the polls.Republican sources said the decision to make a pitch for Mr Perot’s endorsement grew out of internal discussions about how to shake up the race in the closing days.An endorsement by Mr Perot could swing several states in Dole’s favour, especially in the Mountain West. Yesterday’s vote was taken a day after the US and EU ambassadors indicated Slovakia must improve its record on democratic reform and commitment to the rule of law if it wants to join the EU and Nato Reuter – Bratislava. Washington (AP) – In a dramatic bid to revive his White House campaign, Bob Dole dispatched his top aide yesterday to urge Ross Perot to quit the presidential race and endorse the Republican ticket.

King Albert of Belgium called for international co-operation to stamp out the kind of exploitation of children and trade in humans seen in his country’s paedophile scandal. In Japan for a five-day state visit, the king said Belgium and Japan must “act resolutely against these two terrible moral plagues”, and added that “co-operation between nations [is] urgently needed” Reuter – Tokyo. The Slovak parliament brushed aside worries about the country’s relationship with Nato and the European Union by approving the first of several controversial laws. Deputies of the three-party coalition approved a law giving the public prosecutor’s office unprecedented supervisory and executive powers which even President Michal Kovac has rejected. Dr Claude Gubler had already been sentenced to a four-month suspended sentence for breaching medical secrecy by revealing in Le Grand Secret that Mitterrand had allegedly misled the French people for over a decade about his illness Reuter – Paris.

A court ordered Francois Mitterrand’s doctor to pay 340,000 francs (pounds 44,000) in damages to the late French President’s relatives, and upheld a ban on the book disclosing details of his fatal cancer. Michael Howard, editor at the English-language The Middle East Times, said the censors blocked the paper because it failed to remove the front- page teaser to an article which it had already withdrawn analysing 15 years of rule by Hosni Mubarak.
The ban at the Arabic al-Dustour came after it ran a picture of Benjamin Netanyahu with a Nazi swastika on his forehead” Reuter – Cairo. Kedah’s Chief Minister, Sanusi Junid, announced his government will dedicate November to cleaning toilets in schools, restaurants, coffee shops, hospitals, offices and bus stations. Broken toilets will also be fixed as part of the “Toilet Cleaning Month” AP – Kuala Lumpur.

Egypt has banned the distribution of two weekly newspapers because of material rejected by censors, their chief editors said. And, on the side of his apartment building, is a large red poster to help the fund-raising – naming all the residents and listing the amount of their individual donations.. Malaysia’s Kedah state wants to have the cleanest public toilets in the country. A good revolutionary base in the mountains does not always make a base for economic reform.The cost of the Mao statue has mostly been raised through public “donations”, like that of Liang Zhibing, a 74-year-old former Red Army soldier, who gave a whole month’s pension. “According to Chinese customs, 60 is more important than 50,” mumbled Mr Zhuo.The truth is that, until recently, Yanan was too poor for such diversions. After that we did not apply for permission.”There were no events at all to mark the 50th anniversary of the Long March a decade ago. Strangely, this will be the first Mao statue in “sacred” Yanan.

Zhuo Youcai, the general secretary of the Yanan District Administrative Department, said: “We had the idea [for a statue] during the Cultural Revolution, but it did not get approved. A huge square has been levelled and a plinth erected in anticipation of the arrival of a large bronze statue of Mao. He has been written out of the anniversary script.Another bit of revolutionary tidying up may be necessary at the monument in the “Date Garden” where Mao made his famous “Serve the People” speech, but where the locals have since set up basketball posts.Outside the town’s museum will be the anniversary’s piece de resistance. This is the unmarked former home of Lin Biao, revolutionary hero-turned-traitor whose coup plot was thwarted in 1971.