Of possible UDF choices, only Mr Barre is thought capable of giving the two Gaullists a real challenge.. While friends, colleagues and admirers were toasting the work of the revered couturier Madame Gres last September at the opening of a retrospective of her work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, nobody suspected that she had died almos t 10 months previously. Her death was announced only yesterday, after a gap of over a year during which it had been kept a secret by her daughter, Anne Gres. Yesterday, Le Monde newspaper reported that the daughter had kept the death a secret “out of love”, but friends and colleagues of Mme Gres were left feeling hurt that they had not been allowed to pay tribute to the couturier after her death in a retirement home in La Vallette, in the Var region of France on 24 November last year. Richard Martin, the curator of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was surprised at the news and described Anne Gres’s strange behaviour as “shocking and bizarre”. Mme Gres, he said, was a public figure.
In the five years he spent researching the exhibition, Richard Martin wrote to the Gres family but received no replies. Nor did Mr Martin come across any close friends of the couturier who’s clients included American socialite Mrs Randolph Hearst.“It was our assumption she was alive and too frail to travel,” said Mr Martin.Perhaps the strangest twist in the story is a letter received in October by the trade newspaper Women’s Wear Daily after the opening of the exhibition.

The letter was from Mme Gres but now it is believed to have been written by the daughter. Anne Gres’smotives for concealing the death remain unknown.Obituary, page 26. Milan (Reuter) – Silvio Berlusconi was questioned for several hours in a graft investigation by Milan’s “Clean Hands” magistrates yesterday as his government staggered ever closer to collapse. They say more heroin and cocaine enter Spain through its north-western region of Galicia. Perhaps, s a y critics of the smuggling, but Britain is not responsible for Galicia.Although still a cornerstone of the Gibraltar economy, cigarette smuggling has actually dropped because open EU borders have led to an increase in cigarette smuggling into Spain from Portugal and France. “The place is on the verge of economic collapse and unless Gibraltar cleans its act up, they’re not goingto be able to stop it.”British diplomats here and in Madrid admit they are concerned over the tobacco smuggling but play down the extent of drugs running and money-laundering.

Not so with the several thousand British residents or workers, many of whom commute from Spain and who complain angrily that they were discriminated against by a 1993 law pushed through by MrBossano that makes it more difficult for a Briton to work here than a Spaniard or other EC member.”The smuggling has got out of hand, says Jackie Fielding, who has been a travel agent here for 18 years and runs the British Citizens’ Association. “It would be a very serious step.Section 86 of Gibraltar’s 1969 constitution says: “There is reserved to Her Majesty full power to make laws from time to time for the peace, order and good government of Gibraltar (including, without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, laws am e nding or revoking this constitution).”Any such British intervention would not go down well here. Mr Bossano, a former trade-union leader, was re-elected by a landslide in 1992 and his “self-determination” stand against both Britain and Spain appears to have maintained his popularity among Gibraltarians, many of whom benefit from the smuggling spin-off. Every year, more and more drugs have been confiscated in the area and the problem is still increasing.”For the first time since Gibraltar’s constitution as a dependent territory was drawn up 25 years ago, the British Government, irked by Mr Bossano’s go-it-alone policies and feet-dragging over EU directives, is believed to have discussed using the Queen’s”reserved powers” to go over the heads of the local government.

Foreign Office officials have dropped hints of some kind of” direct action” to speed up implementation of EC directives, although Foreign Office spokesmen and the Governor’s offi c e here deny any dramatic move is imminent.”The present British Government would bend over backwards to ensure this was not necessary,” said one Whitehall source. The Spanish Foreign Minister, Javier Solana, says “illicit trafficking andmoney-laundering” in Gibraltar will top his agenda in London talks next week with the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd.”Tobacco smuggling is robbing Spain of income and drug smuggling is affecting the health of Spanish citizens,” a Spanish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.”That’s important to us. And the Gibraltar government of Chief Minister Joe Bossano makes a fortune. The more cigarettes that come in – legally, mostly from the US but in quantities that would have killed off the entire smoking population of Gibraltar years ago had this been their final destination – the more money the government makes, perfectly legally, on import duty.What is increasingly worrying London is that Gibraltar, part of the EU as a dependent territory of Britain, has been failing to comply with EU directives intended to curb money-laundering and other deviations from normal banking practice. It has built upa huge backlog of such directives, which has led the European Commission to send what some diplomats called “threatening letters” to London.In July Britain appointed a special Financial Services Commissioner, John Millner, to head a watchdog body overseeing the territory’s banking sector.Spain’s best-known anti-corruption judge, Baltasar Garzon, insists his investigations into Colombian and other drug rings often lead to a money-laundering connection in Gibraltar. Hence the Rollers and Corvettes you’ll see around here.”Multi-million pound cigarette smuggling, rising drugs traffic using Gibraltar-based boats and growing reports of money-laundering by big-time crooks, including Arabs and Colombians based on Spain’s Costa del Sol, are causing increasing concern in both Whitehall and Madrid.What angers Spain, whose tobacco retail industry is state-controlled, is that it loses hundreds of millions of pounds a year to the illegal trade from Gibraltar. It’s blatant, virtually unchecked, even condoned,” the Briton said.”It’swhen they leave empty that worries me.

That means they’re on the cannabis run, or nowadays often for heroin, between Morocco and Spain.“The other day, one of those lads came in from a `cruise’ and left a black rubbish bag for safekeeping behind the bar of a waterfront pub.`Don’t lose it, mate, there’s 90 grand in there’, he told the barman. The young men are known here as The Winston Boys but the rising price range of their sports cars suggests more and more are moving into the richer drugs trade.
“When the boats leave stacked with Winstons, they’re going to make a few grand in a matter of minutes with a quick run to La Atunara [a fishing village across the Spanish frontier]. Cocky young men with pony tails and earrings strutted around the harbour, where the odd open door of quayside warehouses revealed mountains of cartons of Winston cigarettes guarded by burly bodyguards and Alsatians. .