Hong Kong catching a dose of Cradockitis

PEOPLE

He did away with the plumed hat. Now Chris Patten has dispensed with some diplomatic niceties as his days as Governor of Hong Kong dwindle. Addressing the colony's legislature yesterday, Mr Patten said his critics' gloomy forecasts were undermining Hong Kong's future. Sir Percy Cradock, who negotiated the 1997 handover to China, was among the "retired dyspeptic ambassadors" who accuse Mr Patten of alienating China through his attempts to expand democracy.

"There's the world of difference between pointing to possible dangers in the future ... and saying the rule of law after 1997 is a dead duck," said Mr Patten, who won the first no-confidence motion against a Hong Kong governor in 154 years of British rule. The colony, he said, was suffering from an epidemic of "Cradockitis", whose symptoms include arguing "Hong Kong is doomed unless people agree with you".

Is Lech Walesa looking for a new image before the Polish presidential elections late this year? Perhaps, but that's not why he shaved off his trademark moustache. "It will be back," an aide said.

Mr Walesa's moustache has been almost as famous as he has been since he led the Gdansk shipyard strike of 1980, launching the Solidarity movement.

He shaved off the moustache while on a recent holiday, a break interrupted before the hair could grow back. The bushy black of his union leader days has given way to a more clipped, presidential grey. What will the new version be like? Thin lines, like Bob Geldof's? The world waits with anticipation.

After six years of the relative silence of house arrest in Rangoon, Aung San Suu Kyi wants a telephone. "I must do something about that right away," she said, despite fears that "it will never stop ringing".

Ms Suu Kyi would like a phone so she can call her family, particularly her husband, Michael Aris, and their two sons, who live in Oxford. "That is the only reason why I would like to install a phone quickly ... the only way I can communicate with them is by ringing them."

In addition to her family, a host of world leaders would probably like to ring as well, to personally congratulate Ms Suu Kyi on her freedom.

If she wants to communicate with Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian leader, Ms Suu Kyi might well consider the Internet. The Georgian parliament has a special on-line link installed by the US Agency for International Development, thus bypassing the former Soviet Union's notoriously poor telephone system.

Mr Shevardnadze said the Internet could help keep the world keep in touch with events in Georgia, but USAid officials haven't yet revealed his e-mail address.

MARYANN BIRD