91Èȱ¬

As I travel to work by Tube nearly every day, it was inevitable that sooner or later I would find a "secret" document that someone shouldn't have left behind on the train. This one, which was in a plain envelope marked "Confidential: PM's eyes only", is worth sharing with you. (Warning: I may have dreamt it, but I'll share it with you anyway.)

Here's what it said:

"Prime Minister:

"You asked for my honest appraisal of where you stand after Glasgow East, and for my thoughts on possible courses of action. I have no wish to depress you while you are on holiday with the family, but I do think I need to spell it out as I see it.

"First, is there any way you can recover from where you are now? I am sorry to say I think the answer is No. I think a combination of factors - 11 years in office, the end of a decade of economic growth, and your own difficulties connecting with the public mood - make the current situation irretrievable.

"If I am right, you have only three available options. First, you could hang on till you have to call an election, ie May 2010. Second, you could resign. Third, you could call an election this autumn.

"The disadvantage of Option 1 is that you will inevitably be seen as a lame duck, Major-type PM, in office, to coin a phrase, but not in power. There will be constant chatter in the press about leadership challenges, and it will become all but impossible to enact any legislation without seeing off endless backbench rebellions. The history books, I fear, will call you 'the least successful Labour Prime Minister ever, who hung on to office till the bitter end and took his party down to a crushing defeat.'

"The disadvantage of Option 2 is that it will look as if you have buckled under pressure, and whoever takes over from you - almost certainly Jack Straw - will be able to do no more than caretake until spring 2010, when he will be defeated and then resign. It is just possible that under Straw, the Labour defeat will be less catastrophic than under your leadership, but not by much.

"Which brings me to Option 3. This is the course of action that I favour: I suggest that before Parliament resumes, and just before the Conservative party conference, you tell the nation that you have come to the conclusion that it is your duty to clear the air and give voters a chance to decide which party they want to lead them out of economic crisis. You tell them honestly that you regret not having gone to the country a year ago, you admit that you may well lose, but you insist that you have a duty to put the interests of the country before your own or your party's.

"The likelihood is that Labour will lose anyway. But my estimate is that the losses will not be as heavy as they would be in a year or 18 months' time - and the verdict of history will be much kinder. 'He went to the country early, in the midst of an economic crisis, knowing that defeat was likely. After a decade as one of the country's most successful Chancellors ever, he put his job at PM on the line for the good of his party.' Something like that, anyway ...

"I'll be happy to go into this in more detail if you wish, but I thought you'd like a chance to mull it over while you're in Southwold."

The memo was unsigned, and as I say, I found it on the Tube (or I dreamt I did). Which means that Gordon Brown won't have seen it yet. Unless he reads this blog, of course ...

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I don't get to meet many alleged mass murderers in my line of business - which is probably just as well, because I don't much enjoy it.

My two encounters with Radovan Karadzic - in the days before he was indicted for genocide and war crimes, and was being wined and dined by European government leaders - remain imprinted on my memory as two of the most unpleasant experiences of my career.

The first time we met was at the height of the siege of Sarajevo. You may remember it: night after night, our TV screens showed people being shot at by snipers and shelled from the surrounding hills. So there he was, in the studio, the man everyone held responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in a vicious civil war.

I remember telling my colleagues that I would refuse to shake his hand. They ushered him into the studio ahead of me, I sat down opposite him and immediately began the interview. No pleasantries, no chit-chat. When it was over, I muttered a curt "thank you" and walked out.

On the second occasion, we met at his London hotel. He was late, and when he finally arrived, I saw him come into the lobby together with his wife, laden with shopping bags from some of London's best-known department stores. Again, I tried to keep the pleasantries to an absolute minimum.

He was, as many others have remarked, a man with a remarkable capacity for, shall we say, claiming as true things that few others believed. During the siege of Sarajevo, he insisted in our interview that there were no Serb snipers shooting at civilians. No Serb mortars being fired from the hills; no Serb guns firing at UN planes bringing in relief supplies; no "ethnic cleansing" of Muslim and Croat villages.

So now he is to face his accusers at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. His capture is a remarkable symbol of how a democratically elected government can dramatically change the political weather. I find it hard to believe that it is a coincidence that he was arrested just four days after the appointment of a new head of Serbia's police intelligence agency, replacing a man who was said to be a close ally of the former Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

Don't expect Karadzic's trial to start any time soon. I'd guess early next year is the earliest likely starting date, and proceedings will be, as they always are in such cases, lengthy. And expect to hear a lot about "command responsibility" - will the prosecution be able to prove that Karadzic himself was personally involved in the decisions that led to the killing of thousands, including the slaughter of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica?

Article 7 (3) of the international war crimes tribunal's lays down that the fact that crimes "were committed by a subordinate does not relieve his superior of criminal responsibility if he knew or had reason to know that the subordinate was about to commit such acts, or had done so and the superior failed to take the necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or to punish the perpetrators."

So it won't be enough for Karadzic to argue that he never ordered any massacres. (If you want to see the detail of what he's charged with, you can find it on the tribunal's website . But I warn you: it doesn't make pleasant reading.) The key allegation is that he "planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the destruction, in whole or in part, of the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat national, ethnic, racial or religious groups."

Or to use just a single word, genocide.

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It was nearly 12 years ago, in September 1996, that I rang the bell outside 's house near Sarajevo and asked if he'd like to talk to the 91Èȱ¬.

He had already been by the international war crimes tribunal -- but I had interviewed him twice before in London.

The fiction in 1996 was that no one knew where he was. The reality was that within a couple of days of arriving in Sarajevo, I'd been handed a piece of paper with a scribbled map on it, showing the precise location of the house where he was living, in Pale, in the hills outside the Bosnian capital.

As I made my way to the house, I stopped several times along the way to ask directions. "Excuse me, is this the way to Radovan Karadzic's house?" Everyone was very kind and gave me directions, even the Ghanaian officers at the UN police post just a couple of hundred metres from the house.

The point of the story is this: then, and for most of the time since then, plenty of people knew where he was. What changed tonight was that, at last, someone who knew was prepared to tell the people who wanted to know.

Serbia -- and -- are very different countries from what they were in the mid-1990s. In Belgrade there is now a democratically elected pro-Western government, which is anxious to be accepted as a potential member of the European Union. One of the conditions imposed by Brussels was that Radovan Karadzic and his military chief, General , had to be handed over to the war crimes tribunal.

Now, it looks as if at least one of them will be.

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Dear Senator Obama

Welcome to notAmerica. On behalf of all notAmericans, I hope you enjoy your few days with us, but you do know, don't you, that we don't have a vote on 4 November?

We don't really mind too much being extras in your campaign ads, because we are, after all, curious about you. You're obviously a star (why else would all three network TV news anchors be travelling with you?), and you may well be the next US president. So yes, of course, we'll turn out to see you, if we can find you - just as we would for any other US super-star.

We know you'll have to be careful not to look too much at home among us foreigners ... apparently some of your potential supporters are already wondering if you're not too foreign, what with your Kenyan dad, and your Indonesian childhood and everything. So we'll understand if you don't want to be photographed eating sauerkraut in Berlin, drinking red wine in Paris or playing cricket in London.

But I'm sure our political leaders will be delighted to be photographed with you ... they're quite superstitious in some ways, and they think that if they get really close, even just for a few minutes, some of that Obama magic dust might rub off on them. Don't attach too much importance to it, though - they all know the game well enough to understand that what you say to them now ("historic ties, deep bonds of friendship, valued allies, shared ideals" - all that kind of stuff) won't necessarily mean much if/when you move into the White House.

You've probably heard that if we notAmericans did get to vote, you'd be a shoo-in. But I imagine that doesn't thrill you too much, because the more we say we support you, the more suspicious some of your American folk might be. So, as I say, we'll understand if you seem a bit stand-offish.

The truth is we tend not to fall in love with politicians here in notAmerica - so we'll probably reserve judgment on you till we see what you do, rather than what you say. But you're welcome anyway, and if you want a nice warm glass of beer during the few hours you're planning to be in London, just call. I'm sure your people will be able to find my number ...

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Good news about the crime figures for England and Wales yesterday, wasn't it? According to the double-page headline in the : "A knife attack every 4 minutes."

Sorry, wrong headline. But even found something to worry about: "Crime rates expected to soar as economic difficulties deepen." Same figures, different headlines. Confused? So am I.

Here's how the put it in its announcement yesterday: "Crime in England and Wales fell by ten per cent since the previous year according to the 2007/08 British Crime Survey, and fell by nine per cent according to police recorded crime statistics."

Over the same period, said the 91Èȱ¬ Office, the risk of becoming a victim of crime has fallen from 24 to 22 per cent, and both overall crime and the risk of victimisation are now at their lowest ever levels since 1981. Violent crime, vandalism and vehicle-related thefts have all fallen (by 12 per cent, 10 per cent, and 11 per cent) and domestic burglary has remained stable.

Which all sounds pretty encouraging, doesn't it? So why, in heaven's name, do we read almost every other day of another ghastly knife crime, resulting in the death of another teenager on a city street? Well, for one thing, the survey on which these latest statistics are based doesn't talk to people under the age of 16 - so they will be of scant comfort to the families of Sunday Essiet, Amro Elbadawi, Lyle Tulloch, Arsema Dawit and David Idowu, to name but five of London's 21 knife murder victims so far this year. (The 91Èȱ¬ Office is now considering extending the remit of the British Crime Survey to include under 16s.)

And of course, our perception of crime (two-thirds of us think crime rates are going up) does not stem from a cool analysis of the latest official data: we read the papers, we watch the telly, and we gossip over the garden fence. And fear of crime can be nearly as damaging to the social fabric as crime itself.

As it happens, I was chairing a debate organised by the at Kings College, London, last night, to discuss the government's record on youth crime. (Its new Youth Crime Action Plan published earlier this week promised another £100 million "to stop young people from starting lives of crime" - to be spent on better prevention and support for victims; expansion of family intervention projects; and increasing the number of ASBOs and parenting orders.)

What the record shows is that since Labour came to power 11 years ago, the amount of money pumped into the youth justice system has gone up by no less than 45 per cent in real terms. Over the past few years, the number of first-time young offenders has dropped slightly - by about five per cent - but overall the youth crime picture hasn't changed much. So what happened to all the cash?

Well, most of it seems to have gone on keeping young offenders behind bars. Only about one-third has been spent on the sort of social welfare programmes that youth justice practitioners believe are most likely to reduce the number of young offenders.

Talk to the professionals, and they tell you that many young offenders are themselves victims, whether of abuse in the home or of crime outside it. They may have mental health problems, they may be homeless, or alcohol or drug abusers - yes, they need to be punished if they offend, but they also need help. And sometimes, perhaps, as with parenting orders, it's not clear whether what's on offer is meant as a punishment or as help. (We're going to be discussing some of these issues on tonight's programme, by the way.)

So what would you do about youth crime?

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You'll be delighted to know that the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, is looking after every last cent in these difficult times. Thanks to the Chicago Tribune's blog for highlighting his frugal taste in pens.

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Suppose you've got evidence that points strongly to someone being guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

But suppose you're told that if you charge him, many more people may well die, the conflict could worsen, and any hope of a meaningful process of negotiation would dwindle.

Do you prosecute, or don't you?

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has answered in the affirmative: he is seeking the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo's view is that he is a prosecutor, not a diplomat. For him, justice is what counts. And there are those who say you can have no real peace without justice.

On the other hand, where's the incentive for President Bashir to participate in meaningful negotiations if there's an arrest warrant for genocide hanging over him?

No wonder the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, who's just been in talks with the President in Khartoum reported on his : "I came away from Khartoum very concerned about the imminent risk of even higher levels of instability."

According to the former US special envoy for Sudan, : "This indictment may well shut off the last remaining hope for a peaceful settlement for the country."

These are never easy decisions to make: before you make up your mind, you'd do well to look at the Making Sense of Darfur blog .

Alex de Waal, co-author with Julie Flint, of an excellent book about Darfur, has written an invaluable background to the issue .

When you've read it, let me know what you think.

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Let's see if I can break the habit of a lifetime and take something that a politician has said at face value. (I exaggerate, as you know, but only slightly ...)

It's just four weeks since the man who once thought he was destined to be the leader of the Conservative party, David Davis, dramatically resigned as an MP because, he said, he felt he had to do something to halt the "relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms".

Last night - surprise, surprise, after neither Labour nor the Lib Dems could be bothered to put up a candidate against him - the good voters of Haltemprice and Howden sent him back to the Commons to pick up from where he left off. Except that now he will languish on the backbenches, and his reputation, at least in the Westminster village, has suffered a substantial dent.

My point is this: Mr Davis said - and let's just for a moment assume that what he said was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - that he wanted to give British voters "the opportunity to debate and consider one of the most fundamental issues of the day ... the ever intrusive power of the state into their daily lives, the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom and the steady attrition undermining the rule of law."

This is how he set out : "We will have the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, and a DNA database bigger than that of any dictatorship, with thousands of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it.

"We've witnessed a sustained assault on jury trials, that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state; shortcuts with our justice system that have left it both less firm and less fair -- and the creation of a database state, opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers."

This is all serious stuff. So did the nation rise to the challenge? Did we have the debate? Did we rally in support of the Lone Tory Ranger as he rode into battle against the power of the state? Er, no, actually, we didn't.

Many of us, I suspect, would agree that deciding how to strike the right balance between the need to ensure our security and the need to guarantee our freedom is, as Mr Davis said, "one of the most fundamental issues of the day". So why aren't we ready to answer his call for a national debate?

Is it because we think that the government has got the balance right, so there is no need for any further debate? (The opinion poll evidence, by the way, is highly contradictory.) Is it because the issue is so complex that we just don't know what to think, so we concentrate on trying to cope with rising household bills instead? Or is it perhaps because we're not really sure what David Davis was up to, and we're not in the habit of leaping to debate things just because an MP says he thinks we should?

When Mr Davis resigned, the media by and large were scornful of what was seen as a bit of shameless political grand-standing, an act of personal vanity by an MP bored with the humdrum nature of life as a front-bench spokesman. But the reaction in the blogosphere was overwhelmingly favourable ... at last, people said, a politician who is prepared to put his principles first.

So, I ask again, why no debate?

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Suppose I gave you a choice: you can live either in a secular state, in which religion and politics are kept strictly apart, or you can live in a democracy. But you can't have both - so which would you choose?

Suppose you've had a democratic election. The party that won has traditions rooted in religion - and although it denies any intention of allowing its religious beliefs to impinge on its policies, you're not convinced. Worse than that ... you strongly suspect that its leaders do intend to lull you into a false sense of security and then turn your country, step by step, into a fundamentalist theocracy.

Would you be justified in stopping them, by any means necessary, up to and including military force? After all, your country was founded on secular principles: are they not more important, enshrined as they are in the constitution, than the results of an imperfect electoral process?

Yes, I know I've over-simplified, but these are the questions at the heart of the deepening crisis in Turkey. And how they are resolved could have an immense impact on Europe's relations with its neighbour to the east over the coming decade.

Remember, Turkey wants to join the EU (it already belongs to NATO). But remember also that four times in the past 50 years, the army has stepped in to "protect" the country's secular traditions. Just this week, two senior retired generals were arrested in connection with allegations of a coup plot.

And the ruling AK party is facing a legal challenge to its very existence from the country's chief prosecutor, who wants to ban 71 of its most senior figures from public life for five years, on the grounds that there is a "real and present danger" of it creating an Islamic state. Among the people he wants to ban just happen to be the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the President, Abdullah Gul, whose wife created a furore last year because she prefers to appear in public with her hair covered by a hijab.

So here's some background for you: when Turkey arose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, its first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, insisted that it must be a secular republic. (Article 2 of the constitution says: "The Republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state governed by the rule of law.") Kemalism has become a quasi-religion, a secular faith embraced for decades by the country's intellectual, nationalist and military elite.

But what happens to the democracy bit of the constitution if voters choose to back a party that is rooted in Islamism? The AK party, which has won the last two elections, owes its success in large part to support from Turkey's emerging rural middle class - and it is challenging the long-established political dominance of the urban, secular, liberal elite.

So this isn't just an argument about Islam in politics. It's also a good, old-fashioned power struggle between a deeply entrenched political elite and a new breed of politicians, many of whom are what we would call "modern" Muslims.

An example: when I went to meet an AKP mayor just outside Ankara last year, I was intrigued to find that the two young women working in his outer office both wore their hair uncovered. So did a newly-elected female AKP MP whom I interviewed the day after the election. So don't imagine that AKP women look as if they come from Iran. They don't.

But neither should you under-estimate the importance of the debate now under way in Turkey. The old cliché has it that the country has always stood at a cross-roads between Europe and Asia, and between Christianity and Islam. It now stands at a political cross-roads too.

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