World Notes

Prime Minister John Major had just convened a morning meeting of his gulf war cabinet at 10 Downing Street, when the room was rocked by an explosion that shattered the windows and sent some of the ministers scrambling under the table. Said Major with admirable sangfroid: "We had better begin again somewhere else."

Despite initial fears, the attackers turned out to be not Iraqi-sponsored terrorists but an older British adversary: the Irish Republican Army. The would-be assassins had parked a van 200 yds. from the Prime Minister's offices, then used a delayed-timing device to launch three mortar shells from the vehicle while they escaped. One landed in a garden at the back of Major's official residence; two more fell behind the Foreign Office. A total of three people were injured.

In a statement, the I.R.A. said the planning for the operation "predates both John Major's coming to power and the beginning of British involvement in the gulf war." It was the most brazen assault on top British officials since 1984, when the I.R.A. set off a bomb at a Conservative Party conference in Brighton that killed five people and narrowly missed then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.