HRH Awards Bombers and Spooks

   Financial Times, 16 March 1996, p. 4.


   Prince's forum awards prize to Semtex company

   By Jimmy Burns in London

   Prince Charles faced renewed controversy last night as it
   emerged that his main overseas organisation has awarded an
   environmental prize to the manufacturers of the plastic
   explosive Semtex.

   The Prince of Wales Business Leaders' Forum confirmed last
   night that the Czech chemical company Synthesia had been
   given its annual Czech prize because the installation of
   cleaning devices in its plant had contributed to a
   "significant improvement in the environment".

   Semtex has been used worldwide by terrorist organisations
   including the Irish Republican Army. The company, however,
   has stressed that it produces Semtex legally for
   construction demolition and mining, and that the product
   comprises only a fraction of its sales from a range of
   chemicals at its plant in Pardubice.

   A forum spokesman in London said: "The reason for the
   prize is purely environmental". He added: "What its
   products are used for and where they go does not form
   part of the forum's remit. The Prince of Wales is ten
   steps removed from the award; he would not have known
   about it."

   Major John Wyatt, a British bomb disposal expert, said
   yesterday that Synthesia was widely known by western
   security officials as the company which sold Semtex to
   Libya in the 1980s before it was sold on to the IRA.

   Synthesia agreed in 1989 to introduce a chemical component
   in Semtex to make it more easily identifiable by security
   devices and sniffer dogs.

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   MI5 Dame meets prince at palace

   Dame Stella Rimington visited Buckingham Palace yesterday
   to receive her insignia as a Dame Commander of the Order of
   the Bath from Prince Charles. When Dame Stella became head
   of the MI5 security service in 1991, it was the first time
   the name of a head of the service had been disclosed in
   public. Her male predecessors have been knighted. But the
   need for anonymity made it impossible for them to be fully
   recognised as Dame Stella was in front of hundreds of
   people attending a traditional investiture ceremony in the
   Great Ballroom of the palace. Dame Stella said afterwards,
   "Obviously. I am very pleased for all my colleagues in the
   service whose work this also recognises." Now aged 60, she
   intends to retire at Easter.

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