The whole museum was flooded along with hundreds of costumes and photographs Plans are now under way for their restoration. There are also several hundred plaster replicas of French Gothic art.The main damage to the Museum of the Cinema, which is situated in the basement, was caused by the thousands of gallons of water pumped by the fire brigade. On that occasion, the Belgrade supporters broke down barriers, provoking pitched battles that spilled on to the pitch and into the streets outside. The referee never got a chance to start the game.Anti-government demonstrators flung hundreds of shoes over the heads of riot police towards Slobodan Milosevic, the outgoing Serbian President who was formally sworn in as president of the Yugoslav Republic yesterday. The blaze did cause extensive damage to the north-east wing, however, which houses the Museum of French Monuments and the Museum of the Cinema. The fire broke out just before 10pm and took 180 fire-fighters more than three hours to bring under control.
Guy Cogeval, director of the Museum of French Monuments, explained: “Although it looks like a battlefield, the damage to the artefacts is thankfully fairly limited.” None of the originals was damaged and only 5 to 10 per cent of the plaster replicas have been destroyed.The Museum of French Monuments houses a collection of medieval and Renaissance sculptures and monuments, some measuring 13ft in height, including cathedral porches and pieces of church facades. The demonstrators used the shoes as a symbol of the number of Serbs who have walked out of the country during his rule..

Museum directors in Paris were counting their blessings yesterday that damage was less extensive than they had originally feared, after a fire ravaged the Palais de Chaillot at the Trocadero on Tuesday. He was not a Belgrader at all, but had travelled up from Novi Pazar – emphasising the extent to which this match was a contest between Serbia and Croatia rather than just Belgrade and Zagreb. But he was also a Muslim, ostensibly lending his voice to the Serb national cause. The postwar Balkans have become a very confused place.The confusion was even more evident on field. Croatia Zagreb’s star player, Robert Prosinecki, used to play for Red Star Belgrade and helped them win the European Cup in 1991. On the Belgrade side, goalkeeper Ivica Kralj has featured in the Zagreb newspapers over the past few days because he is said to be an ethnic Croat.Such paradoxes make a mockery of the sort of nationalist sentiments that fuelled the 1990 game between Dynamo and Red Star at Zagreb’s Maximir stadium. Any fears of a renewed explosion of violence were misplaced, however.

It was a timid affair that ended in a 1-0 victory for Partizan snatched in the closing minutes.
In one way, the match was the latest tentative sign of progress in Serb- Croat relations and a hint of a more normal future to come. In another, though, it was simply an illustration of how screwy ethnic politics have become in the Balkans after four years of fighting.The Croatian team did not so much burst into Belgrade as crawl in, keeping a low profile at the Hotel Intercontinental away from the centre of town. There were 78 of them – the players, the administrative staff, a clutch of Croatian journalists and a sizeable private police force to guard against trouble.Violent clashes between supporters did not materialise – for the simple reason that no Croatian supporters were foolhardy to come along for the ride. At the stadium, the Croatian players were greeted with abuse, and although they were the stronger team looked too scared to take up any chances at goal.So was this a sports event, or a surreal exercise in Balkan politics? “Obviously, there’s no way this can be a simple football match,” said one Partizan supporter, Emir Kurtovic.Mr Kurtovic embodied the craziness of the whole affair. The last time teams from Zagreb and Belgrade played each other at football, back in 1990, the fixture led to rampant violence in the stands and all but unleashed the bitter wars of secession in the former Yugoslavia. Last night, for the first time since the end of the fighting, the old Dynamo team from Zagreb (now renamed “Croatia”) ventured into the lion’s den to play the away leg of a European championship qualifier against Partizan Belgrade. The no-show convention also applied to Baroness Thatcher and John Major.The by-election was caused by the death of Sir Michael Shersby, whose majority was slashed at the general election from 12,368 to 724..

I have sat in on discussions on whether the Prime Minister should go to by-elections … and always you end up coming down to the same answer, which is no.”If you lose, you put the Prime Minister on the line. If you win, you have committed the Prime Minister to going to every by-election.”Sir Edward Heath told local Tories that he had never visited a by-election when he was Prime Minister. “If they felt sure they were going to win, they would not bring him here, because it’s a hostage to fortune for every future by-election.”They will have to bring him in at every future by-election. The unprecedented appearance of the Prime Minister in a by-election was seen in the constituency as a last-minute attempt to swing the final wavering voters to Labour in a contest which is too close to call.
He dismissed the convention that Prime Ministers should not enter by- election campaigns.

“I am the elected Prime Minister and it is my government that is seeking the approval of the people of Uxbridge on 31 July. That is why I want to visit the constituency myself to explain to local people why Uxbridge needs Andy Slaughter as their next Labour MP,” he said.Andrew Lansley, the Tory candidate’s “minder” and a former head of the Conservative Party research department, said Mr Blair was making a mistake. He rounded on the Conservative benches for their “hypocrisy”.The Liberal Democrat leader said that, in government, the Conservatives had welcomed cross-party support when they could get it. “Now, in opposition, they criticise it whenever anybody else does it.”.