51.   Brussels prosecutors Friday told the lower house of parliament that they were investigating Claes, former defence minister Coeme and former minister for the Brussels region Philippe Moureaux.

52.   Besides Pilot, Sharad Pawar, a former defence minister, and former ministers, Manmohan Singh and Jagannath Mishra are also seeking the job.

53.   Bush, accompanied by former defence secretary Richard Cheney, has already visited Oman and Saudi Arabia and is due to travel on to Kuwait and Syria.

54.   But the fighters have begun to suffer a string of military reversals after former defence minister Ahmed Shah Masood Masood launched an intense guerrilla war against them.

55.   Datuashvili was killed in Moscow Wednesday in an attack in which former Georgian defence minister Georgi Karkarashvili was seriously hurt.

56.   Constand Viljoen, a former defence force chief and leader of the white rightwing Freedom Front, offered to facilitate a settlement between the police and the ANC.

57.   Despite his illness no-one was named to succeed him with the exception of former Norwegian defence minister Jurgent Holst, who also died recently.

58.   Ex-government forces loyal to former defence minister Ahmed Shah Masood took the town back from the Taliban last weekend.

59.   Egypt has launched an official investigation to determine whether former Israeli defence minister Moshe Dayan returned all of the antiquities which he took from the Sinai desert.

60.   Former Belgian defence minister Leo Delcroix said in an interview with the daily Libre Belgique that the accusations against Marchal were unjust.