Prime Minister Tony Blair's bid to persuade UK farmers that some parts of the rural garden are thriving has proved a red rag to newspaper cartoonists.

A drawing in the Financial Times shows a tourist standing on the summit of a cliff where he is confronted by a sign.

It says: "From this point you can see absolutely no crisis whatsoever in five counties."

Cartoonist Gaskill - in The Sun - shows a dapperly-dressed man smartly ducking behind a dry stone wall as he hurls a lump of manure in the face of a flat-capped farmer.

One cow says to another: "I think it's part of Tony Blair's charm offensive."

But The Guardian reports that some farmers who met Mr Blair in the West Country left feeling impressed by his grasp of their problems.

The Daily Telegraph says Mr Blair is determined to argue that the town-country divide is an illusion.

But the Daily Mail is not so sure. Its celebrated cartoonist, Mac, shows a bashful pair of rustic characters returning to the farmhouse - hand in hand.

One says to his wife at the stove: "I'm sorry, Ethel. That bloke Blair may not know much about the countryside. But, my goodness, he's very persuasive on Clause 28."

The Express describes the situation in Northern Ireland in a headline as peace hanging by a thread.

But The Mirror says there is a defiant mood on the streets of Belfast with people determined not to give up their hopes of a better future.

The Mirror says: "The billboards screamed words which should have chilled the hearts of shoppers but people refuse to surrender the peace they have achieved."

The Mail puts the blame fair and square on the Provisional IRA, which has failed to begin decommissioning.

The paper says the government's threat to reimpose direct rule gives just "five more days" to rescue the Good Friday Agreement.

To keep the Unionists on board, The Guardian says there has to be "enough of an IRA concession."

In the grim opinion of The Telegraph, "Arms and the hard men were always going to be the stumbling block to peace."

The nationalist Irish News offers few grounds for hope on that front.

It reports that republicans were enraged by Peter Mandelson's statement to MPs.

But it says there is also speculation that General John de Chastelain could issue a second report on decommissioning - one that offers "some kind of timetable," but not enough to stop the First Minister, David Trimble, from resigning.

There is strong support for Mr Trimble in the News Letter, a paper with a big readership among Unionists.

The paper thinks the Ulster Unionist party can hold its head high - saying it has laid claim to the moral high ground: "it has gone the extra mile...against its own instincts and the prospects for party-political advantage in the short term."

If the government has made "a desparate play for time," the paper has no doubt that "the ball is firmly in the Provos' court."

A long lost statue of an ancient Egyptian king has been rediscovered - in the cellar of a museum in Southampton.

The Times says it is an important piece of seventh century BC art - and the experts are tremendously excited.

But in recent years the sculpture has been performing a much more modest, though no doubt useful, task - as what the paper calls "the world's oldest bike rack".