This will be a shortened parliamentary week with the Commons sitting only on Monday and Tuesday. But there is no shortage of politics. On the foreign front, the Kosovo peace talks are intensifying, with the expectation that British troops will be deployed to back up any settlement. The latest moves from Libya, following mediation by Nelson Mandela, seem to be bringing closer the prospects of a trial for the Lockerbie suspects.

In Northern Ireland the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process are under considerable strain. On Monday Ken Livingstone, the man the New Labour hierarchy doesn't want to be London's mayor, is launching his "don't you dare to stop me" campaign, seeking to get his retaliation in first against the party fixers.

The grumbling campaign against William Hague's failure to achieve any kind of turnaround in the polls for the Tories is growing. But the issue of the week which seems likely to play the longest is the growing pressure the government is facing on the issue of genetically modified foods.

Frankenstein foods - and all that

The political fallout from the GM food scare about the so-called "Frankenstein foods" is potentially immense. We are in the early skirmishes of a serious war between the government and its advisers and environmental and health lobbyists. Much of what both sides have to say about GM foods has to be filtered from its SD (or spin doctoring ) treatment by the protagonists.

Following the BSE scares, people are much less ready to trust assurances from food manufacturers, scientists and politicians about the quality and safety of what we put in our mouths. There are growing fears about possible side effects from genetically modified crops, whose genetic blueprint has been altered, often by the use of bacteria, to provide advantages like increased pest resistance or a longer shelf life. There are fears too that GM crops could contaminate plant life in the surrounding areas after being spread by winds or animals. This could create a new generation of pesticide-resistant "superweeds" and become a threat to wildlife.

Defenders of the companies developing the GM foods say that such work is essential to increase yields, range and quality and to help in feeding the increasing world population in an age when global warming could create new food shortages. They argue that we have been changing plant structures and growth for centuries by selective breeding.

Currently, the research and testing done by the biotech companies is passed on to various government committees which sanction the products in a rather fuzzy and not particularly open process, without the human trials required of drug producers. The sudden focus on the question of GM foods follows the forced retirement from the Rowett Research Institute of Dr Arpad Pusztai after he claimed that he had tested genetically modified potatoes on rats and discovered that they suffered damage to their internal organs and immune systems. The Institute's head, Professor Philip James, is an adviser to the prime minister and is tipped to head the new Food Standards Agency. He said Dr Puzstai had confused different batches of potatoes but last week an international batch of scientists backed Dr Pusztai's warnings and called for his reinstatement.

The political factor comes in because the government has so far played down fears about GM foods and because Tory leader William Hague was swiftly onto the issue, raising English Nature's concerns, calling for a moratorium on the sale of GM foods and accusing the government of complacency. Dr Jack Cunningham, the former agriculture minister now the Cabinet Office minister and the government's chief media front man, has been accused of misrepresenting those concerns.

The government, keen to prove its pro-science and pro-business credentials, is finding those coming into conflict with its promises to put consumers first. It is facing accusations that it is over-protective of the rich biotechnology companies. The European Parliament has voted for tighter controls on GM foods and there is a one-year moratorium in Britain on the growing of GM crops which some environmental lobbyists would like to see extended to five years. No GM crops are being grown commercially in Britain, but time-limited trials have been taking place. An all-party committee this week will begin scrutinising government policy on GM foods and the Commons environmental committee will also be looking into genetically modified organisms.

Facing the accusation that a government which was trigger-happy on the beef-on-the-bone issue is being complacent about GM foods, soother-in-chief Dr Cunningham, who chairs the Cabinet committee on bio-technology, has insisted that there is no evidence that GM foods on sale in the UK pose a health risk. He promises: "Now new products [containing them] will be allowed for sale unless they have passed a whole series of rigorous and careful checks and tests." Those would be conducted by such bodies as the independent Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes. He says the government is committed to a "full labelling regime".

Dr Cunningham also insists there is no evidence to support the idea that the Blair government is under pressure from President Clinton to speed up the commercialisation of GM foods. But with some in the food industry accusing ministers of dithering a number of British supermarkets are weeding out foods with GM elements from their shelves.

The issue is complicated politically by the fact that former Labour officials are now involved in advising some of the biotech giants involved in GM food production and because multi-millionaire Lord Sainsbury, a Labour benefactor whose family supermarket firm is involved in selling GM foods, is the current science minister. Although his shares are held in a blind trust Tory frontbenchers have alleged a conflict of interest and called for him to be moved.

Genetic engineering companies like Monsanto have been given inducements to expand their UK operations and conspiracy theorists are making much of the fact that there have been more than 80 meetings between such companies and government ministers or officials since Labour came to power. In fact it might have been a bigger cause for alarm if there had not been many such meetings.