THE summit between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac is not the first important meeting to take place in the North-East.

In September 1972, Willie Whitelaw visited Darlington to host an Ulster "peace conference" in the town's Blackwell Grange Hotel.

The Grange was chosen because it had only been open for a month, so was easy for security men to take over and seal off, in what was then the largest operation of its kind ever undertaken in Britain.

About a dozen or so Ulster politicians attended, but four of the main parties stayed away, including the Nationalists and the Reverend Ian Paisley.

The conference achieved very little.

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin visited Tony Blair's Sedgefield constituency in July 1998, for talks with a football theme.

The two PMs had discussions at Mr Blair's Trimdon home, Myrobella, before announcing a new football programme allowing French youngsters to visit Premiership clubs in England and Scotland.

Business leaders met in York, in June 1999, to discuss the deepening crisis in British agriculture.

Representatives from rural industries including banks, machinery dealers and auctioneers met at the NFU regional office, for private talks.

An international summit on growing computer crime was held at the Cleveland Police headquarters in April this year.

Police officers from Denmark, Norway and Poland pooled suggestions on how to try to clean up the information superhighway.

And in July, an international gathering of medical specialists met at the Thistle Hotel, in Middlesbrough, for a conference on improving infertility treatment.