Buhl took this ill and therein lay a seed that soured the whole enterprise.The first summit bid ended with Wintersteller and Diemberger reaching the mountain's forepeak, struggling in the thin air - six breaths for each step - and an icy wind Diaries revealed increasing acrimony. In 1949, on the formidable Fleischbank, not far from the hut, Schmuck had led the way up an overhanging chimney that had repulsed Buhl, creating a route that still bears his name - the Schmuckkamin. Mutual respect led to a successful climbing partnership and eventually the design on Broad Peak.As funds accrued, two other climbers were invited on the team, first another Salzburger, Wintersteller, and then the youthful Diemberger. More contentious than money was the issue of leadership, with the Austrian Alpenverein backing Schmuck, rather than Buhl who was regarded by the establishment as a troublemaker.

Nor did he have the kind of hero status Buhl had gained with his audacious solo ascent of Nanga Parbat in 1953.When the two men first met at the Gaudeamus hut in the heart of the Wilder Kaiser it was, said one observer, "like a summer thunderstorm" as the pair sounded each other out. He learnt his trade following the Second World War, when he was captured in Normandy.Schmuck cut his teeth on the limestone walls of the Dachstein, not far from his birthplace at Maria Alm, and in the Wilder Kaiser, testing ground for all ambitious climbers in German-speaking Europe. In this vertical rock arena, Schmuck was probably Buhl's equal, but he did not have the latter's experience on north faces elsewhere in the Alps. Buhl was thinking on similar lines.This approach also had the virtue of being relatively cheap, an important consideration for Schmuck who was, in a sense, a "holiday climber", a working electrician with a young family to support.

While most Himalayan expeditions were large-scale affairs with columns of porters and Sherpas stocking high camps, Schmuck's idea was for a small team - initially, he thought, only Buhl and himself - to climb without the aid of porters above base camp and without bottled oxygen. Alongside him, similarly attired, was Fritz Wintersteller, his partner in one of the outstanding events in post-war mountaineering - the first ascent of Broad Peak in the Pakistan Karakoram.Broad Peak is the 12th highest of the world's 14 8,000-metre peaks. Of the four young Austrians who reached the 8,047m summit on 9 June 1957, Schmuck and Wintersteller were the first to the top by a country mile. However their achievement was eclipsed by the subsequent death of their better-known companion Hermann Buhl - hero of Nanga Parbat - and the literary and photographic skills of the other, Kurt Diemberger.The Broad Peak expedition was of a modest, self-denying style 20 years ahead of its time. The climbing community is loath to bestow celebrity treatment on anyone, yet here was a fleece-jacketed crowd cheering an octogenarian Austrian unknown to many of them just an hour earlier. Always a handsome man, Schmuck looked dapper dressed in the trachten of his native Salzburgerland. Marcus Schmuck, mountaineer and electrician: born Maria Alm, Austria 18 April 1925; married (two sons, one daughter); died Salzburg, Austria 21 August 2005.

To his obvious delight, Marcus Schmuck last April found himself the subject of a warm standing ovation at the annual International Mountaineering Literature Festival at Bretton Hall, near Wakefield It was a novel occasion. And al-Jazeera International may be better placed to do that than the religious fundamentalists who snipe at it and each other across the East-West divide.". In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York in 2001, the broadcaster gained prominence in non-Arabic countries because of its footage of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qa'ida leaders It has an estimated worldwide audience of 50 million. The new international channel will have a potential audience of one billion English speakers.Sir David, who has interviewed the last seven US presidents and the last six British prime ministers, described the job as "a great adventure - the first and perhaps the only brand new international TV news network for the 21st century".Mr Seddon wrote in The Independent recently: "For conflict, I prefer diplomacy. The BBC is government funded and for me that is one of the most balanced and impartial broadcasters around," he said.Al-Jazeera was launched in November 1996 with the support of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. "I don't think being government funded has any implications in terms of freedom We have had absolutely no interference whatsoever. We are in the Middle East, which is probably the news hotspot of the world at the moment and is likely to be for some years to come."Like all of the channels in the al-Jazeera portfolio - including a children's channel, a sports channel and a documentary channel, as well as the original Arabic news channel - the Qatar government will fund the English news service.

The international channel will be given between three and five years to break even.Mr Parsons insisted that it would be completely impartial. It's so small you can't carry a domestic agenda.."We will have a different perspective on events simply because of where we are coming from. We are going for as wide a spread as we can."Our philosophy is decentralising. We want Africans reporting on Africa and Europeans reporting on Europe. We are here in a tiny country that is geographically very central.