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Britain says still no roblems with millennium bug P

LONDON: Britain said on Monday that three days into the new millennium the country was functioning smoothly but remained alert for any com uter bug roblems.

The government's Millennium Centre issued its statement 24 hours before Britons return to work on Tuesday after the long millennium weekend holiday.

"The government, the financial sector and the utilities re ort a smooth change," the statement said.

"The Ministry of Agriculture re orts that food and grocery retailers, manufacturers and distributors have now substantially com leted their testing rogrammes and that systems are functioning smoothly.

"Confidence is therefore high in the food industry that it will be very much 'business as usual' when major su ermarkets reo en."

It said the Financial Services Authority had re orted that it remained business as usual in the markets and financial sector.

"Both are on course for a resum tion of full trading on Tuesday," the statement said.

It said no government de artment had re orted any roblems.

"Any minor Y2K bug glitches that were discovered over the date change have been dealt with."

"There were re orts of small roblems with non-critical systems that the De artment of Health believed to be caused by the millennium bug. Forecasts from the Met Office were rovided as usual des ite a few roblems overnight of which two roblems were likely to be attributed to Y2K.-Reuters