The legendary1 Charlie Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977

England have

The coffin² containing the body of Charlie Chaplin - missing since his grave was robbed 11 weeks ago - has been found.

It was dug up from a field about a mile away from the Chaplin home in Corsier near Lausanne, Switzerland.

The legendary comedian³ died on Christmas Day last year, aged⁴ 88. He was buried two days later in the village of Corsier in the hills above Lake Geneva.

"Charlie would have thought it ridiculous." Lady Oona Chaplin said.

Swiss police have arrested two men - a Pole aged 24 and a Bulgarian aged 38 - and say they have confessed to stealing the coffin 10 weeks ago and reburying it.

Names of the accused have not been released, but police say they are both motor mechanics.

They were traced after police kept a watch on 200 phone kiosks and tapped the Chaplins' phone after the famiy received ransom⁵ demands of ?00,000 for return of the body after it went missing in March.

Sir Charles' 51-year-old widow, Lady Oona Chaplin, refused to pay up saying: "Charlie would have thought it ridiculous." In further calls the kidnappers⁶ made threats to harm her two youngest children.

Hollywood rumours⁷

The family kept silent about the ransom demands and various rumours circulated about the missing coffin.

One Hollywood report suggested it had been dug up because Sir Charles was a Jew buried in a gentile cemetery⁸.

Lady Chaplin, daughter of playwright⁹ Eugene O'Neill inherited about ?2m after the death of her husband.

The couple and their eight children have been living in Lausanne since 1952.

A spokesman for the Chaplins said: "The family is very happy and relieved that this ordeal¹⁰ is over."

Superintendent¹¹ Gabriel Cettou, the head of the Geneva police, said the two men would be charged with attempted extortion and disturbing the peace of the dead.

Nikita Khrushchev demanded an apology from the Americans

It follows three days of bitter recrimination over a US spy plane shot down two weeks ago by the Russians.

Any hope of East-West rapprochement was doomed¹² from the start as heads of state - President Eisenhower, Soviet¹³ leader Nikita Khrushchev, General de Gaulle and Harold Macmillan - never got beyond preliminary procedural meetings.

The U2 spy plane was shot down on 1 May by a Russian missile after it lost height owing to engine trouble.

The civilian¹⁴ pilot, Gary Powers, was able to bale out of the aircraft and was arrested in Sverdlovsk in the USSR.

State Department denial

When the Soviet Union announced it had shot the plane down, the US State Department at first denied it was a spy plane, saying it was simply an aircraft that had gone astray.

But when Mr Khrushchev produced photos taken by the pilot of military installations, President Eisenhower was forced to admit he had authorised the flight because he needed to prevent another Pearl Harbor.

When leaders gathered in Paris for the summit two days ago, after months of planning by Soviet and French officials, Mr Khrushchev demanded an apology before discussions could begin.

He also said the USA should promise never to violate Soviet airspace again and should punish all those responsible for the incident.

President Eisenhower rejected the demands, leaving the hoped-for peace summit in tatters.

De Gaulle's invitation

General de Gaulle had tried to revive the talks by inviting¹⁵ all the delegates to another conference at the Elysee Palace to discuss the situation.

All agreed but President Eisenhower insisted he would not discuss the spy plane incident.

When told of the invitation, Mr Khrushchev was on a trip outside Paris. He returned to the French capital and told a press conference the Soviet Union was ready to take part only if the USA met his demands of a public condemnation¹⁶ of the U2 incident.

So ended the summit that never was.

Both sides are now blaming each other for the failure of the conference.