McCanns consider return to Portugal

Portuguese police have asked Madeleine McCann's parents to return to the Algarve to stage a reconstruction of the night their daughter went missing, a family spokesman said on Tuesday.

Kate and Gerry McCann and their lawyers are considering the proposal and have yet to decide whether to go, spokesman Clarence Mitchell told BBC television.

"It is very much under discussion," he said.

"What Kate and Gerry would welcome very much is something that will actually help find Madeleine.

"If a Crimewatch style reconstruction ... is what is being proposed, then of course they will take part."

He said such a televised reconstruction was suggested by the McCanns and BBC Crimewatch last year, but was turned down by the Portuguese authorities.

"You have to ask, what good will it do a year on?" he said.

The McCanns, who are still suspects in the case, flew home last September after days of police questioning. Their daughter disappeared on May 3 during a holiday in the Algarve region of southern Portugal.

Portuguese detectives arrived in England on Monday to attend interviews with the so-called "Tapas Seven", a group who were with the McCanns on the night Madeleine went missing.

Mitchell said the McCanns welcomed the re-interviews of their friends.

"They are very confident the Portuguese police will come away from these interviews ... realising that there is no evidence whatsoever to implicate Kate and Gerry in Madeleine's disappearance and they should be eliminated from the inquiry."

The McCanns believe their daughter was abducted from their holiday apartment while they were dining with friends.

They hired private investigators to help find their daughter after Portuguese police named them as suspects in September.

Two tabloid newspapers made unprecedented front page apologies last month to the McCanns for suggesting they might have killed their daughter and covered up her death.