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Couple launch new campaign to find missing daughter

Friends of the McCanns leapt to their defense yesterday as the besieged British couple launched a new publicity campaign in Europe to help the search for their missing daughter Madeleine.

The renewed offensive is aimed at shifting the focus back onto the search for the toddler and away from lurid speculation about her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann.

Lifelong friends of Madeleine's 39-year-old mother came out to insist she was an exemplary parent who would never harm her children.

Lurid newspaper speculation in Portugal and Britain has flown since the McCanns were named as arguidos -- formal suspects -- in Madeleine's disappearance.

The status means they can no longer speak about the police investigation.

Madeleine McCann was three years old when she vanished from her bedroom in an apartment in the southern Portuguese coastal resort of Praia da Luz.

Gerry McCann, a hospital cardiologist, and Kate McCann, a family doctor, were with friends at a restaurant less than 150m away.

Kate McCann's lifelong friend Linda McQueen said it was unthinkable that either parent would have harmed their eldest child.

"Not at all, not a shadow of a doubt from anybody at all ever," she said.

"They are the most loving, caring, family-oriented couple that you could ever meet. They are absolutely fabulous. Those three children are the world to them," she said.

Madeleine was "everything they ever wanted," McQueen said.

"They had been up and down about with whether they could get pregnant and the in-vitro fertilization and it was a dream come true. Kate always wanted a large family so it means the world to her. She is just a fabulous mum," McQueen said.

Asked if Kate McCann was struggling as a mother of three, she replied: "I have never ever seen Kate run ragged in her life.
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