PORTUGAL: Kate and Gerry McCann speak about Madeleine's disappearance

Praia da Luz prepares to mark on Saturday (August 11) 100 days of the disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann, tourists and locals will participate in a mass to be held in the church of the Algarve resort at 1000gmt. "It's just a horrendous situation. It is absolutely awful, I just feel so much for the family and it's just awful, absolutely awful but obviously the police are doing as much as they can," said a Scottish tourist as she passed by a church in the Portuguese ocean-side resort on Friday (August 10). In an interview with Reuters Television, Kate and Gerry McCann said on Friday that they don't feel they're being treated as suspects by police. "I don't feel we are suspects, but the police wouldn't be doing their job if they did exclude us and that's what it is about, the police have to be objective, and the investigation up to now has not found Madeleine or found out what has happened to her, so it's only natural that everything is being reviewed, we don't have a problem with that," said Madelein's father, Gerry McCann. The couple also unveiled a new initiative to help trace missing children to mark the 100th day since their daughter's disappearance. Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, disappeared on May 3 during a holiday with her parents at the Mark Warner Ocean Club holiday resort of Praia da Luz. "I think we've got to one hundred days and we still don't know what's happened to Madeleine and if it means that if something has to get quite clear, and we feel that we are going back then everybody has to be seen again, scrutinized again, that's fine we have always cooperated and we will carry on doing it," said Kate McCann. "All we want is Madeleine back and the truth, we will do whatever we can, whatever is necessary to try and establish that." While the British media has remained supportive of the family, other journalists and some members of the public have been more critical. They have questioned why the couple had left their children alone, and suggested that their behaviour since has not been what people would expect. News that traces of blood had been found in the apartment has prompted Portuguese news media to report that police suspected Madeleine might have been murdered there. Gerry McCann said that those reports were "really hurtful". "It is very distressing to have it suggested, first of all that your daughter is dead and you don't know about it, and in the next breath to suggest that we are involved in that," said Gerry McCann. "That's incredibly hard to deal with. If Madeleine is dead we need to know about it, as parents, we need to know about it, because the despair that we have about being separated from her and the anguish we have about her being separate from us, as parents we need to know that. We will work and cooperate in whatever way possible because we need to find out what's happened." On Saturday, the McCanns will mark the 100th day since Madeleine disappeared with the launch of "Don't You Forget about Me", a channel on video-sharing Web site YouTube. The couple said that, until evidence tells them otherwise, they remain hopeful that their daughter is still alive. "Until somebody says to us that there is definitely blood in the apartment and there is definitely evidence that Madeleine has been seriously harmed, there is no point us really going there, until somebody says that, we've still got hope that Madeleine could be alive out there and we got to keep going and keep looking for her," said her mother.

ITN Source | August 11, 2007

Tags:. .seriously. .quite. .daughters. .daughter. .apartment