As long-standing readers know, when I left the FCO back in 2007 I qualified as a professional Mediator and had ideas about developing that line of work. It turned out not to be easy to do that if one lived well away from a seething centre of serious disputes such […]
It’s hard to work out what exactly Iran’s President Rouhani said in the USA about Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions (or not) and/or the Holocaust. We Brits see these events through the filter of our media bias. Luckily we have Press TV to explain what is happening: Although the reports of […]
Another day, another attempt to broker a deal betwen Israel and the Palestine Authority, this time with John Kerry leading the charge. Who knows, maybe this one will get somewhere. Perhaps the generalised shambles in Egypt and across the Middle East will create a sense that if there has to […]
This is to let everyone know that ADRg Ambassadors LLP is now renamed The Ambassador Partnership LLP with a completely new (and simpler) website. Basically, after I left the FCO and qualified as a professional mediator, the idea emerged of setting up a new and unique distinguished panel of ambassador-mediators. […]
The Assange case is stuck and embarrassing. How might one look at this issue as a professional mediator? As things stand, the interests of Assange/Ecuador and UK/Sweden respectively largely coincide. Assange/Ecuador want to use the issue to bolster their reputations and poke the US/West in the eye. UK/Sweden want to […]
Here at The Corner (National Review Online’s popular stream of consciousness in the USA) is a piece by John O’Sullivan that picks up some of my ideas but comes down in favour of gracefully letting Mr Assange stew in his Ecuadorean juice: With those two points in mind, why not try […]
Here is an unusually astute piece by Aaron David Miller at Foreign Policy looking at key negotiation mistakes made at the 2000 Camp David Peace Talks which he followed at first hand. You’ll need to read the whole thing to get the breadth of his argument. What is good is […]
Back in writing business after a few days of running around trying to earn some money. Here is a piece I have written for the Telegraph Blogs on the moral case for the Syrians doing what it takes to defeat the regime oppressing them: One of the iconic principles of the […]
I am pointed to a website describing a grim battle has been going on for some 30 years(!) between the local Council in Ealing and Mrs Yafa Partner and relatives over the state of the family house in Uxbridge Road and surrounding environmental issues. The site gives the Partner side of […]
The winner of the the 2012 ICC Mediation Competition in Paris was South Texas College of Law. Hurrah. I was over in Paris for the Preliminary Rounds earlier this week. This is an excellent opportunity for students around the world to work up their negotiating skills in something a bit […]
