Let’s pull together some news about the UK Foreign Office in the word’s first blogged FCO Roundup. Or is the news that it has … gone AWOL?

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What has the FCO to say about the elections in Honduras? Not much.

HM Government do not have an Embassy there but cover the country from nearby Guatemala.

The website of the Embassy in Guatemala as of this afternoon (11 December) has as its Recent News a press conference by the Ambassador back in October about .. the environment!

Nothing about the Honduras crisis or HMG’s reaction to it. Amazing.

As for the FCO website in London, here’s a funny one.

Nothing at all about the elections has been said by FCO Ministers, if the FCO website is anything to go by. But there is a page under News saying this:

‘FREE AND PEACEFUL ELECTIONS’ IN HONDURAS WELCOMED BY EU PRESIDENCY

14 Dec 2005

EU welcomes Honduras elections 14.12.05 

Then … nothing about what the EU Presidency has said.

Funny that. It’s 11 December today!

Which is worse for a foreign Ministry? Being merely utterly inept, or being AWOL on a key foreign policy story? Both!

UPDATE:  an eagle-eyed reader rightly points out that I am going blind in not noticing that this is an old announcement from 2005. Which, I admit, diminishes my point and reduces the fun to no mean extent.

Still, is it really the best the FCO can do when opining on these latest elections to link in a dim way back to those of 2005?

Moving on, somewhat shiftily…

Another example of being AWOL, this time involving the Foreign Secretary in person, is given here.

The EU once again has been battling with Greek intransigence over the grotesque issue of the name of Macedonia. But look what Greek Minister Droutsas has to say in an interview (my emphasis):

Mr. Kottakis: Good day. You’ve been through a lot in these negotiations; I think Mr. Miliband asked you yesterday whether you were still talking to him. Is what we read in the papers true ? 

Mr. Droutsas: Things were somewhat like that, I can’t hide that it was a particularly difficult Council; negotiations were tough…

… You will allow me to mention a couple of other incidents, as we, in Greece, like to discuss what goes on behind the scenes. These two incidents also show that the conclusions have indeed upset certain people. 

First of all, something you also mentioned earlier, i.e., that the Turkish side has itself reacted with its announcements, in which it expresses its disappointment about the wording and strictness of the conclusions. 

But I also want to mention another incident: my British counterpart, the UK Foreign Secretary, did not show up at the final meeting when, following tough negotiations, we reached a compromise solution that everyone applauded later on. The British Foreign Secretary chose not to come to the room so as not to agree to the conclusions in person.  

Well, that’s one way of doing business in Europe. Letting it happen behind your back?

Another reason for not showing up is that one is not invited. Hence the emerging important row over whether at EU Summits national Foreign Ministers should stay tucked up at home, leaving the new EU High Representative to deal with foreign policy issues:

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who is the last national leader to chair a summit before Van Rompuy takes over for good, has told national foreign ministers that they are no longer welcome because High Representative Ashton will represent them all when leaders gather…

And so Lisbon unfolds.

A crafty move by the Swedes, playing on the vanity of national leaders to suggest that they ‘really’ own foreign policy and the HiRep alone reports to them, leaving all those tedious national foreign ministers to not pronounce on Honduras back at their respective HQs.

Of course, that will work well if national foreign ministers give a sad sigh and just surrender.

Finally, how about being AWOL on history?

Look at this fascinating story of how the FCO has wriggled and writhed to avoid committing itself on the vexed issue of the Armenian Genocide (or Not):

The Armenian Centre in London obtained hundreds of pages of hitherto secret memorandums, bearing the astonishing admission that there was no "evidence" that had ever been looked at and there had never been a "judgment" at all.

Parliament had been misinformed: as the Foreign Office now admits, "there is no collection of documents, publications and reports by historians, held on the relevant files, or any evidence that a series of documents were submitted to ministers for consideration".

In any case, ministers repeatedly asserted that, "in the absence of unequivocal evidence to show that the Ottoman administration took a specific decision to eliminate the Armenians under their control at the time, British governments have not recognised the events of 1915-16 as genocide".

We might or might not think that there is something to be said for HMG not taking a formal ‘official’ view on an issue not involving us and which happened so long ago, but which still causes huge controversy in many places.

But at least let’s be minimally competent and honest in reaching that position. Did the FCO not learn from its outlandish decades-long equivocations over the Katyn massacre?

Memo to next Government: Please o please get a grip on all this.