An interesting pair of Ambassadorial letters to newspapers have appeared in recent days. First, HM Ambassador in Poland Ric Todd wrote in July to the Polish paper Rzeczpospolita about the death in a plane accident in 1943 in Gibraltar of General Sikorski. Various Poles continue to insist that this death was suspicious, […]
War criminals are war criminals only when they are convicted of war crimes. Until then they are ‘war crimes indictees’, ‘people suspected/charged with war crimes’ or some such neutral phrase. Why? Because it is true. And because it is unwise to give such people any excuse to claim that they […]
Looking at the FCO website on the David Miliband Blog page is this curious list of links (presumably there to indicate Mr Miliband’s own inclinations) to non-government sites: New media and e-government Whitehall Webby Digital Dialogues Simon Dickson Stuart Bruce David Wilcox eDemocracy Update The Obvious? Emma Mulqueeny Personal South Shields Gazette […]
Craig Murray responds to my previous post: Charles, You brush very lightly over the fact that you praised in the warmest terms at the time the telegrams you now rubbish – as did numerous other Ambassadors including Jeremy Greenstock who commended the to his New York morning meeting. I think […]
A noteworthy sub-plot in the Kosovo situation is a plan by Serbia to ask the UN General Assembly to refer the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an Advisory Opinion. Serbia looks to be getting some handy noises of support for this manoeuvre from eg Russia and India. […]
Here’s something new. A husband-and-wife couple doing a job-share at Ambassador level, for the first time ever, anwhere. Tom Carter and Carolyn Davidson are off to represent HM The Queen as High Commissioner in Zambia, taking it in turns to run the High Commission for four months at a time. […]
These celebrity revivals are sooooo exhausting. First we have the long-awaited return to the stage of Joker Karadzic, although without his funny costume and disguise he was really not that scary. And with him returns Batman Holbrooke, the distinguished former American diplomat whose considerable ego and ruthlessness helped bring peace to the […]
A bit more on Karadzic, alas. Dick Holbrooke says that there was No Deal struck by him with Karadzic under which if Karadzic left political life he would not be sent to the Hague Tribunal. Karadzic in his first appearance at ICTY tried to get this claim established, but failed. […]
Pressing on through Craig Murray’s Murder in Samarkand, we reach Chapter 4 – Diplomacy. Craig has to present his credentials to President Karimov to assume the full rights and responsibilities of HM Ambassador. These credentials traditionally are formal letters in flamboyantly old-fashioned courteous language language from HM The Queen to […]
The words "modern management techniques" and "whelk stall" come to mind: Labour was plunged into open warfare as Gordon Brown’s allies launched a series of highly personal attacks on leadership rival David Miliband. Did ‘sources at Number 10’ and ‘Brown’s allies’ and ‘an MP close to Brown’ really say stuff […]
