Here is my Telegraph Blogs piece on the terrible attack of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens: There is no easy diplomatic response to such atrocities. Blaming the host country for poor security does not go far – usually they are as appalled as the rest of us at […]
Here is my latest DIPLOMAT article, this one about my own modest experiences in Africa: Malan’s book concluded with the staggering true story of Neil and Creina Alcock. Neil Alcock was a white farmer in Natal who dismayed his family and neighbours by getting involved with the local Zulu community, […]
At the risk of boring you all to death, I link to my new Telegraph Blogs piece on #Assange. Many excellent and pertinent comments: Penned by a gutless burocrat who spent his entire worthless career cowering inside a British Embassy, knowing that no matter what garbage he wrote, he was […]
My various postings and pronouncements on the rights and wrongs of the UK government’s ‘threat’ to remove the diplomatic immunity of the Ecuador Embassy in London to enable J Assange to be nabbed have prompted Brian Barder to weigh in. And when Brian weighs in, he does so thoroughly. His […]
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 […]
In a comment on my earlier post, my old sparring partner and inveterate contrarian Brian Barder takes up the challenge re diplomatic immunity and Assange: Entertaining knockabout, Charles, but completely wrong. The embassy’s premises are unequivocally immune from entry without the agreement of the ambassador, under international law as laid down […]
With Ecuador set to make an announcement later today about Julian Assange and his bid for asylum (he currently is skulking in their Embassy in London) the BBC World Service have just interviewed me for some background on the way bids for ‘asylum’ in Embassies work in practice. I drew on my […]
Having gone through a full cheery diplomatic career without having read the Vienna Convention, I thought that I would see if J Assange might be popp’d in an Ecuadoran Diplomatic Bag and removed from the UK that way. In other words, can he be ‘smuggled’ out in broad sight or […]
Anyone reading this blog regularly will know my views on the Bosnia story and the underlying struggles it epitomizes. But as there is never enough of a good thing, here is a new longer piece from me over at TransConflict: Basically, Yugoslavia was a set of sui generis contradictory and […]
