A new step in the Serbia/Kosovo story: the UN General Assembly has passed a unanimous resolution whose sense is to open ‘dialogue’ between Belgrade and Pristina supported by the European Union. Note that the BBC can not even get the simplest facts right. Its report says that: The European Union […]
Working on some slides for a Mediation Technique presentation in Geneva next week. Mediation as a professional discipline has some core assumptions. One of the most noted is the idea that there are three levels in the way people look at disputes, namely PIN: Positions Interests Needs Thus Kosovo. The […]
Here’s an interesting one. The German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is homosexual. He has decided not to take his partner with him on official visits to countries where homosexuality is a prosecutable crime. His somewhat obscure argument as quoted in the excellent Spiegel Online: We want to promote the concept […]
The Daily Telegraph reports that the new EU Ambassador In Washington Joao Vale de Almeida is bent on elbowing out of the way such diplomatic minnows as HM Ambassador Nigel Sheinwald: Mr Vale de Almeida has stressed to Washington officials and politicians that under the EU’s’ Lisbon Treaty, he has […]
When the Soviet Union broke up, an interesting issue emerged: how should the FCO/HMG name (in English) the many new countries which had appeared on the world scene? Those of us at the policy coal-face had a radical idea. Go for the simplest option, ie the one most easy to […]
My piece analysing David Cameron’s high-profile speeches in Turkey and India has attracted some attention, and various well-taken comments. Part of the problem for a speechwriter for a top politician is to work out who the audience is, and craft the words accordingly. Most speeches of any consequence by (say) […]
My piece at the Independent on the outcome of the Ejup Ganic trial in London provokes the usual flurry of comments: Mr Crawford is one of the morons that manipulated both US and UK foreign policy towards Bosnia in the 1990s. As an officer in the NATO force that arrived […]
My recent piece about the feebleness of Peter Mandelson’s speechwriters looked ahead to the coming international tour of David Cameron to see if his people would do a better job. NB folks, what follows is not about policy as such. It’s about speechwriting and diplomatic technique, and the way messages are […]
The European Stability Initiative do lots of good solid analytical/policy work. Have a look at this ingenious proposal for resolving the absurd problem of Greek opposition to Macedonia’s name: How can this conundrum be resolved? It can be done through a constitutional amendment in Skopje that changes the name of […]
A London court has rejected Serbia’s application to get former Bosnian/Bosniac leader Ejup Ganic extradited to Belgrade to face charges on the infamous Dobrovoljacka Street killings in Sarajevo in 1992. The word ‘rejected‘ perhaps does not do justice to District Judge Timothy Workman’s demolition of Serbia’s case. Perhaps ‘blew to smithereens beyond […]
