A consignment of weapons clandestinely sent from North Korea to Iran is intercepted by the UAE. Pretty big news for the UN Security Council and the different sanctions regimes against North Korea and Iran alike, huh? Of course not, when the USA is chairing the UNSC: At Ambassador Rice’s news briefing, […]
This Libya business gets worse. Now the UK government is tangled up in explaining what it did or did not to to help victims of IRA terrorist bombs get compensation from Libya, source of the IRA’s Semtex explosives. Here is a piece about the basic legal claim involved. To my long-lost […]
Remember my struggling with a paper on how best to deal with failing/fragile states? Thanks to all those who sent ideas. Here is an extract from the finished product, which lists some of the grisly dilemmas which arise at the practical and policy levels alike: There will be no consensus […]
The UK’s ‘devolution’ arrangements are complicated and either stupidly inconsistent or elegantly tailored to meet varying local requirements, depending how you look at it. Here is the official summary: Devolution of powers Following referendums in Scotland and Wales in 1997, and in both parts of Ireland in 1998, the UK […]
This is excellent. Really excellent. It shows how politicians now are baffled by the idea that they are there for us. No, we are here for them, and on their terms.
It is always fascinating to read original official documents, in this case a selection of papers about the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted for the Lockerbie bombing. So have a look here. Yet it all seems … incomplete. Where are the letters and emails from/to the […]
Aaargh. Bosnia hits another political crisis or two or three: Meanwhile, Bosnia’s state government – the Council of Ministers – is facing a similar crisis after the strongest Bosniak party, the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, announced it may boycott the government over the issue of top appointments to key state […]
Who is to lead Europe? The French and Germans, of course. Who else? Gordon Brown is barely surviving as UK prime minister, and the Conservatives are as provincially Eurosceptic as ever. Europe simply cannot count on the British, at least for a while… Silvio Berlusconi’s sexcapades and Spain’s dire economic […]
A youthful Crawf asks me what I make of the sending to Libya of the ‘Lockerbie bomber’. Very difficult to say, because it’s a fiendishly long and complicated story about which I know next to nothing on the inner detail. My only professional diplomatic encounter with Libya came on the […]
John Redwood and Denis MacShane have been debating the growing UK total contribution to the EU Budget. So let’s go back to how it was negotiated in 2005. Previous postings (in date order for ease of following the story) are: here here and here In a nutshell, the EU Budget had to grow as […]
