How to make sense of the Kosovo/Kosova independence issue? Kosovo is diplomacy’s elephant’s graveyard, a bleak place where our best hopes and strategies and principles forlornly creep away to die. There is nothing uniquely special or principled or even self-evidently fair about the Kosovo Albanian majority’s demand that […]
Last week I was attempting to train some EU officials in the art of writing impactful political reports. My theory always was that if one’s work from Post was to be actually read by someone somewhere ploughing dispiritedly through the mass of dull stuff on an official desk or in an official […]
Not long before the Dayton Peace Conference negotiations started in November 1995, the Contact Group met in Moscow to discuss how it all should go. The European members of the Contact Group decided to have an informal consultation before we met the Americans and then had the full Group meeting […]
After returning from Zagreb I hit the Eurostar to Brussels to join for the first time as a trainer a good CPDS training course aimed at improving the quality of political reporting and analysis produced by EU officials. In one exercise the participants had to draft an urgent short report about the implications of […]
One of the great words of our time is the Balkan/Turkish word ‘inat’. Most ‘Western’ diplomats and politicians dealing with the Balkans of course have never heard of it, even though those who know the region well regularly remind us of the force of inat Serb-style. Thus here. And here. […]
Back to sunny Zagreb last week for the first time in some years. I was there to represent ADR Group at the start of a new good EU-funded scheme to help spread modern Mediation practice and procedures in Croatia. Croatia like many former Communist countries has vast traffic-jams in its […]
Boris Tadic has won Serbia’s Presidential elections, defeating the populist Radical Tomislav Nikolic by a close but clear margin on a high turn-out. Nikolic has conceded defeat in a dignified way. Tadic is making suitably polite noises about his opponent and his supporters. This is a powerful vote by Serbia […]
A tough question I have put to various candidates for jobs involving protocol instinct and practice: You are supervising the seating of VIPs at the theatre for a big British theatre night. As guests arrive you are told that two top VIPs allocated to the best central front-row seats are […]
Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I think that appearances matter. When one walks into a shop or office or home, what is the first impression? Smart, tidy, clean premises? People looking intelligent and interested to see you? A sense of good order? The grand former Federation Palace building in New Belgrade […]
On the subject of football and diplomacy, in 1984 the then British Ambassador to communist Yugoslavia and I as Embassy First Secretary went to see Croatia’s Hajduk Split team play Tottenham in a UEFA Cup first-leg game. At half-time Spurs were leading 1-0 and going well, Micky Hazard in outstanding form. The […]
