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Posts tagged Foreign policy
Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown hail ‘entente formidable’
Mar 12th
Two leaders stress need for close co-operation to stay ‘bang in the middle’ of Europe
Gordon Brown today described Britain’s alliance with France as an “entente formidable” as he and Nicolas Sarkozy stressed the need for close co-operation and to stay “bang in the middle” of Europe.
Speaking at a press conference after a working lunch at Downing Street today, the two leaders highlighted close political alignment on a number of policy fronts as the prime minister described relations between the two countries as “greater now than at any time since the second world war”.
Brown said he and Sarkozy were in “harmony” over the need to introduce a tax on banking transactions as he revealed that a report on the levy is due “in the next few weeks”.
As well as on the economy, the two countries were working “more closely than ever” on environmental, energy and security matters, he said.
This included putting nuclear power at the heart of tackling climate change.
In his first visit to Downing Street since 2008, Sarkozy echoed the view that it was essential Britain remain “bang in the middle” of Europe amid concerns that a Tory government may engage less enthusiastically with Europe under David Cameron.
Sarkozy insisted he was not in Britain to “play politics” ahead of the forthcoming general election but nevertheless made comments that appeared to be aimed squarely at the Tory leader, who he is meeting this afternoon.
“I remain convinced that the position of our British friends is bang in the middle of Europe. We need you,” the French president said.
Sarkozy said he “regretted” Cameron’s decision to pull the Tories out of the centre-right European People’s party grouping in the European parliament.
The two leaders used their press conference to reveal that work on a banking levy was progressing as Brown pointed to Japan’s recent decision to come out in favour of such a move.
“The banks are organised at a global level now,” said the prime minister. “Their global contribution to society has to be measured in some way. I cannot have one set of banks undercutting another set of banks by moving from one country to another as tax havens or regulatory regimes make it too easy to pay any taxes at all.
“The global financial levy is something that is not only on the agenda but will be subject to a report that will appear in the next few weeks and I believe that the French and British positions are entirely in harmony on this and we can move forward on this.”
He said Britain’s alliance with France was a partnership for the future.
Both were worried about the fragility of the economic recovery, he said, so had agreed to maintain the economic stimulus, “to stick to the course” in their determination to create high global growth.
But he stressed the need for “more global co-operation” in the G20. This should comprise “more determination, more consistency and more speed”.
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US State Department launches site to gather views on US foreign policy
Mar 12th
The US State Department has launched a web application to gather and map the views of citizens and those abroad about US foreign policy
The US State Department has launched a web application, Opinion Space, that solicits views and input on US foreign policy.
The site was launched at the Alliance of Youth Movements summit in London.
Instead of a virtual suggestion box, users respond to comments by moving a slider showing gauging your view ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. For the launch, Opinion Space explores five topics, the threat posed by nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists, the role of empowering women in terms of development, “proactive diplomacy”, food security and climate change. Users can also leave an idea and suggestions for follow up for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The topics will change every month. The initial topics are broad, but in the coming months, the questions will “drill down” into issues including those that might relate to upcoming trips by Secretary Clinton, said Ari Wallach, founder of consultancy studioBenZion which was involved with the launch strategy of the site and developing the topics and questions.
Secretary Clinton said: “Opinion Space is an example of 21st Century Statecraft, where connection technologies can encourage open dialogue and engagement. My staff and I look forward to listening to the opinions and ideas the Opinion Space participants provide and vote on.”
What is 21st Century Statecraft (for those of us who don’t have a degree in international relations)?
In the past, Wallach said that diplomacy was often “two people in suits over Scotch talking about how they were going to do this or that vis a vis the other country”.
In Secretary Clinton’s vision, 21st Century statecraft means that foreign relations isn’t just government-to-government but also government-to-people, people-to-people and people-to-government, “a new matrix of how we interact with one another”.
Developed with the Centre for New Media at the University of California Berkeley, the site designers hope that contributors will not only add interesting views but also filter the best ones.
Once you’ve added your views, you are charted in what looks almost like a star chart. It’s a very impressionistic mapping of your views.
“This map is not based on geography or predetermined categories, but on similarity of opinion,” said UC Professor and Berkeley Centre for New Media director Ken Goldberg. “It’s designed to ‘depolarise’ discussions by including all participants on a level playing field.”
Wallach said that they thought a lot about ways to create incentive systems as opposed to “unintelligent, unenlightening, debate flame wars”.
Also, once you’ve left your views and comments, you can then see the views and comments of others and again, using a slider, say whether you strongly agree or disagree with the comment and whether you found the comment insightful. The site also lists the top authors and reviewers. You can see other views and see how they relate to one another.
This is not just an information gathering tool for the State Department, it’s also an information gathering tool for everyone who uses it, Wallach said. People answer the questions but in testing the site, they saw people spending 20 to 40 minutes exploring other views.
It’s an experiment and they hope to refine this over the years, he said. “In line with the technological aesthetic of the day, don’t wait for something to be perfect. Put it out there. See how it works and how it doesn’t work. Refine along the way.”
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Torture and table tennis: Iraq hostage Peter Moore recounts life in captivity
Mar 12th
British IT expert held captive for more than two years after Baghdad kidnap laments not trying to escape
Watch the GuardianFilms investigation into how the hostages were taken to Iran
Peter Moore, the British IT expert who spent 31 months in captivity after being kidnapped in Iraq, has revealed how he thought he was about to be killed on the day of his release, spent his ordeal unable to see clearly without his glasses, and played table-tennis with a guard.
Moore said he regretted not trying to escape during the early days of his detention when the captives had the opportunity to kill a guard. The computer consultant from Lincoln said he had had a chance to flee when one of the two men watching over him fell ill.
The 36-year-old told Channel 4 News and the Times how he was seized, with four bodyguards, from a government building in Baghdad in May 2007. He was released in December last year and arrived home on New Year’s Day.
Moore said he and his fellow captives were stripped down to their underpants during their capture. Later, his glasses were taken, leaving the short-sighted consultant unable to see clearly until his release.
Moore paid tribute to the other four men seized, saying he was “very grateful” for their help and the medical treatment they gave him after his abduction.
Jason Creswell, Jason Swindlehurst and Alec MacLachlan were shot dead and their bodies returned to Britain last year. Alan McMenemy, the fourth bodyguard, is also believed to be dead.
Moore told Channel 4 News that early in their detention he and Creswell were asked to treat the sick guard.The hostages discussed using a syringe to inject him with air bubbles and attempting to overpower the remaining captor.
“I was concerned it was going to go out of the frying pan into the fire. There were two of them with us but 100 outside. I think we should have done it in hindsight. It was the best chance we had. I think one or two would have been killed and one made it out.
“There was a woman downstairs with a child and we would have had to kill her too.”
The men were seized at the end of May 2007, but they were held together only until July. Moore remained with McMenemy, chained side by side in cramped rooms with only a television for comfort until December, he told the Times.
Moore was training finance ministry workers how to spot misspent money when about 100 police in 20 vehicles stormed the building. Initially he believed he was being arrested. It was only when they began removing his clothes during the ride to Sadr City that he realised otherwise.
Moore, who has talked of being subjected to mock executions, said he was beaten on a near-daily basis and once subjected to severe punishment for allegedly breaking a lock.
“They tied my hands behind my back and put a chair next to the door. I was made to stand on the chair with my hands over the door and they pulled the chair out to leave me hanging. They did that four or five times. It was very painful. I was screaming in pain.”
Moore said he tried to appeal to his captors’ respect for family and religion, so invented a Brazilian wife and pretended to be Catholic. His act seemed to have worked – his kidnappers gave him a string of Islamic beads to pray with.
In early 2009, a major who spoke English ordered that Moore no longer be kept in chains. The two men watched tennis together on television. One day the major appeared with two table tennis bats and a ball.
“We got quite fast, playing for hours at a time,” said Moore. “It was a good laugh.” The kidnappers had made clear they wanted a prisoner exchange: the five British hostages for leaders who had been arrested by British forces in Iraq but held by the US military. “I just knew we were in it for the long haul,” Moore said.
As his living conditions improved, he began to suspect that the other four hostages were dead. On the morning of 30 December last year, he was woken at 5am and told to get dressed in jeans and black top because he was going to be released. Moore refused to believe them. “I was just like, ‘Go away,’ and put the blanket over my head.”
He was bundled into a car, transferred to a minibus, then to another car and finally driven to a driveway where he was met by a large group of Iraqi men in suits and others in combat gear with machineguns. “I thought, ‘S***, I am going to die,’” he told the Times.
But a man stepped forward and introduced himself as Sami al-Askari, an Iraqi MP, and told Moore: “I am from the Iraqi government and you are a free man.”
In his television interview, Moore contested Foreign Office claims that his kidnappers, from a Shia organisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous, had requested a news blackout and insisted they wanted to publicise their message.
“They felt they complied with everything the British embassy said but still were not getting what they wanted,” Moore said.
A Guardian investigation reported that the hostages were taken to Iran within a day of their kidnapping in an operation led and masterminded by the Quds Force, part of Iran’s revolutionary guard.
But Moore believed he was held in houses in Basra and the cities of Hilla, Karbala and Baghdad during his captivity, although he conceded the men might have been driven across the border.
Iraqi intelligence sources told the Guardian the British captives were never made aware they had crossed the border and back within 24 hours of being seized.
The Foreign Office has continued to insist there was no evidence that Moore was held in Iran, despite claims by Iraqi intelligence that they told their British counterparts and the Foreign Office that the hostages were taken across the border.
General David Petraeus, the head of US central command, said Moore was “certainly” held in Iran for at least some of his time in captivity, although he told Reuters it was “difficult to say” what role the revolutionary guard played.
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British troops hand over control of key Afghan town to US
Mar 11th
Soldiers based in Musa Qala in northern Helmand to be redeployed, but 800 troops will remain in Sangin
Control of a key town in southern Afghanistan, twice captured by British troops and where 23 were killed, is to be handed over to the US marines, it was announced today.
Five hundred British soldiers based in Musa Qala, in northern Helmand, will be redeployed further south to join most of the UK’s remaining 10,000 troops in the province, Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, told MPs.
However, 800 British troops will remain in Sangin, described by British commanders today as one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan. Six British soldiers have been killed there since the beginning of March, some as a result of what military sources called “increasing accuracy” in small arms fire by Taliban fighters.
Military spokesman Major General Gordon Messenger described Sangin as a place which “matters to the Taliban” as an important transit route, near a major poppy route and a narcotics region.
He described the district as “one of the most enduring problems in Helmand”. The Taliban were intimidating the population at night and British and Afghan troops are manning 30 patrol bases and checkpoints.
Messenger said it was possible that responsibility for Sangin could also be handed over to the US, though defence sources said that was extremely unlikely.
Musa Qala was taken by British forces in early 2006. In October that year, the British moved out after an agreement, pressed on them by the Karzai government in Kabul, with tribal elders. In February 2007 the Taliban took over the town. In December that year it was reclaimed by British troops, supported by Afghan forces, after a fierce battle.
Defence officials said today that the 500 British troops still there will be redeployed to “thicken and deepen” the British presence in central Helmand, closer to areas where thousands have been engaged in Operation Moshtarak with US and Afghan troops.
British troops currently make up 30% of the military force in Helmand, but are responsible for the security of 70% of the region’s population, a state of affairs that has been described by British commanders as nonsensical. The 10,000 British troops in the province include some 500 special forces.
Lieutenant Colonel Harry Fullerton, commander of a Household Cavalry-led battlegroup, said today: “We didn’t take over a disaster at the beginning, we took over a market system which was starting to be successful. We have seen the market enlarge. We have about 1,200 stall holders in the bazaar. It hasn’t been without its cost but it has been a cost worth making.”
Messenger said British troops were handing over “a going concern, a success story”. He said Nato commanders were considering transferring other parts of Helmand, including Kajaki, to US forces.
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UK urged to apologise for ex-Bosnian president’s prison ‘mistreatment’
Mar 11th
Chairman of joint presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina says Ejup Ganic, arrested in London after extradition request from Serbia, was denied access to medicine
The British government should apologise to a former Bosnian president for his “mistreatment” in prison, the chairman of the joint presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina said today.
Ejup Ganic, who served as vice-president and president of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the break from the former Yugoslavia, was arrested at Heathrow airport on 1 March after an extradition request from Serbia.
Haris Silajdzic said he was “shocked” by Ganic’s claims that he was denied access to consular assistance, to a telephone and to his medicine for three days.
He said the foreign secretary, David Miliband, had promised to investigate the complaint.
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Ganic had been in the UK for several days before being detained by police at Heathrow. The Serbian government has accused him of being responsible for the deaths of 42 Bosnian-Serb soldiers in May 1992, a month after the start of the Bosnian war.
His bail request was adjourned last week to give the Serbian authorities more time to submit evidence backing their war crime allegations and oppose bail.
Lawyers for Ganic said moves to make him face trial in Serbia were politically motivated and his arrest was illegal.
Lord Justice Laws today granted the former president bail on what he described as “stringent” conditions.
Under the conditions, Ganic – who is currently being held in Wandsworth prison, in south-west London – has to live at a specified address in the capital and must remain “within the confines” of the property between 10am and 7pm.
He is not allowed to apply for a passport or travel document, and must report to a London police station every day.
Laws said £300,000 had been provided as security by a wellwisher who the court understood was “a lady of substantial means”.
Terence Kealey, the vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, paid a further £25,000 surety to be retained if Ganic breached his bail conditions.
Ganic is president of the Sarajevo school of science and technology (SSST). He had been in the UK to attend events at Buckingham University, which is partnered with the SSST.
“Prof Ganic was visiting Buckingham to attend the graduation ceremony of the second cohort of SSST students to have graduated with a degree from Buckingham,” a spokeswoman for the university said.
Earlier, a Foreign Office spokesman said Miliband had met Silajdzic this morning.
“They discussed a range of issues, including the UK’s strong support for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s European perspective,” the spokesman said.
“The foreign secretary underlined that the arrest of Dr Ejup Ganic in London on 1 March is a judicial matter, which in no way amounts to a diplomatic or political statement by the British government or any UK point of view on past events in the western Balkans.
“The foreign secretary confirmed that the UK takes its obligations towards foreign nationals in detention very seriously, and that officials will continue to look into any concerns raised by the Bosnian authorities in this regard.”
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Army chief sees ministerial ambitions snuffed out by wily Liam Fox | Nicholas Watt
Mar 11th
Quietly, and with little fanfare, the shadow defence secretary has killed off ministerial ambitions of retired army chief
When you achieve victory – of the complete, earth-scorching variety – it is always best to avoid crowing. “In war: resolution; in defeat: defiance; in victory: magnanimity,” is a handy bit of advice from Winston Churchill.
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, has clearly been thinking of Churchill after achieving a complete victory over the Tory leadership.
David Cameron had planned to appoint General Sir Richard Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff, as a minister in a Tory government. That is now toast after Lord Guthrie, the former chief of the defence staff, told the Today programme this morning that it was a “great mistake” for Dannatt to have accepted a post as adviser to the Tories.
Gurthrie’s remarks are significant because he has been highly critical of Gordon Brown over defence spending and was withering about Labour MPs who condemned retired defence chiefs in the Commons yesterday as Tories.
Guthrie showed why it is unwise to cross this former SAS commander. This is what he had to say about the attacks from the Labour MPs:
I thought it was rather a desperate act and actually rather cheap. I don’t think everybody is a Tory. I certainly am a crossbencher and am quite prepared to criticise anybody.
And this is what he said about the planned Dannatt appointment:
I think personally it was a great mistake. I really do. I do not think serving officers should criticise publicly.
Guthrie’s remarks will be welcomed by Fox, who has fought a clever under-the-radar campaign to sideline Dannatt after Cameron went over the heads of his shadow defence team to line up the former army chief for a ministerial post.
This is what Cameron told the Tory conference in October:
When the country is at war, when Whitehall is at war, we need people who understand war in Whitehall. That’s why I’m proud to announce today that someone who has fought for our country and served for 40 years in our armed forces will not only advise our defence team but will join our benches in the House of Lords and if we win the election could serve in a future Conservative government: General Sir Richard Dannatt. As we welcome him to serve with us, let us all salute those who serve our country.
Fox signalled to the world the end of Dannatt’s ministerial ambitions in a little-noticed interview at the end of January. In remarks that were helpfully buried towards the end of an interview with the Sunday Times on 31 January, Fox made clear that defence chiefs had vetoed Dannatt’s appointment as a minister:
They think there would be a problem in the constitutional relationships if he were to hold a ministerial role.
Fox’s victory means that he will be a formidable force in a Cameron cabinet. That is quite an achievement for someone who had been subject to a whispering campaign last summer that he may not be appointed defence secretary.
And the future? Fox is still only 48. He would be one of the few cabinet ministers to have served in the last Tory government. If the Tories follow Labour’s example, Cameron’s successor will probably emerge from the heart of the party. Step up Liam Fox, your time may arrive, though you might have to wait a decade.
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Gordon Brown rejects criticism from former military chiefs over defence spending
Mar 11th
Prime minister says former chiefs of defence staff Lord Guthrie and Lord Boyce are wrong to say military budget was insufficient for two wars
Gordon Brown today rejected criticisms from former military chiefs who accused him of starving the armed forces of funds when he was chancellor.
The prime minister also claimed it was “incredibly unfair” of Conservatives, including Sir John Major, the former prime minister, to accuse him of using a visit to troops in Afghanistan as a party political stunt ahead of the general election.
Sparks flew in the Commons chamber yesterday when David Cameron took Brown to task over comments by two former chiefs of defence staff – General Lord Guthrie and Admiral Lord Boyce – who branded his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry on Iraq “disingenuous”.
Brown insisted when giving evidence to the inquiry on Friday that he had always provided military commanders with the equipment they requested. However, the two former chiefs argued that, while urgent operational requirements were always funded, the Treasury failed to maintain the MoD’s overall budget at a level needed to fight two wars.
In an interview today with BFBS, the forces’ broadcaster, the prime minister said: “I think they are wrong. To be honest, I don’t think it is appropriate for people to criticise us for not providing what we did provide. The urgent operational requirements that were asked for by our forces were always met.”
Guthrie, the first chief of the defence staff under New Labour, insisted today that Brown had been “unsympathetic” to military spending during his tenure as chancellor.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think he was unsympathetic to defence. I think everybody who has had anything to do with defence thinks that. Particularly in the early days when he was chancellor and there was a lot of money in this country and he showered it on other departments but he didn’t give much to defence.
“I think nowadays the personal kit of people in Afghanistan, for instance, is better than it ever has been, but goodness it has taken some time to get there.”
He said attempts by Labour backbenchers to dismiss his concerns by calling him a Conservative was a “desperate act” and “rather cheap”.
Guthrie was at the centre of a Commons exchange between Brown and David Cameron yesterday that prompted several Labour voices to accuse him of being a Tory.
Guthrie told the Today programme: “I thought it was rather a desperate act and rather cheap. I don’t think everybody is a Tory. I certainly am a crossbencher and quite prepared to criticise anyone.”
Brown was also forced to respond to an accusation by Major that his visit to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry last Friday and weeks ahead of a general election was “unbecoming conduct for a prime minister”.
Brown told BFBS: “I think that is an incredibly unfair accusation. I have gone to Afghanistan every year at this time for four years. I have visited Afghanistan eight times. People are making very politically loaded statements. I was doing my duty as prime minister, going to meet our forces. I wanted to thank our troops for what they had done.
“I find it quite unusual for people to criticise me for doing what I consider to be my duty. This is nothing to do with partisan politics. It is everything to do with wanting to assure our troops that they have the support and warm wishes of everybody in Britain and that we are absolutely confident they are doing the best job they can.”
In response to allegations that the government was slow to replace the soft-skinned Snatch Land Rover patrol vehicles, which are vulnerable to roadside bombs, Brown said that it was not known for some time in either Iraq or Afghanistan that enemy forces would use guerilla tactics, including homemade bombs, rather than facing allied troops in open battle.
“This happened in Iraq in about 2005-06 and it happened in Afghanistan a bit later,” he said.
“The moment people realised that this was the nature of the guerilla warfare that was going to be practised, Des Browne, the defence secretary, came to me and said we need to buy new vehicles and we approved those new vehicles immediately.”
The prime minister went on: “In 2006 we took a decision that we needed to do more and put about £90m in and bought Mastiffs and Ridgebacks. Then we decided to put out to competition a design for a light patrol vehicle and that is what we have done in the last few months.”
An inquest earlier this week into the deaths of four soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008 heard a string of criticisms over their equipment and training. Wiltshire and Swindon coroner David Masters pledged to raise his concerns with the Ministry of Defence.
He recorded unlawful killing verdicts for Corporal Sarah Bryant, 26, the first female casualty in Afghanistan, and special forces reservists Corporal Sean Robert Reeve, 28, Lance Corporal Richard Larkin, 39, and Private Paul Stout, 31, who died when their Snatch Land Rover hit a roadside bomb in June 2008.
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Afghanistan: War with an end | Editorial
Mar 11th
The conditions exist for a settlement, which would limit Taliban influence to the south, preserve advances and cut corruption
Two thoughtful speeches this week dealt with the challenging legacy of America’s war on terror. The first was given in London by Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5. She spoke about the use of torture by American intelligence. Britain did not, she said, condone its use or carry it out directly, but nor did this country try as hard as it should have done (or perhaps at all) to discover what its allies were up to. As a result Britain gained information from suspects subjected to extreme and illegal techniques, while claiming that it did not condone the use of them. That is a greater matter for shame and scrutiny than the government seems able to admit, connivance being only one or two steps short of commission.
The second important speech this week was made in Boston by David Miliband, the man who as foreign secretary has had to deal with the consequences of torture and the wars which brought it about. His words repay close analysis, since they stand above the routine, as a signal to the future rather than a justification of the past.
“In 1988, I would never have believed that 2010 years later I would be British foreign secretary explaining a war in Afghanistan,” Mr Miliband began. That was a clue to the direction of his thinking. He knows that the Afghan war has gone wrong, cannot be won in military terms and in the form it is being fought is destroying Afghanistan rather than saving it. He could not say this directly, but did so instead by proposing a change of strategy, in which dialogue and serious compromise matter more than fighting.
“Talking to the Taliban” has become an easy slogan for many critics of the war, but it has now also become official British and – in some regards – US policy. “A political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome,” the US general Stanley McChrysal said recently. Or as Mr Miliband put it in his speech: “While violence of the most murderous, indiscriminate and terrible kind started this Afghan war, politics will bring it to an end on the back of concerted military and civilian effort.”
The foreign secretary does not need to persuade the British public. Six British deaths this month in Sangin alone are miserable evidence of the military struggle, and Mr Miliband is not the only politician who would like to see the fight come to an end. The American surge will not be sustained beyond 2011, as the presidential election comes closer. All this has added urgency to the search for an alternative. Tentative contacts with some Taliban figures, and a sham of an Afghan election to return a discredited president, are not in themselves a political solution.
A precipitate Nato pullout would require a latter-day version of the Soviet government’s departing advice to its Afghan ally in 1989: “Forget Communism, abandon socialism, embrace Islam and work with the tribes.” It would lead to the swift collapse of the Kabul regime, and chaos afterwards. But fighting on is no better. The answer, as Mr Miliband recognises, is some combination of less fighting and more talking, which could lead to a deal. This deal will not be the same as the “reconciliation” which has always been on offer – allowing Taliban fighters to surrender. The west and Kabul must compromise too. One target of Mr Miliband’s speech was President Karzai, who has long since ceased to be anything other than an obstacle to a settlement. As the foreign secretary put it: “Without a genuine effort to understand and ultimately address the wider concerns which fuel the insurgency, it will be hard to convince significant numbers of combatants that their interests will be better served by working with the government than by fighting against it.”
The conditions exist for a settlement. It would limit Taliban influence to the south, preserve advances such as female education, cut corruption and the number of foreign troops. Mr Miliband is right to be brave.
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Tories would play leading role in European Union, says William Hague
Mar 10th
Shadow foreign secretary says the Conservatives have been champions of EU’s greatest achievements: single market and enlargement
William Hague said today that a Conservative government would play a “leading role” in the European Union.
In a speech, the shadow foreign secretary said that although the Tories had criticised aspects of the EU, they had also “been the foremost champions of the EU’s greatest achievements: the single market and enlargement.”
Hague said that his party would seek to “maintain and value the bonds of our relationships” with other EU states.
“The European Union is obviously an institution of enormous importance to the United Kingdom and its foreign policy,” he said in his address to the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“If we win the coming general election, it is our firm intention that a Conservative government will be active and activist in the European Union from day one, energetically engaging with our partners.”
He said that they would be “highly active” in promoting European cooperation on climate change, energy security, and pressing for freer and fairer global trade, as well as pushing for Turkey’s membership of the EU.
Hague also emphasised the potential of the EU 2020 strategy on jobs and growth to enhance Europe’s competitiveness – “if we get it right”.
While the Tories had opposed the Lisbon treaty that created the new external action service – in effect an EU diplomatic service – Hague said that they now accepted its existence and would seek to work with it.
They would also work closely with Lady Ashton – the Labour peer who heads the service – although Hague warned that she had an “almost impossible task” amid the “bureaucratic turf wars” in Brussels.
“Whatever our disagreements on that treaty, we intend to maintain and value the bonds of our relationships with our European partners,” he said.
“While we have had differences over the utility and purpose of institutional structures, we have always argued that it is in all our common interests that the nations of the EU use their collective weight in the world to our mutual advantage and in the promotion of our shared values.
“I have often argued that the nations of Europe have demonstrated insufficient determination and consistency in the delivery of our foreign policy goals. A Conservative government will be a strong advocate of the EU’s collective demonstration of those qualities.
“So, with a Conservative government, Britain will play a leading role in external affairs discussions within the European Union.”
The largely positive tone of his comments will been seen as an olive branch to leaders such as Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany, who were dismayed by David Cameron’s decision to pull out of the centre-right European People’s party grouping in the European parliament.
Hague also strongly attacked Labour’s record over foreign policy and the international economy, warning that the re-election of Gordon Brown would be a “catastrophe”.
He said that the dominant current within Labour was no longer the outward-looking aspect of the late 1990s, but an “explicitly old-fashioned left approach” characterised by the selection of “hardened union activists” as parliamentary candidates.
“Five more years of Gordon Brown would mean that this country would be associated across the world with risky and unaffordable debt, lack of discipline over spending and trade union power,” he said.
During questions, Hague declined to respond when asked to explain why it had taken him so long to find out that Lord Ashcroft was a non-dom. Hague said he was there to discuss foreign policy.
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William Hague speech – live
Mar 10th
Live coverage as the shadow foreign secretary makes a foreign policy speech at Royal United Services Institute
11.44am: William Hague is giving a big speech today. It’s on the “foreign policy framework of a new Conservative government” and Hague is delivering it at 1pm at the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall. The Tories have already released some excerpts in advance and my colleague Nicholas Watt has already written a blog about what Hague’s speech means for the Foreign Office, while I’ve written a story covering some other aspects of what Hague will say.
But Hague is also promising to take questions. This will be his first major public outing since we learned last week that he had been kept in the dark about Lord Aschroft’s tax arrangements for nearly 10 years. Hague did not want to talk about this when he gave an interview to the Financial Times – beyond saying that Ashcroft never tried to influence party policy – but there’s a chance that we might have more luck today. We’ll find out soon.
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