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International Affairs

Let me make a little more progress, or my speech will become as long as the Foreign Secretary’s, understandably, became. I do not underestimate the immense difficulties for anyone trying to bring about an agreed ceasefire in a conflict where one party is a terrorist organisation whose primary links are to countries such as Iran and Syria, which are already at loggerheads with most of the international community. However, it was dispiriting that the G8 summit at St. Petersburg, despite the reference to the UN Secretary-General of which the Foreign Secretary spoke, produced so little unity and such an apparent shortage of the will to take immediate action. The Prime Minister’s famous ““Yo”” conversation with President Bush meant that the headlines were once again about those two leaders being too close together, when the real story was surely that the G8 leaders as a body were not remotely close enough to each other. The evident failure of the leaders of countries with a huge influence in the middle east region, including France and Russia, to overcome their differences even to the extent of being able to take some co-ordinated initiative was the most enduring impression of the G8 summit.