---

Zimbabwe: Elections

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an extremely good point. It is a reason why—as noble Lords may remember from the case of Kenya at the beginning of this year—we do not recognise Governments, we recognise states. When there is a Government whose legitimacy we do not accept, we make it clear that we do not accept that Government as representative of the people of the country and therefore that we will not do business with them. That is the formula that we are seeking here. I would just ask whether, in addition to the case of Mr Tsvangirai and the Dutch embassy, we would really want to close our embassy and leave the 14,000 British nationals in Zimbabwe unprotected?