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North Africa and the Middle East

My point is that public declarations of support for a policy need to be matched by private diplomacy. It appears that there is a fashion in the Government to take a different view and a different approach from the previous Government on many aspects of policy. There might be a view in the present Government that the action the previous Prime Minister took ahead of the G20 meeting—getting on a plane, travelling to Brazil and travelling around the world making the case for concerted international action in circumstances of economic crisis—was somewhat overplayed. I personally think that there is a genuine need for action to be taken at this stage but that public words need to be matched by private conduct. In that sense, there must be concerted efforts to try to bring the international community together. That challenge is not unique to the United Kingdom—it is a responsibility that falls on all those in positions of leadership—and I would be the first to concede that this is a challenging and difficult set of circumstances in which, to date, the international community has not been united. That is why, however, I think it demands effort, skill, application and judgment to ensure that we do what we can to cohere the international community rather than further to divide it at a point at which judgments are being made not only in Tripoli but in Benghazi about the commitment of the international community to supporting these changes.