Britain and France are still looking for dates for their foreign ministers to travel together to tour hotspots in central Africa’s Great Lakes region, a Foreign Office spokesperson said on Thursday.
”There are still plans for a visit to Africa,” by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, the spokesperson said.
”We’re looking at dates in the next few weeks, though nothing suitable has been identified at the moment,” he said.
He said Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel and the European Union’s high representative for foreign policy Javier Solana had expressed interest in joining the trip.
Diplomats in Paris had said on June 29 that De Villepin would be travelling to Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda from next Tuesday, and that Straw and Michel were expected to accompany him.
Straw’s agenda should be more open from next Thursday when the
House of Commons begins its summer recess.
A joint trip by Straw and De Villepin would be their first since Britain and France fell out over the Iraq war. – Sapa-AFP