Foreign Office
latest news & developments‘It’s like inviting Pol Pot to a human rights conference’
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe made a surprise appearance on Monday at a world food summit in Rome, drawing fierce criticism from the British government. In his first official…
Experts see big holes in cluster bomb ban
An agreement banning cluster bombs has cheered human rights campaigners, but powerful military states are refusing to join it and experts say the treaty is riddled with holes and…
Shackled Simon Mann names names
Wearing handcuffs and leg-irons in an African prison, the former SAS soldier who tried to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea in a coup d’état on Tuesday claimed the…
Talks fail: Army is Kenya’s best hope
Britain on Tuesday said that the Kenyan army is now ”by far the best option” to stop a sectarian bloodbath as peace talks in Nairobi between the government and opposition were…
CBS staff kidnapped in Iraq
Two employees of United States broadcaster CBS News, one reportedly a British journalist, have been kidnapped in Iraq. The United Kingdom journalist was seized by gunmen in Basra…
Burma’s junta sets timetable for polls
Burma’s military junta unveiled a timetable for the country’s first elections in two decades, but it was unclear on Sunday if detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi would be…
Russian envoy: ‘Now we really have a crisis’
The diplomatic stand-off with Russia entered a dangerous new phase on Wednesday as British officials denounced ”a pattern of intimidation” by Russia’s security services against…
Musharraf to be given ultimatum
The United States and Britain are on Monday expected to demand that Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf, honour pledges to hold elections in the next two months and step down…
Iraq’s hired hands under fire
They needed to be hired fast after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. With too few United States soldiers on the ground, demand for private security guards was at a level not seen since…
Thai crash investigators find flight recorders
Investigators on Monday recovered the two flight recorders, or ”black boxes”, from Thailand’s worst plane crash in a decade, which killed at least 90 people, mostly foreign…
China denies cyber-spying charges
From the German chancellery to the Pentagon, government computer networks have been targeted by cyber spies that media reports say were directed by China’s military. The reported…