The Ambassador of Switzerland, HE Alexis P Lautenberg, gave the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Council a brief foreign and European policy outline from the Swiss point of view as a non-EU member, at the Swiss Ambassador's Residence in London.
Ambassador Tandar spoke of the future of Afghanistan as a free and democratic society where the freedom of press gives people equal voice to all citizens. Freedom of press in Afghanitan is an important achievement and will help in national reconciliation.
Tonight, the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Council, assembled in the House of Commons, London, heard a presentation by H.E. Zef Mazi, the Ambassador of the Republic of Albania to the UK, entitled “Albania’s Foreign and Security Policy, NATO and the EU”
Our vision for international development, as in other areas of policy, is to achieve progressive aims through Conservative means. We believe we can bring to the fight against global poverty weapons and techniques that will make more of a difference to more people: a focus on aid effectiveness and value for money; an understanding of the importance of wealth creation and the means to foster it; a recognition that security is the precondition for sustainable development and hard-headed proposals to improve conflict resolution.
HE Mr Derek Leask, High Commissioner of New Zealand, delivered a speech to the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Council in central London this evening.
At a time when we should be forging new alliances with the powers that will affect our destiny, when we should be vigorously promoting new and more flexible structures for the EU, when we should be building up the Commonwealth as the ideal soft power network of the future, at a time when we should be massively modernising our security forces to meet asymmetric threats, when we should be reconstructing and upgrading our whole diplomatic system, we are doing none of those things.
