Category Archives: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

UK to keep Kremlin assets frozen until Russia pays compensation to Ukraine

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Council of Europe has established digital register of damage as first step towards compensation mechanism

Britain is likely to keep Russian state assets immobilised for some time after the war in Ukraine ends, and certainly until Moscow has agreed to pay compensation for the damage it has inflicted, British officials have confirmed.

The Council of Europe summit last week established a digital register of damage for Ukraine as the first step towards an international compensation mechanism for victims of Russian aggression.

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End ‘megaphone diplomacy’ between UK and Hong Kong, says British diplomat

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Consul general calls for ‘constructive engagement’ with territory as Chinese vice-president says he will attend king’s coronation

Britain’s most senior diplomat for Hong Kong has called for an end to “megaphone diplomacy” between the UK and the Chinese territory, saying British and Hong Kong diplomats would make more progress with closed-door discussions.

Brian Davidson, the consul general to Hong Kong and Macau, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post that the UK-Hong Kong relationship had weathered “some difficult headwinds” over the past four or five years, but that “we are looking to lean back into a constructive engagement to see where we can collaborate”.

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‘I’m in intense pain’: Vahid Beheshti passes 70 days on UK hunger strike

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Camped outside Foreign Office, Beheshti is demanding Iran’s Revolutionary Guards be proscribed

Vahid Beheshti’s hunger strike outside the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office took a surreal turn on Wednesday – its 70th day – when he attended a royal coronation tea party at Buckingham Palace, arriving by wheelchair and wearing a suit and red tie.

He has lost more than 17kg (37lb), or a quarter of his body weight, and he told the Guardian that “my body and joints are now racked in intense pain”. As he left his tent, draped in the Iranian flag and surrounded by flowers, he clutched an envelope containing a letter for the king. After carefully smartening himself up, he was wheeled to a taxi by his wife, Mattie Heaven, a Conservative councillor.

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Britons trapped in Sudan say relatives were not allowed on flights

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Foreign Office accused of creating ‘confusion’ during evacuation, with some struggling to get visas or prove citizenship

British people trapped in Sudan have described being forced to make impossible choices about whether to fly home without family members the UK government will not allow on flights.

Suleiman, a British national who asked to withhold his family name, said a British official had called him to say he could be evacuated with his two children only if he left his pregnant wife behind. His children are also British nationals, and their mother is a Sudanese citizen.

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UK government extends Sudan evacuation with additional flight

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FCDO asks any British nationals hoping to leave war-torn country to reach airport in Port Sudan by noon local time on Monday

The UK government has announced plans to carry out an additional evacuation flight from Sudan on Monday, after previously suggesting that efforts to bring British nationals out of the war-torn country had concluded.

In a statement on Sunday, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) urged any UK nationals still hoping to leave Sudan to make their way to the airport in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, by noon local time (11am BST) on 1 May.

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Liz Truss disputing £12,000 bill relating to use of Chevening grace-and-favour house

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Invoice for ex-PM’s time at Kent mansion when foreign secretary is thought to include sums for missing bathrobes and party business

Liz Truss is disputing part of a £12,000 bill sent to her by the Cabinet Office relating to her use of the grace-and-favour Chevening house while she was foreign secretary.

The bill mostly covered hospitality but also included missing items, such as some bathrobes, and dates back to last summer when she was fighting the Conservative leadership campaign against Rishi Sunak.

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Britons in Sudan have until midday on Saturday to fly out, ministers say

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Government announces end to airlifts amid calls for NHS doctors without UK passports to be rescued

British nationals trapped in Sudan have until midday on Saturday local time to get on a flight before they stop, ministers have announced, as a doctors’ union called for NHS medics without UK passports to also be airlifted.

Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, said on Friday night more than 1,500 people had been flown out, and there had been a “significant decline in British nationals coming forward”, meaning it was time to end the operation.

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Sudan: UK evacuates more than 300 people amid criticism of response

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Further flights expected to leave airfield north of Khartoum on Wednesday, but proportion of British evacuees is unclear

Britain has evacuated more than 300 people from Sudan on rescue flights from an airfield north of the capital, with the first group on their way to the UK from Cyprus, where flights have been stopping over.

Downing Street said 301 people have been evacuated on three flights and that and a fourth was being loaded. A further four flights are expected to take off on Wednesday, but it is not clear what proportion of those rescued are British.

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RAF plane lands in Sudan as UK assesses options for further evacuations

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Armed forces minister says ‘job isn’t done’ in evacuating as many as 4,000 Britons and dual nationals trapped in war zone

The British military is assessing a highly fraught operation to rescue some of the thousands of British nationals stranded in Sudan after the Foreign Office was deluged by cross-party criticism for missing a window of opportunity on Sunday to evacuate more than just British diplomats and their families.

An RAF plane has landed at Port Sudan in the north-east of the country with some troops to look at the option of taking nationals who have attempted to drive – some in UN-protected convoys – from Khartoum and elsewhere. The landing ship RFA Cardigan Bay and the frigate HMS Lancaster are also being lined up as options to help people out of the war-torn country as the UK desperately considers its restricted options.

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Sudan unrest: evacuations intensify as US warns of humanitarian crisis

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US agency sends in disaster response teams as western nations pull diplomats and citizens out of strife-torn country

The US has warned of shortages of vital medicines, food and water in Sudan and deployed disaster response experts to the region, as efforts intensified to evacuate foreign diplomats and citizens from Khartoum.

On Sunday, the UK successfully evacuated its diplomatic staff and their dependants from Khartoum in a complex operation, while Germany and France said they had each evacuated more than 100 people. Italy, Spain and Canada also evacuated their citizens among other nationalities. A Dutch military plane took evacuees to Jordan early on Monday, the Dutch foreign ministry said. The US evacuated diplomats, embassy workers and their families on Saturday night.

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Sacked Foreign Office whistleblower hits out at secrecy of tribunal hearing

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Josie Stewart, who highlighted failures in Afghan evacuation, is concerned by attempt to keep her legal challenge private

A whistleblower who was sacked for highlighting Britain’s chaotic response to the fall of Kabul has expressed frustration at government attempts to have her legal challenge against her dismissal held in private.

Josie Stewart, a senior official, was fired from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) for giving an anonymous interview to the BBC about the failures in the handling of the Afghan withdrawal.

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UK aid cuts could force closure of Afghan project supporting women and girls

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Slashing funding to the programme from a promised £7m to just £1m sends a ‘stark message to the world’, says Save the Children

The UK government has cut almost £6m in funding to a programme in Afghanistan supporting vulnerable women and girls.

Save the Children said it has been told by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office that it will receive just over £1m of a promised £7m to support more than 100,000 people to access essential basic services such as healthcare and education.

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UK ambassador to Yemen took part in opening of Jordanian cigarette factory

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Michael Aron praised facility part-owned by British American Tobacco at ribbon-cutting event in 2019

A UK ambassador took part in the opening ceremony of a Jordanian cigarette factory part-owned by British American Tobacco (BAT) and praised the new facility in a televised interview, in the latest example of British diplomats breaching strict guidelines against mixing with the tobacco industry overseas.

The envoy stood at the ribbon as it was cut and later appeared in promotional material on the tobacco company’s website, but no record of his presence at the event was kept by the British embassy in Amman because the event was not considered a “formal meeting”.

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Foreign Office asks for India torture claim to be heard in secret court

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British citizen Jagtar Singh Johal was detained and says he was tortured after alleged tipoff by UK intelligence

The Foreign Office has asked for claims to be examined in a secret court that a British citizen was detained and tortured after the security services passed intelligence to the Indian government, newly filed court papers show.

The government department is refusing to confirm or deny claims that Jagtar Singh Johal, a British Sikh activist, was detained in India in 4 November 2017 after an alleged tipoff to the Indian security services.

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Whitehall procurement cards serve a purpose but oversight is patchy

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Labour analysis shows use of GPCs has risen under Tory government despite David Cameron decrying ‘hideous’ spending levels in 2010

Nestled inside a shaded courtyard, Plataran in south Jakarta offers diners the promise of authentic Indonesian food “with the atmosphere of Javanese royalty”. Five miles to the north, Kaum gives guests a taste of tribal Indonesian cooking with modern inflections.

Together, these are two of the city’s finest restaurants, and they are where Liz Truss and her team decamped, first for lunch and then for dinner, during a whistle-stop trip to the Indonesian capital in 2021. The two meals cost the taxpayer £1,443 – all paid for conveniently by handing over one of the thousands of government procurement cards (GPCs) that officials can use to pay for anything under £20,000.

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Cross-party MPs shocked by Foreign Office talks with Xinjiang governor

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Exclusive: Erkin Tuniyaz ‘played central role’ in persecution of Uyghurs, says inter-parliamentary alliance on China

The Foreign Office has shocked cross-party opponents of the Chinese treatment of Uyghur groups by revealing that it has asked the Xinjiang governor for talks.

MPs belonging to the inter-parliamentary alliance on China (Ipac) called it “incomprehensible” that “anybody within government would think it appropriate to meet with someone who has played a central role in the persecution of Uyghurs – crimes our own parliament has declared to be genocide”.

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UK set to brand Iran’s revolutionary guards as terrorists after Akbari execution

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Britain and EU expected to coordinate response to hanging of British-Iranian accused of spying

The UK and the European Union are expected to coordinate moves to brand the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation after the execution of Alireza Akbari, a British-Iranian dual national who was lured back to Iran by the security services three years ago.

Akbari, who had been a senior defence figure in reformist governments nearly two decades ago, was hanged for being a spy for MI6, a charge his family deny. A friend of the family said “this is a murder case”, and vowed to prove the innocence of the 61-year-old, including allegations that he had been paid by British intelligence.

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James Cleverly says Iran must halt execution of British citizen

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Foreign secretary warns Tehran over case of Alireza Akbari, an ex-Iranian minister accused of being MI6 spy

The UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has urged the Iranian government not to press ahead with plans to execute a British-Iranian dual national found guilty of spying for MI6.

Alireza Akbari, a former Iranian deputy defence minister who has lived in the UK for more than a decade, could be executed within days after he was found guilty by the revolutionary courts of being a senior spy for M16. His appeal was rejected more than three months ago, but for reasons that are not clear the Iranian security services are now threatening to go ahead and impose the death penalty.

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Revealed: UK has failed to resettle Afghans facing torture and death despite promise

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Those who risked their lives helping British government face a ‘toxic combination of incompetence and indifference’

Afghan nationals who were promised resettlement to the UK nearly a year ago are facing torture and death while they wait for a response from the British government, the Observer can reveal.

Not one person has been accepted and evacuated from Afghanistan under the Home Office’s Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme (ACRS), launched in January, prompting claims that ministers are showing a “toxic combination of incompetence and indifference”. The scheme was intended to help Afghans who worked for, or were affiliated with, the British government – including its embassy staff and British Council teachers – and all of whom face severe harm at the hands of the Taliban.

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UK foreign secretary visits Kyiv to reaffirm support for Ukraine

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James Cleverly, who says Russia will fail in its attempt to ‘break Ukrainian resolve’, announces fresh support package

The foreign secretary, James Cleverly, travelled to Kyiv on Thursday to meet the Ukrainian leadership and promise the UK’s support for as long as it takes to defeat Russia’s brutal efforts to break the country’s resolve.

In his first visit to Ukraine since his appointment as foreign secretary, Cleverly presented a package of support including money for the reconstruction of schools, ambulances, the victims of sexual violence, and grain sales to the world’s poorest markets, such as Sudan and Yemen.

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