by Chris Mullin
Friday, 1 October
Brixton Road
Great excitement. The Man has gone into hospital for what is described as ‘a minor procedure’ to correct a heart flutter. At the same time he announced (in television interviews last night) that, if reelected, he intends to serve a full third term. And to cap it all, it has also been disclosed that he and Cherie are paying an alleged £3.6
million (where on earth have they got that kind of money? Not from Geoffrey Robinson, I hope) for a house in Connaught Square. What kind of signal does that send to the millions of struggling punters whose votes we need? Clearly a fall-back position is being prepared in case it all goes wrong. My guess is that, if we win a third term, Gordon will be removed from the Treasury. That is certainly what Alan Milburn will be arguing for.
Oh, and by the way, we won Hartlepool – the Tories were in fourth place, behind UKIP. God bless UKIP.
Thursday, 7 October
Sunderland
At long last my Birmingham Six papers – 30 or 40 boxes – have gone to the university library at Hull. Two men in a van came and carted them away. Who knows if they will ever be any use to anyone, but I couldn’t bring myself to pulp them.
Friday, 8 October
A call from Nigel Sheinwald, just back from a lightning visit to Sudan and Ethiopia with The Man. They spent two nights in the air and one on the ground – in a hotel in Addis. Less than a week after his heart op. Barmy. What’s he trying to do? Kill himself? Nigel said it was for ‘security reasons’. Anyway, it seems The Man has decided he wants to sort out the Ethiopia/Eritrea border dispute. He wants me to get together with the Canadian mediator, Lloyd Axworthy, to see if we can come up with some way of breaking the deadlock. A fat chance, but who am I to argue?
Monday, 20 October
Awoke at 4 a.m., unable to sleep for thinking about Mum. I just want to go to her and say, ‘Come on, Mum. The nightmare’s over. I am taking you home.’
It has been decided by some shadowy Whitehall committee that I require protection for my visit to east Africa later this week. Why, for goodness’ sake? No one has ever suggested that I need protecting before. This afternoon two Special Branch officers came to explain. Kenya, apparently, is the problem. Nothing personal, but there are credible if vague reports that a local franchise of al-Qaida is planning to celebrate Ramadan with an attack on Western interests. I pointed out (a) that I shall scarcely be leaving the W1 area of Nairobi and (b) that I am hardly likely to be noticed until after I have left. If anyone in Kenya needs protecting, it is our highly visible High Commissioner, Edward Clay, and he apparently doesn’t qualify. Anyway, it seems I have no choice. It has been decided and that is that.
‘How many will there be?’
‘Only two – and they’ll be very discreet.’
No sooner were they out the door than my diary secretary reported that six visas had been applied for. Six, for heavens’ sake? I rang Edward Clay who confirmed that an advance party of three had already arrived. Goodness knows how much all this will cost the public purse. If I’d known earlier, I would have called the whole thing off.
Tuesday, 21 October
The Cabinet Room, Number 10
The Prime Minister’s ‘asylum stock take’. My first such meeting, having only just been given FCO responsibility for asylum policy. I have prepared carefully only to discover on arrival that the document which is to form the basis for discussion has been omitted from my file, placing me at a disadvantage to everyone else around the table. I sit, quietly seething, hoping not to be noticed. Which is not easy since the main ministerial line-up is Des Browne (in the hot seat), David Blunkett, Jack (who departed early) and I. Various other ministers with peripheral interests are scattered around the end of the table. Fortunately Des performs magnificently in that ponderous, considered Scots lawyerly way of his. As it turns out my services are scarcely required, but after an hour and a half in which I do no more than nod ostentatiously in the right places I decide to register my presence with a point about the various fiddles surrounding arranged marriages. Briefly, I had The Man’s full attention, even though this is a wholly new front, and politically very risky. Blunkett chips in, to the effect that there was uproar when he dipped his toe in that particular water.
‘Political dynamite,’ says Paul Boateng, ‘don’t touch it with a barge pole.’
The Man says gently, ‘I think, Chris, we’ll have to park that for the time being, although I acknowledge that there are issues.’ And on we go.
Incidentally, it emerged that the number of new migrants from the Accession countries so far amounts to 75,000, rather than the 13,000 predicted by a bunch of academic researchers from London University. It was decided to present the figures as good news, evidence of a thriving economy etc. A nice try, but I somehow doubt the tabloids will fall for it.
At 5 p.m. Bharat and I set off for Heathrow and Nairobi.
Wednesday, 22 October
Nairobi
Suddenly, I am The Man. Yesterday I travelled to work on a number 159 bus and now, as if in a dream, I am racing around in a convoy of Land Cruisers shadowed by two minders, Steve and Toby, and a wagonload of Kenyan police officers headed by a rotund, cheerful female superintendent. Sirens wail, lights flash, doors open and close without my so much as touching them and, much to my embarrassment, the traffic is held back at junctions by saluting policemen to allow our convoy to pass. ‘This side, please, sir,’ says Toby indicating the seat behind his. ‘Then I can get to you quickly.’ Meekly, I obey, all resistance abandoned. From now on I shall go with the flow.
Item One on today’s long agenda: a call on Abdullahai Yusuf, the new ‘President’ of Somalia. At the moment, of course, he is nothing of the sort. Just a man in a hotel in Nairobi. Later, in another hotel, I addressed the new Somali ‘parliament’, which comprises some of the very people who have reduced Somalia to rubble. My message: reconciliation, dialogue etc … From the backbenches ominous cries of ‘And unity.’
Friday, 24 October
State House, Nairobi
An hour and a quarter with President Kibaki, the last half-hour tête à tête; our first encounter since Edward’s vomit speech. Kibaki as ever, ponderous, not entirely with it, at one point confusing Somalia and Sudan. He perked up a bit when we were alone. V pissed off with Edward. Why hadn’t Edward come to see him, excellent access etc. (Edward says he had been trying to see him for months, but the flunkies kept on blocking.) We talked corruption. I suggested a register of interests for MPs, tighter procurement rules, suspension of ministers under a cloud etc. Kibaki insisted he’s on the case, but that a register of interests would never get through Parliament as presently composed. One wonders whether the old boy is going to make it to the end of his first term, let alone a second. He was a big man in his day but his day was some time ago. His bad luck – and Kenya’s – that he should have come to power in his declining years.
On television this evening I was asked if the UK isn’t meddling too much in Kenya. Maybe, but why should we pour our aid into a big hole?
Saturday, 25 October
Al Mansoor Hotel, Hargeisa (Somaliland)
We flew up to Addis, lunched at the Residence, and touched down at Hargeisa in the late afternoon. ‘No need to go into the terminal. We will just slip out the back,’ advised Bob Dewar as we taxied to a halt. I looked out of the porthole through which I could see miles of red carpet, a guard of honour, little girls holding fading pictures of the Queen, a police band and the entire government, minus the President, lined up waiting to greet us. ‘I think you’ve misread the tealeaves, Ambassador,’ I replied.
Accompanied by the Foreign and Interior ministers, we set off into town in a long convoy of Land Cruisers, preceded by an escort of policemen on Chinese motorcycles with flashing red poles on the back. Along the way, people applauding, waving, ululating and holding up signs saying ‘No Mogadishu’. To make quite sure I had got the message, we did a lap of honour.
The most
striking thing about Hargeisa is the plastic bags. The very trees are sprouting them. They infest grass and scrub, clog drains and streams. No public space is free of them.
This evening, dinner with President Riyale, who occupies just about the only house in Hargeisa that survived Siad Barre’s holocaust. Before we set out Edna Adan, the Foreign Minister, showed me a video of Hargeisa as it looked circa 1991. The destruction is awesome. Before dinner a private meeting with the President, which sometimes got quite heated. I, as advised, urging dialogue and reconciliation. He, demanding to know why Somaliland has been abandoned by the West having done everything we asked: rebuilding their country from ruins, establishing a fledgling democracy, co-operating over terrorism … In truth I am entirely sympathetic. On no account must we sell these people down the river.
As I am preparing for bed, a knock on the door. It is one of my Special Branch minders. ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but if the lights go out break one of these.’ A luminous yellow glow. ‘So we can see where you are,’ he explains, adding, ‘Whatever you do, don’t pick up a red one. The person with the red one gets shot.’
Sunday, 26 October
Berbera
A dry, dusty, tired place that has seen better days. A huge, strategic deepwater port on the Gulf of Aden, enclosed by a long, thin spit of sand. Apart from the occasional drizzle, there has been no rain in Berbera for four years.
We swept into town in a huge convoy of Land Cruisers (at one point I counted 26), preceded by a truckload of police at the front of which stood a man in a luminous orange jacket and a crash helmet, vigorously waving down oncoming traffic. I travelled with Edna Adan, a formidable woman who trained in London as a midwife (Somalia’s first), doing her rounds by bicycle in Kennington, Camberwell and Brixton. By the age of 30 she was married to the Somali president, later also the first president of independent Somaliland. Somewhere along the line he and Edna separated, Somalia disintegrated and she went off to work for the World Health Organisation, from which she retired with a good pension only to return in 1991 and, seeing the state of her country, felt obliged to come home and help rebuild. She started by building a gleaming new maternity hospital, her pride and joy which, a tad immodestly perhaps, is named after her.
Edna pointed out the sights – the hollowed-out shell of what was once a Russian hospital, the modest house where she spent her early childhood, the broken building with ornate porches that was once the local grocery store. And here and there magnificent, crumbling, derelict (yet multi-occupied) villas enclosed by verandahs on which in years gone by the panjandrums of a bygone age breakfasted as the sun rose over the Gulf of Aden.
Monday, 27 October
Al Mansoor Hotel, Hargeisa
Bharat is the latest member of our party to be struck down with a stomach bug. I, happily, remain unscathed.
Breakfast with John Drysdale, a delightfully refined old Englishman who came to Somaliland with the army in 1943 and has lived here on and off ever since. He is in the process of mapping and registering land-ownership for the entire country. Then to the war cemetery, where I laid a wreath in memory of British soldiers who died here, seeing off the Italians. Then to one of the mass graves on the outskirts of the city, where in 1988 the southern warlords murdered unknown thousands. (‘General’ Morgan, one of the chief perpetrators, is still swaggering around Nairobi. No wonder the Somalilanders fear an outbreak of ‘peace’.) Then a meeting with half a dozen ministers, each of whom presented a long wish list of requests for aid.
Then to the fledgling parliament, to address a joint session. My aim, to assure the Somalilanders that the international community is not going to push them into a forced marriage with the south. This attracts one of the few rounds of applause. Talk of dialogue and reconciliation is received with less enthusiasm. For light relief I chide them gently over the absence of women. This is a big event. My speech is to be broadcast across the country. I stand at the rostrum, swatting cameras and tape recorders thrust to within an inch of my nose, pausing after every paragraph to allow for translation, looking them firmly in the eye. The applause, when I sit down, is lukewarm. Suspicion runs deep. Half a dozen questions. All on the same theme: the wickedness of the southerners, the perfidy of the international community and the inevitable demand for recognition. Our exchanges become heated. Several times the Speaker has to call for order. Once I, too, came close to losing my cool. At the end the redoubtable Edna made a little speech. I’ve no idea what she said, but it seemed to mollify them. We parted on reasonable terms, shaking hands along the way.
Tuesday, 28 October
The Residence, Addis
Our plane (to Nairobi) is delayed. I am writing this in bright sunshine, by the pergola, next to the thatched summer house in HE’s garden. A giant tortoise (neck extended) eyes me cautiously from the lawn. As do my Ethiopian minders, discreetly concealed in the shrubbery. Where I go they follow, even trailing around HE’s vegetable garden, affecting an interest in carrots, onions and artichokes. There was none of this nonsense on previous visits.
Today in the centre of Addis Ababa I glimpsed a sad little tableau: a small, bewildered, blind person, no more than five or six years old, standing alone on a little square of cloth, a hand tentatively outstretched, turning this way and that, as pedestrians hurried by, oblivious. She wasn’t badly dressed, a headscarf knotted under her chin, a little pair of jeans, a warm jacket; her large round, swollen face. Observing from the shadows, a woman (the child’s mother?) propped against a wall, enveloped in a dirty shawl. A few seconds and the little person was lost from sight, but I can see her still and will do for months to come.
Out before dawn for a stroll up the hill behind the embassy with Bharat, my two remaining minders, Steve and Toby, and a couple of Ethiopian guides. In the twilight, outside the Residence, we glimpsed a pair of jackals making their way across HE’s lawn and into the trees.
Then to see Prime Minister Meles, at his request. Seyoum, the Foreign Minister also present. To my amazement Meles announced that he is proposing to do exactly what I have been urging on him: accept in principle the report of the Boundary Commission, pay Ethiopia’s arrears and appoint delegates to the demarcation commission.
First, he has to convince his executive and then Parliament. It will not be popular, he says, but he is confident he can swing it. He expects to be in a position to go public by the middle of next month. Until then we are sworn to secrecy.
‘Wonderful, but what persuaded you?’
‘You did.’
Somehow I doubt that. Others have been making similar points, but what seems to have registered was my oft-repeated phrase about the need for Ethiopia to scramble back onto the moral high ground until now (however improbably) occupied by the Eritrean president, Isaias. Of course, he’s under no illusions: Isaias will denounce the move as a trick, but the Eritrean people, who are desperate for peace, may take a different view.
I came away with a spring in my step. For once we are not just going through the motions. An achievement beckons. Who knows, we might just possibly avert another war.
In the late afternoon we flew down to Nairobi where Edward Clay had arranged a dinner at the Muthaiga Club (where the recent John le Carré was filmed) with half a dozen ambassadors, to discuss Somalia. I did an interview with the BBC. Then, police cars fore and aft, we were taken in convoy back to the airport, departing for London just around midnight. What a day.
Monday, 1 November
The Foreign Office
An extraordinary situation. I have been asked to respond to two adjournment debates this week – a half-hour one on a British journalist who was shot by the Israelis in Gaza and the other a three-hour general debate on terrorism in response to a select committee report – but no one is willing to produce a speech. The reaction of the Consular Department when asked for a draft on the journalist was, ‘We are too busy. Why don’t you ask the MP to withdraw?’ As for the other, the Counter-Terrorism Department is flatly, brazenly refusing to
co-operate saying that it’s a matter for the Iraq desk. Officials on the Iraq desk reply with equal insolence that they are too busy because they are moving office. Result: stalemate. Apparently this tug-of-war has been going on for a week. Caron, my Assistant Private Secretary, has been too embarrassed to tell me, and is tearing her hair out. In four years in government, I have never come across anything like this. Suddenly it becomes clear that, for many people in this building, accounting to Parliament is a low priority.
This afternoon we finally managed to wring from consular officials half a dozen pre-cooked pages consisting of a long screed of dates listing ministerial representations to the Israelis and a lot of irrelevant material about the Middle East peace process. To the end and the beginning, someone has attached two or three sentences of guff which must have taken all of five minutes to tap out. This borders on contempt.
In desperation Caron contacted Michael Jay’s office for advice, but word came back that he was too busy, we should sort it out ourselves. The consular debate is tomorrow afternoon. It looks as if this is going to go to the wire.
Tuesday, 2 November
At my desk by 07.30. Michael Williams called in and I unburdened myself to him. Apparently there have been problems elsewhere, too. Mike agrees we cannot let this pass. For the moment, however, I must concentrate on sorting out this mess. The consular debate is at 3.30
this afternoon and so far no one has blinked. I would write the damn speech myself except that (a) there is no slot in my diary and (b) I don’t have the information. What angers me is that somewhere in this building there are people who could tap out the necessary words in no time at all.
Later
Help is at hand. Caron and Bharat have managed to secure the services of a couple of professional speechwriters, one of whom is going to do the consular debate and the other is promising a terrorism speech by noon tomorrow.