David Miliband

EU Energy

I said in Poland a few weeks ago that energy was a key issue for the EU.  The signing last week of the Nabucco Intergovernmental Agreement is a big step forward towards diversification - and vitally a signal that the EU will take diversification seriously, with an 8 billion Euro project from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary and a capacity of 31 billion cubic metres of gas.  Azerbaijan is the key source country.  Iraq is involved too.  So this is big geopolitics.

Link to Map of Nabucco

Posted at 21:22 19 July 2009 by David Miliband  |  Comments[2]

Afghanistan

The dignity and grief of the homecomings and funerals of those killed in Afghanistan is an important reminder of what we ask of our armed forces, of the recognition by the British public of what they do, and of the sacrifice that is asked from families as well as servicemen and women.  I tried to reflect some of this at the beginning of my speech to the House of Commons on Thursday.  Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the dangers to Britain from those two countries, have been a top priority since I started as Foreign Secretary - first visit, more regular visits outside Brussels/Washington.

The Prime Minister's statements to Parliament in December 07 and April 09, and Nato and American speeches, for example by President Obama, have laid out a clear mission (to prevent al qaeda using Afghanistan as a bases for attacks), a clear strategy to promote Afghan self-governance and in the intermin to ensure that the current government is not overwhelmed, and a commentary on the key tactical decisions (for example at the moment about how to maximise the opportunity for Afghans to exercise their rights at the elections on August 20th).  I think it is also important to emphasise that the insurgency is diverse and fragmented - hence the opportunities for reconciliation of Taliban who are not affiliated to al qaeda.  This was the subject of my article in the Independent in February.

One confusion concerns the role of the coalition.  We all want it to be deeper - of the 41 countries committed on the military side and the 60 plus on the development side we want the greatest possible degree of burden sharing.  But inherent in this is the fact that we will use each other's facililties - as I said in the debate on Thursday the US forces now in Helmand province use "our" hospital and all helicopter movements in Southern Afghanistan are coordinated out of the Regional Command headquarters in Kandahar.  We need to keep pushing for burden sharing not be worried by it.  And the biggest burden sharing must be with Afghans.  That means big responsibilities for the Afghan government as well as big support for them.  Responsibilities in respect of rooting out corruption that corrodes their support among their own population, continued drive to work with Pakistan, and development of armed forces who are able to contribute properly to keeping order.

I will return to this again before the holiday.

Posted at 17:40 19 July 2009 by David Miliband  |  Comments[5]

Chinese Growth

I spoke on Thursday to the high level Chinese delegation studying at Cambridge for two weeks.  They wanted to talk about "win-wins" on trade, climate and financial regulation.  They also wanted me to know about the rebound of Chinese growth - 7.9 per cent to second quarter of 2009, on course for 8% this year.  Who said capitalism was saving China?  China seems to be playing a big part stabilising the global market economy.

Posted at 16:47 19 July 2009 by David Miliband  |  Comments[3]