Parliament & Politics: Cook: `What ethical foreign policy?'

FOREIGN POLICY

THE FOREIGN Secretary, Robin Cook, has disowned one of the Government's central earlypledges with a strong denial that he has ever operated an ethical foreign policy.

In a move that will surprise those who were led to believe that his appointment signalled a new approach on human rights, Mr Cook declared that he had never used the phrase.

The shift in policy was signalled by the Foreign Secretary in an interview in the New Statesman magazine in which he also made a clear that the Government was determined to join a single European currency if it proved successful.

When his regime at the Foreign Office was launched last year in a blaze of showbiz glamour, Mr Cook listed a series of criteria on which he would base its operations abroad. Among the list of suggestions he proposed was "an ethical dimension" to foreign policy, an idea promoted by his spin doctors as proof of a new era.

However, the policy came to haunt the FO as the controversy broke over the use of a British mercenary company, Sandline, in a counter-coup in Sierra Leone.

Mr Cook was also attacked for refusing to revoke the licensing of Hawk jets to Indonesia as the country's popular revolution overthrew President Suharto.

In an interview in today's New Statesman, the Foreign Secretary attempted to finally get his department off the hook by rejecting the notion that there was such a policy.

"I've given up trying to get this across. I've never used the phrase. I never said there would be an ethical foreign policy," he said.

"What we have sought to do is put into effect our values. People see that phrase and see it as grandstanding."

Mr Cook, who has in the past been seen as a Eurosceptic figure within the Labour Party, said that he was a strong advocate of closer ties with the European Union.

"If the euro project proves a success then at some stage in the future, on the basis of a hard headed assessment of the economic situation, we will be inside," he said.

"That view is well understood in Europe. If we were opposed in principle to a single currency, which is the Conservatives' policy, that would severely damage our economic position."

The Foreign Secretary also declared that he would find time away from this duties to campaign for electoral reform as outlined by the recent Jenkins Commission report.

He said that no decision about the timing of a referendum on the proposed changes would be made until after next summer's elections for the Scottish and European parliaments.