Sherard Cowper-Coles
British Ambassador in Afghanistan.
Joined the Foreign Office as a desk officer in the Republic of Ireland Department in 1977.[1]
Media management
Robert Fisk writes:
- Indeed, I remember way back in the late 1970s - when I was Middle East correspondent for The Times - how a British diplomat in Cairo tried to persuade me to fire my local "stringer", an Egyptian Coptic woman who also worked as a correspondent for the Associated Press and who provided a competent coverage of the country when I was in Beirut. "She isn't much good," he said, and suggested I hire a young Englishwoman whom he knew and who - so I later heard - had close contacts in the Foreign Office.
- I refused this spooky proposal. Indeed, I told The Times that I thought it was outrageous that a British diplomat should have tried to engineer the sacking of our part-timer in Cairo. The Times's foreign editor agreed.
- But it just shows what diplomats can get up to.
- And the name of that young British diplomat in Cairo back in the late 1970s? Why, Sherard Cowper-Coles, of course.[2]
Connections
- Michael Semple
- Frank Gardner, BBC Security Correspondent
Notes
- ↑ Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. Cherwell24, 12 October 2007, accessed 28 March 2008.
- ↑ 'Abu Henry' and the mysterious silence I guess that's what diplomacy is all about, persuading here, pleading there The Independent, Saturday, 30 June 2007
