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
