Duncan Slater

Duncan Slater (15 July 1934 - 28 June 2002) was a British diplomat involved in the establishment of the United Arab Emirates. After retirement he served as a board member of the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism.

Diplomatic career

Slater joined the Diplomatic Service in 1958 and was sent to the Arabic School in Lebanon. His first overseas posting was to Abu Dhabi as assistant to the political agent. In 1966 he was sent on a temporary assignment as First Secretary and Head of the Political Section to the British High Commission in Islamabad and a few months later transferred to the British High Commission in Delhi as First Secretary. He was Head of Chancery in Aden from 1968–69 and in 1969 returned to work at the Foreign Office in London.

In 1970 he was appointed special assistant to William Luce. Together they played a lead role in the formation of the United Arab Emirates. The Times gave the following account in Slater’s obituary:

Together they spent much time shuttling between the Shah of Iran, perpetually incensed at the latest outrageous article about him in the British newspapers, the King of Saudi Arabia, with his own tenaciously held but inscrutably expressed agenda, and the Gulf rulers, many of whom feared assassination if they signed the wrong deal. Eventually they persuaded all the parties to broker, barter and merge their interests in the creation of the United Arab Emirates and thus bring about a stable political system on the Arab side of the Gulf, which still holds today.

In 1972 Slater was promoted to assistant head of the South Asian Department of the Foreign Office, dealing with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. That year Slater married Candida Wheatley, who also worked at the Foreign Office. She had joined as desk officer UN department, then moved to Private Office of Minister in charge of Britain’s entry into EU (after her husband’s death she returned to the Foreign Office). Candida Slater quit her job at the Foreign Office in 1972 when her husband was appointed to Brussels as the UK Permanent Representation to the EEC, responsible for energy policy and the environment. Slater became the British Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 1975, as well as Permanent Representative to the other UN Organisation in that city, the UN Industrial Development Organisation. In 1978 he was appointed Counsellor and Head of Chancery to the British High Commission in Lagos.

Towards the end of 1979 Slater was sent on a special assignment to join the staff of Lord Soames, the Governor of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, during the period leading up to Zimbabwe's independence. He was particularly responsible for maintaining contact with Robert Mugabe, and according to The Times, their shared interest in Marxist economics providing a useful point of contact. In December 1981 he was appointed Ambassador to Oman. He was Ambassador to Oman from 1981–86 and was Assistant Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office from 1986–92.

After retirement

After retiring from the diplomatic service Slater was invited by GEC to become part-time chairman of one of its subsidiaries, GEC-Marconi (Projects) Ltd. He also worked as a Part-time Lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. On 24 November 1994, Slater was appointed chairman of the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism, a think-tank set up in 1989 which was the successor to the MI5 and CIA affiliated Institute for the Study of Conflict.