UK in Lebanon

I was asked to speak at a graduation ceremony on Friday. It was the end of a tiring and typically eclectic week, including a huge celebration of HM Queen’s birthday (held early, ironically, to avoid Lebanese elections), the launch of the Jaguar F-Type, postponement of elections, the usual round of mountain top meetings with leaders, […]

I was asked to speak at the Issam Fares Centre tonight on how Lebanon can best manage contagion from the growing crisis next door in Syria. Thanks as ever for the input via Twitter. Lebanon faces no more pressing question. We won’t have the luxury of addressing other issues – the potential gas bonanza, Leb2020, the […]

I spoke this week at a conference on Lebanon’s gas sector. Interest in the subject is rightly high. This could be one of the largest gas finds anywhere in the world in the last decade. It could pave the way to a Lebanese renaissance – to Beirutopia. It could be the basis for a gas peace dividend in […]

As a Brit in the Levant, you can never go far without being reminded of history, and our role in it. At this week’s Lebanese Army conference, the moderator spoke of ‘the British habit of interventions in the Middle East’. I countered that this was a relatively recent phenomenon – others had been at it […]

Last Friday, I was lucky to attend the launch of the National Charter for Education on Living Together in Lebanon, which provides pupils with the knowledge and attitudes needed to live together in a diverse society. It was the first public milestone in the work that the Education Ministry, the Council for Educational Research and […]

Guest blog from British Ambassador to Turkey, David Reddaway, marking the second anniversary of the Syrian Uprising: The two years of crisis and human tragedy in Syria since the uprising, shaped by the Assad regime’s decision to respond to the Syrian people’s demand for democratic rights by repression rather than reform, have had a huge […]