LONDON, March 28: The twin global challenges of economic competition and terrorism have forced Britain to shift the balance of its diplomatic priorities toward Asia, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday. “We are ensuring that our people are in the right place to make a difference,” Mr Straw said in a speech in London outlining the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s priorities for the next few years.

“Part of this has been moving more resources to the growing Asian economies and frontline states in the fight against terrorism,” Mr Straw told 200 British ambassadors, high commissioners, governors and other Foreign Office staff.

“In the last two years we have increased staff numbers in China by seven per cent, in India by 16 per cent, in Pakistan by 15 per cent, in Afghanistan by 70 per cent and in Iraq from 16 staff to 105 staff,” Mr Straw said.

He was speaking at the launch of the ‘White Paper, Active Diplomacy for a Changing World’, updating Britain’s diplomatic priorities from the last white paper in Dec 2003.

The paper focuses on nine key points, including tackling terrorism, reducing international crime, resolving conflict, building a competitive European Union and supporting the British economy.

Mr Straw said priorities were shifting to cope with a ‘twin revolution’ on the political and technological level.

“The end of the Cold War saw new countries and new democracies emerge. So too did new conflicts,” Mr Straw said.

“The relatively predictable — if far from ideal — international environment of the Cold War became much more complex and much more fluid,” Mr Straw said.

“Initially our main focus was on achieving stability in Europe — and the Balkans in particular,” before the attacks of Sept 11, 2001, occurred.

“We saw with terrible clarity that unstable, failing states did not have to be right on our borders to be a direct danger to our security,” Mr Straw said.

“We understood, even more clearly that tackling threats to international peace and security — including global terrorism and proliferation — relied on dealing with problems at source, as they arose, not allowing them to fester,” he said.

He said the technological revolution meanwhile led to rapid economic development in Asia, removing the edge Western powers once had.

“By eroding barriers of distance and time we have expanded opportunities for people around the world,” he said.

“We are seeing what the American commentator Thomas Friedman has described as an unprecedented ‘flattening’ of traditional social and geographical hierarchies,” he said.

“Nowhere is this more true than in China and India.

“In both cases economic progress accelerated as a result of political and economic reforms in the early 1990s. And since then both have been growing on a scale and at a speed which outstrips anything we have seen before.

“The globalisation can help everyone, including people in Britain,” he said.

“New opportunities will emerge as the market for high valued-added goods and professional services grows in India and China. The UK, with its historic links to India, is particularly well placed.”

But the developments also threaten to create growing instability, and increased demand for common resources is helping to drive climate change, the foreign secretary warned. —AFP