Issue: 27 November 2004	PAGE 1 of 2 next >>

Jack Straw, though by no means a distinguished foreign secretary, nevertheless possesses animal cunning. He is an acknowledged master of dissimulation, contrivance, machination, manoeuvre, evasion, guile, trickery, craft, diversion, disguise, distortion, persiflage, falsehood, deception, sophistry, stealth, artifice, sharp practice, underhand dealing, sleight of hand, subterfuge, prevarication and every other stratagem of concealment and deceit. Occasionally, however, the Foreign Secretary is capable of candour. This was the case with his parliamentary answer to Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, two weeks ago.

Ancram wearily asked Jack Straw when the British government first knew of the botched coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea last March. A characteristically long space of time elapsed before the question was answered. But the answer itself was to the point. ‘In late January 2004,’ replied Straw.

This answer is pregnant with significance, and casts the failed coup — led by the mercenary Simon Mann with alleged backing from (among others) Sir Mark Thatcher — in an entirely fresh light. For up to that point Jack Straw had gone to astonishing lengths to maintain the pretence that the coup attempt came as a complete surprise in Whitehall. Three months after the coup the Observer newspaper, long famed for its well-informed African coverage, received a tip that HMG knew of the plot well in advance. The story was put through official channels to the Foreign Secretary — who issued a categorical denial. This denial was not one of those artful rebuttals in which Jack Straw is an established expert. Not content with merely telling a reporter that the story was untrue, the head of the Foreign Office news department took the unusual step of ringing Roger Alton, editor of the Observer. He issued an assurance that Britain had no ‘prior knowledge of the alleged plot’.

Privately, the official went much further. He stressed to the Observer that the claims being made were extremely grave. If they were true, insisted the official, then HMG would have been indirectly complicit in the plot itself, and individual diplomats guilty of a conspiracy to bring down an internationally recognised government. Since it was utterly unthinkable that HMG would ever conduct itself in such a fashion, the official stated, the Observer should think very carefully indeed before running such an obviously implausible and damaging version of events. In these circumstances the Observer very reasonably felt it had no choice but to order that the story be changed.

The paper naturally felt deceived when Jack Straw’s answer to Michael Ancram was published. It sought an explanation, only to be met by a further wave of obstruction. This time the Foreign Office claimed that it had been alerted to the impending coup by ‘media stories’ emanating from Spain, the former colonial power in Equatorial Guinea. Unluckily for the Foreign Office, Observer journalists had already obtained and translated this Spanish coverage and concluded that it was incapable of bearing the heavy weight placed upon it. When this was pointed out, in no uncertain terms, Jack Straw at last came clean. British government knowledge of the coup, he admitted, came from ‘confidential information received by the government’, but he refused to provide further information about these ‘confidential diplomatic exchanges’. A Foreign Office official has since written a personal letter to the Observer to apologise for misleading the newspaper.

But these latest revelations simply give rise to fresh questions. Given that the Foreign Office was indeed in possession of such interesting information, why did Britain not at once comply with her obligations and warn Equatorial Guinea? Straw’s own explanation for the omission, made in a further written answer to Michael Ancram on 17 November, goes as follows: ‘As we were not able to establish any definitive evidence which could add significantly to the reports which had already appeared in the media, we took no further action with other African governments.’ The information received through covert diplomatic channels was, nevertheless, strong enough for Britain to ‘review and update our civil contingency plan’: in other words, make arrangements for the safety and possible evacuation of British nationals from Equatorial Guinea in the event that the coup took place.

The British government surely knew all along. Simon Mann’s company, Logo Logistics, has close connections with the security establishment. Teodoro Obiang, President of Equatorial Guinea, is an especially loathsome dictator whose removal from office would raise the spirits of his benighted people just as much as it would lift the profits of Western oil companies.