- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday January 23 2001 03.16 GMT
In a pamphlet, the Foreign Office minister, Peter Hain, called yesterday for countries to pool resources to confront global challenges such as Aids and BSE.
As a first step, Mr Hain called for the most radical restructuring of the Foreign Office in its history. Departments based on geographical divisions should be scrapped in favour of "issues" departments such as human rights, the environment and conflict prevention.
Mr Hain, the former anti-apartheid leader who is one of the government's most original thinkers, said that the problems which came across his desk no longer responded to traditional diplomatic solutions.
In a speech last night launching his pamphlet, titled The End of Foreign Policy?, he said: "Take BSE, recent devastating floods in Europe or Mozambique, militant protests at the Seattle trade summit or a computer virus sent out by two students which disabled 10m computers worldwide.
"Each reflects a new kind of world shaped not by old clashes of ideology or power but by more complex forces which could blight the 21st century just as the 20th."
Mr Hain added that diplomacy would have to change to cope with such important shared interests. "The responsibility of the current generation of politicians and diplomats is no longer solely to balance distinct national aims," he said. "It is to align the way nations see their own interests with the new global imperatives."
In a section of his pamphlet which will alarm Foreign Office traditionalists, Mr Hain writes of his frustration at its slowness in responding to new global threats.
"A frustration for me as a [Foreign Office] minister has been that the machine is geared to responding to new circumstances mostly by incremental shifts in emphasis."
Mr Hain's pamphlet, which was approved by the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, and by Downing Street, will be seen as an attempt to redefine the government's "ethical" foreign policy.
Ministers have faced severe criticism for failing to live up to their manifesto commitment to add a humanitarian dimension to British diplomacy.
There was an embarrassing reminder of the ethical foreign policy record yesterday when the author of the report on the arms to Iraq scandal criticised the government for failing to change the law on arms exports.
On the Today programme, Lord Justice Scott said: "It's regrettable, because I think it's important, and it's it's long, long overdue.
The government has pledged to publish a draft bill on arms exports. This means that the law will not be changed before the election.
