The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41 am very pleased to be offered the chance to pass on to you some thoughts on the con- flict between human rights and the “War on Terror,” drawn largely from my recent service as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Uzbekistan. As a result of that experience, I should acknowledge, I was recently vetoed as a participant in a U.S.-sponsored seminar on that topic by a very senior State Department official, on the grounds that I was “vicious- ly anti-American.” F O C U S O N H U M A N R I G H T S T HE F OLLY OF A S HORT -T ERM A PPROACH A B RITISH DIPLOMAT DESCRIBES THE CHALLENGES OF PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHTS WHEN A DICTATORSHIP IS ALSO A KEY ALLY . B Y C RAIG M URRAY I Ian Dodds