Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Spokesman on: Home Office, Washington trip, President Mbeki, other business and the UNICEF Soccer Aid event.
Home Office
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) told journalists that John Reid would be sending a letter to the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee about some of the evidence that he gave yesterday.
Washington trip
Asked what the Prime Minister might discuss with President Bush and what was likely to be in his speech, the PMOS said that they would discuss the Doha round of trade talks, the Middle East Peace Process, particularly after Prime Minister Olmert’s visit to Washington yesterday, and Iran. The starting point of the speech would be the Prime Minister’s impressions from Baghdad this week and the implications for the international community to come behind the democratically elected government of Iraq. The theme of the speech would come out of Iraq to talk about how you applied the global values that the Prime Minister had spoken about in his speech in Australia and to develop his thinking in terms of how the institutions of the world needed to be updated from how they were designed immediately after World War II immediately into the modern setting, to deal with modern challenges.
Asked if we agreed with the principle of a unilateral Israeli solution to the MEPP if there was no further progress, the PMOS said that we agreed with what Prime Minister Olmert and George Bush had actually said which was that the first priority was to try and get negotiations with the Palestinians. That gave a responsibility to the Israeli side. There was equally a responsibility on the Palestinian side to enter those talks on a realistic basis and that realistic basis had to be an acknowledgement that the outcome would be a two state solution.
President Mbeki
Asked what the Prime Minister had discussed with the President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki, the PMOS said that part of it was about the joint launch of the plan to help Southern Africa as a whole in terms of trade. However they would also cover issues such as trade, where South Africa was one of the main players in terms of negotiations on a WTO level, also the Middle East where South Africa traditionally had links with the Palestinian side and so on. He expected Zimbabwe would also come up in some way.
Other business
Asked why we didn’t just apologise over the auction of a signed copy of the Hutton report, the PMOS said that it was a matter for the Labour party and it would be entirely wrong for him to get involved. The Prime Minister had spoken about this matter at PMQs and he would refer people to that.
UNICEF Soccer Aid Event
Asked for a cast list for the UNICEF Soccer aid event, the PMOS said that it would comprise of the following:
England celebrities: Robbie Williams, Jamie Theakston, Bradley Walsh, Jonathan Wilkes, Ben Shephard, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Damian Lewis, Angus Deayton, Dean Lennox Kelly, David Gray
England legends: David Seaman, Tony Adams, Paul Gascoigne, Jamie Redknapp, Les Ferdinand, John Barnes
England Manager and staff: Terry Venables, Ted Buxton, David Geddis
Rest of the World (ROW) celebrities: Gordon Ramsay, David Campese, Patrick Kielty, Michael Greco, Ben Johnson, Sergei Fedorov, Brian Mcfadden, Alastair Campbell, Craig Doyle, Alessandro Nivola
ROW legends: Gianfranco Zola, Marcel Desailly, David Ginola, Dunga, Lothar Matthaus, Peter Schmeichel, Diego Maradona
ROW Manager and staff: Ruud Gullit, Gus Poyet
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