Downing Street Says » 2006 » November

» Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Russia-COBR

When asked how important or unimportant in the grand scheme of things was the ongoing saga of the Russian man, as there was a Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) meeting this afternoon, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) replied that with regards to the COBR meeting, as he had said yesterday, COBR met because this was a cross-departmental issue. There were health concerns, as well as Home Office concerns too, and therefore, people should not read anything more than COBR being a sensible bureaucratic mechanism for discussing these matters. COBR played an important role, but it should not be overstated, although the PMOS said that he knew how over-excited the journalists got by COBR.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

BBC-ITV

Asked why the Prime Minister had not been invited to President Chirac's birthday party tomorrow, and who else had been invited, and when did President Putin arrive, the PMOS said that we were not in Riga tomorrow evening. With regards to other invitees, that was a matter for President Chirac - surprise, surprise, people did not get to choose. The PMOS said that his understanding was that President Putin would arrive after we had left Riga, and therefore, all the speculation about whether we would meet him or not was irrelevant, as we would be elsewhere by then.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

NATO Summit-Afghanistan

Asked why were the party was leaving Riga after so short a time, the PMOS replied that the Prime Minister would tonight be the first of the leaders to talk at the dinner, and he would give a report back on his visit to Afghanistan. The Prime Minister would be giving three basic messages. One was that what Afghanistan needed to know was that NATO was there for the long haul, but it was sustainable in terms of its efforts. We also recognised that it was not just the military intervention, but also a reconstruction side to that, and that we would carry through and people would be flexible in their response to Afghanistan.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

The unofficial site which lets you comment on the UK Prime Minister's official briefings. About us...

» Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Russia-COBR

BBC-ITV

NATO Summit-Afghanistan

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries