As Private Eye point out, Sir Ivor, the British ambassador to Rome who recently described George Bush as “Al-Qaeda’s best recruiting sergeant ever”, was formerly the British ambassador to Belgrade, and well-known as someone who boasted of his “closeness of access” to Slobodan Milosevic, and a great believer in the British policy under Hurd and Rifkind that no obstacle should be placed in the way of Slobodan and his thugs. From an article from 1996 by Morton Abramowitz:
[A]lmost weekly since Dayton, US officials have carried their red carpet to Belgrade, giving Mr Milosevic every reason to think he holds the key to our Balkans policy. The British have been even worse in playing up to Mr Milosevic. In Belgrade, their ambassador [Sir Ivor] is widely regarded as his handmaiden.
Since Bosnian Muslims were the main victims of Serbian aggression, and since some of the recruits to the training camps in Afghanistan were motivated in part by the West’s indifference to their suffering, Sir Ivor could well be said to have played his own small part in recruiting for Al-Qaeda.
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