{"id":9587,"date":"2012-04-25T08:20:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T08:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=9587"},"modified":"2012-04-25T08:20:33","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T08:20:33","slug":"britain-restores-ties-with-malawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/25\/britain-restores-ties-with-malawi\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain restores ties with Malawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain is resuming full diplomatic ties with Malawi, a year after the southern African nation expelled the British ambassador for criticizing the president, Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Former envoy Fergus Cochrane-Dyet was booted from Malawi when a diplomatic cable released by the WikiLeaks website showed that he had criticized then-president Bingu wa Mutharika, and Malawi responded in kind.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Cochrane-Dyet - Was deported by Late President Mutharika <\/p><\/div>\n

Hague told lawmakers that following Mutharika’s death from a heart attack on April 7, new president Joyce Banda was prioritizing the restoration of relations with Malawi’s former colonial power.<\/p>\n

“I have now decided that the time is right to appoint a new high commissioner to Malawi. The Prime Minister has written to the president to convey this decision to her,” Hague said.<\/p>\n

Britain describes its ambassadors to former colonies as high commissioners.<\/p>\n

“In her inauguration speech President Banda emphasised the need to focus immediately on mourning President Mutharika, and for healing and reconciliation,” Hague told parliament.<\/p>\n

Hague said the new ambassador, once appointed, would “monitor developments in Malawi closely”.<\/p>\n

The cable released by WikiLeaks showed Cochrane-Dyet accusing Mutharika of “becoming ever more autocratic and intolerant of criticism”.<\/p>\n

Malawi expelled the ambassador in April last year and London retaliated by ejecting Malawi’s envoy from Britain.<\/p>\n

London then suspended budgetary aid to Malawi because of its failure to tackle Britain’s “serious concerns over economic management, governance and human rights”.<\/p>\n

Malawi had said in October that Cochrane-Dyet would be allowed to return, but a spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign Office said he had now been posted to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain is resuming full diplomatic ties with Malawi, a year after the southern African nation expelled the British ambassador for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[300,1599,2236,466,258,366],"class_list":["post-9587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-bingu-wa-mutharika","tag-britain","tag-cochrane-dyet","tag-joyce-banda","tag-malawi","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}