We are the only government department which has inbuilt inspectors who go round all the time. You couldn't sell it and even if you could sell it and move to the outskirts of Paris, it femalesLyalya wouldn't serve the purpose So I don't feel in the least bit defensive. If a html British firm produces a product, it parades it in the courtyard of the embassy. If you really want to make sure that everyone important in France listens to a html British minister, they all come to the embassy in Paris. He has femalesLyalya always been a good friend." Of all the Chief Secretaries Mr Hurd has dealt with, Mr Aitken is the "one who most understands, because of his previous experience, the overseas effort".But hasn't the grandeur of some of the biggest embassies sent out the wrong public relations message?He femalesLyalya counters that there are very few embassies like Paris, palaces which were bequeathed to HMG many femalesLyalya years ago "And we use them. Now, html he insists, the femalesLyalya FCO gets a lot more bouquets than brickbats from businessmen.And on Mr Aitken's alleged depredations, he is his classically diplomatic self "I don't know what it's all about I can't trace this Jonathan Aitken thing There's nothing on the record html The Treasury can't shed html any light on it.

So the two in many of the markets are completely intertwined. All the work the embassy does in Washington on aviation - it's politics and commercial intertwined". You can't separate what he does on politicial and what he does on commercial."In the Third World, "for most of the big contracts you have to have the right product at the right price, but you also have to know the right minister. "And anyway, I think all these figures are all pretty suspect You spend a couple of days with an ambassador. But the Foreign Office, which recently created a raft of new commerical posts in expanding markets at the expense of 500 back home, has changed too. A good deal has changed, he implies, since the the early years under Margaret Thatcher when the Government's counter- interventionism discouraged active DTI help with exports.He gives handsome and repeated tribute to Michael Heseltine, President of the Board of Trade, and his team for what he says is the tireless help give to business, not least in export credit.

But some of it, more woundingly, according to apparently well-sourced press reports, has sprung from the Treasury and in particular its Chief Secretary, Jonathan Aitken.Most of it, Mr Hurd says, is "old-fashioned nonsense". Why?Also, the conference has co-incided with - and perhaps precipitated - a little well-aimed sniping at what some see as the obsolete pretensions of the FCO; at the fact that the bald figures in its annual report suggest that only £92.1m of the total spend of £1.3bn is directed specifically at helping exporting businessmen to sell their products; and at the grandiosity of some of its embassies and residences.Some of this has come from a liberal press concerned that Britain is still living beyond its post-imperial role and means. It keeps 241,000 men and women under arms and a large intelligence-gathering operation. And if the Lagos regime yields to intense pressure to allow him to emerge from house arrest and attend, Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian head of state, will be there too.As well as big figures there are big questions: a conference background paper by a senior Chatham House fellow, Vincent Cable, puts it succinctly: "Britain spends £1.3bn on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and £2.2bn on aid.