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COVERING STAFF IN CONFIDENCE
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Assistants in all Geographical Departments
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Лювинет
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(23
CHIEFS OF STAFF VISIT WORKING PARTY (COOVWP) MEETING.
1. The next Co-ordination of Overseas Visits Working Party (COOVWP) will meet on Thursday 16 December to discuss proposals for representational inward and outward Chiefs of Staff (COS) visits. The FCO will be represented by NPDD.
2.
I attach copies of MOD tables giving details of representational visits currently planned for the financial years 93/94, 94/95 and 95/96. The FCO can request an inward or outward visit to a country not currently included, or ask for an inward or outward visit to be deleted from the list.
3. You should all be aware of the following ground rules:
Inward visits: the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) and Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff (VCDS) are able to host six visits each year. The Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS) Chief of General Staff (CGS) and the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) are able to host three visits each year. However, these totals do not necessarily include Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO) sponsored visits, which are only restricted by the diary space available.
Outward visits: there are normally three made by each of the Chiefs of Staff every year.
4.
Please also note that countries in receipt of regular working visits are less likely to receive representational visits than countries that do not. Similarly, countries that have received many visits in the past are often less likely to receive a representational visit than countries that have not.
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5. There are a number of other MoD departments represented at the meeting whose interests need to be taken into account alongside the FCO's. In order to achieve the best outcome for departmental bids we need to make realistic requests supported by convincing arguments. With your advice we also need to decide how strongly we want to press for a particular bid. is unrealistic to be able to bid for all requests made by departments or to expect all bids put to the MOD to be successful. With this in mind I would be grateful if departments could provide bids for inward and outward visits supported by comprehensive and accurate arguments as to why a particular visit is being requested together with an indication of how strongly a department feels about the visit taking place
CODE
018-0077
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COVERING STAFF IN CONFIDENCE