David Carter
 Dr David Carter     (Spook, Diplomat) | |
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David Carter (born 4 May 1945) is a former British diplomat who joined the Information Research Department (IRD) of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1970, and transferred to HM Diplomatic Service when the IRD was shut down in 1978 by UK Foreign Secretary David Owen.[1]
Dr David Carter went on to serve in HM Diplomatic Service until he retired in 2005. Two notable postings for Dr Carter were as deputy Head of Mission at Lusaka, Zambia and at Pretoria, apartheid South Africa.
Following his retirement, Dr Carter returned to academia: first to the University of Birmingham, then to Cambridge University.[2]
Contents
Education
David Carter was brought up in Africa and taught there for a year. He graduated from the University of Wales and has a PhD from Durham University. He submitted his doctoral thesis entitled "the land tenure system in Southern Rhodesia" to Ruth First who, from 1973 to 1978, lectured in development studies at the University of Durham. Ruth First was killed in 1982 by a parcel bomb that South African 'superspy' Craig Williamson addressed to her at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo, Mozambique, where she had been working since 1978.
Diplomatic career
Dr David Carter joined the Research Cadre of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1970. He was posted as Second Secretary to Accra in 1971, returning to the FCO in 1975. His next posting was in HM Diplomatic Service as First Secretary and Head of Chancery to Manila in the Philippines in 1980.
He returned to the FCO in 1983 and was appointed South Africa desk officer in Jeremy Varcoe's Southern African Department (SAfD). David Carter was highly critical of the assistant desk officer Patrick Haseldine's performance in SAfD when the Coventry Four affair erupted in March 1984. Carter ensured that Haseldine was seconded from the FCO to the Office of Fair Trading from 1984 to 1986.
Lusaka, Zambia
In 1986, David Carter was posted to Lusaka, Zambia as Deputy High Commissioner and Head of Chancery, where he was briefed to keep tabs on SWAPO's United Nations Institute for Namibia (UNIN) and on the African National Congress (ANC), both of which were based in Lusaka.[3] SWAPO visitors to Lusaka at the time included Hidipo Hamutenya, Anton Lubowski, Charles Courtney-Clarke, Hage Geingob and Sam Nujoma.
On 19 October 1986, following a meeting with the ANC in Lusaka, Mozambican president Samora Machel was killed when his aircraft crashed in the Lebombo Mountains, near Mbuzini, South Africa. The apartheid regime was blamed for Samora Machel's death.[4]
Pretoria, apartheid South Africa
David Carter was in apartheid South Africa as Deputy Ambassador during the transition to democracy from 1988, when UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson was targeted by South Africa's CCB on Pan Am Flight 103 and in 1989 when SWAPO activist Anton Lubowski was assassinated by South Africa's CCB in Windhoek, Namibia.
Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president of South Africa in May 1994.
India and Bangladesh
Dr Carter later served in India as Deputy High Commissioner and was appointed High Commissioner to Bangladesh from 2000 to 2004.
Post retirement
In 2005, returning to academia, Dr David Carter went to Birmingham University as Deputy Director at the Centre for Studies in Security and Diplomacy, moving to Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge as Bursar in July 2006.
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Pan Am Flight 103: It was the Uranium | article | 6 January 2014 | Patrick Haseldine | Following Bernt Carlsson's untimely death in the Lockerbie bombing, the UN Council for Namibia inexplicably dropped the case against Britain's URENCO for illegally importing yellowcake from the Rössing Uranium Mine in Namibia. |
References
- ↑ "David Leigh recounts the 30-year history of the Foreign Office's covert propaganda operation"
- ↑ "Dr David Carter"
- ↑ The Diplomatic Service List 1989 (page 138), HMSO, ISBN 0-11-591707-1
- ↑ "Investigation of Samora Machel’s death reopened"
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