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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now let’s get more on that Commonwealth meeting in Sri Lanka, was it right for David Cameron, the Prime Minister, to attend that meeting? Well that question has dominated the news for the past few days but it has overshadowed perhaps a more basic question – what is the Commonwealth actually for? Is it an organisation that provides a strong respected voice on democracy and good government for instance or is it, as one of my next guests claims, just a country club for corrupt leaders? Well I’m joined now in the studio by Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK, Wajid Hassan and by the diplomatic editor at The Times, Roger Boyes and from Sherborne in Dorset by the former British High Commissioner to India, he is Sir Michael Arthur. A very good morning to you all, gentlemen, I want to start with you Roger Boyes, because you’re the very one who has more or less said that the Commonwealth is well past its sell-by date.

ROGER BOYES: Well yes, unlike most post-war organisations, it has not reinvented itself. It is a collection of countries that really have no common purpose anymore and it has of course some elements of soft power, it can speak up for the Anglophone world but where are those common values that are needed for any kind of soft power? It seems to be falling apart basically and it is falling apart partly through bad governance, partly because of the inefficiency of the Secretariat and largely because a lot of people, a lot of members, don’t want to change at all.

DM: Okay, Wajid Hassan, do you go along with any of that? Is it fit for purpose in the 21st century?

WAJID HASSAN: I would say that the Commonwealth has been doing positive work in the field of human relations, democracy, good governance, providing education to the suffering, millions of students don’t get education in our countries and they are being funded, being encouraged. So all these things put together, despite the fact they don’t have teeth, they can’t enforce anything but they have gathered around on a voluntary basis, all the 53 countries together and they have an objective, to serve democracy, to serve development and to carry on in order to improve the quality of life in the Commonwealth countries. I think they are doing very good work.

DM: Okay, I want to get Sir Michael’s view on that but add in, having listened to what we heard there from both Roger and Mr Hassan, Sir Michael, aren’t there other bodies, other international bodies, to achieve the kind of objectives that the Commonwealth has?

SIR MICHAEL ARTHUR: I think the High Commissioner is right, this is a rather special network and the 21st century, let’s face it, is a century of networks and this is one of the best networks that exists in all those countries across the globe and I think Roger is expecting too much of it. It still has a value, it stands for a set of values, rule of law, democracy and so on, which binds the Commonwealth people together. We shouldn’t be expecting it to be an economic organisation, this is not the EU, it does something different but if you look at the French group, they imitated it in 1970 because they thought it was worth having and I think that says quite a lot about the value of the Commonwealth in the 21^st century. To [perform] and to move forward as well.

DM: But Sir Michael, the very point that has the real spotlight being shone upon it at the moment because of Sri Lanka and the Prime Minister going there, the UK’s role in the Commonwealth is a very difficult one because of the history of course and because you end up with the Prime Minister going to countries like Sri Lanka and trying to lecture them about human rights which, to say the very least, they haven’t taken very well.

SIR MICHAEL ARTHUR: He has had a difficult path to tread, I think he’s done it very well but as the Foreign Secretary just said on your show, it is absolutely right to go, to engage, because the spotlight that this conference has shone on Sri Lanka is part of the process of improving the human rights record in that country and elsewhere so it was actually right to engage.

DM: So Roger Boyes, do you agree with that? As I said in the first part of my question, the UK is in a very difficult position isn’t it, given the colonial past, to go to former colonial countries and tell them how to run themselves?

ROGER BOYES: Of course and that’s their first response. This is a neo-colonial effort, Britain should stick out. I don't think a lot of them like Britain very much to be honest and I think the whole debate about whether to go or not kind of highlights the weakness of the institution, that’s to say we went there to embarrass Sri Lanka. Well what kind of sanction is that? What kind of policing of human rights abuse is that? It’s not enough. We don’t have any policing mechanism apart from suspending membership, which happened twice to Pakistan. So I think William Hague and the Prime Minister did as much as they can in terms of embarrassment potential. Mr Cameron left slightly early, he went to the north, there’s talk of reconciliation or pushing them towards reconciliation but let’s not forget that Sri Lanka remains chairman of the Commonwealth for the next two years. We’ve had our little even and now what happens? We should have a debate.

DM: What’s the Pakistani attitude to being told to do things by the United Kingdom? You have reacted in the past not necessary through the Commonwealth but you have reacted fairly poorly in the past when criticisms have been made of Pakistan by leading figures in the UK.

WAJID HASSAN: Well yes, there has been criticism and there is some argument regarding Sri Lanka as well but you have to see the conditions both in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Both of us, the two countries have had thirty years of war in the region, our people are being killed every day in Pakistan, every day there are bomb blasts and everything but the difference the Commonwealth has made – for example me, I am Pakistani and I have lived here for 20 years in exile and the Commonwealth has been the only organisation that has been supporting democracy in Pakistan against military dictatorship while the world’s most leading democracies have accepted and gone out of their way to embrace the military dictator in Pakistan and today we are proud to be members of the Commonwealth and we like to lend our full support to it because it is one institution where there are no questions asked about democracy, they support it to the hilt.

DM: Just a quick point about Sri Lanka and President Rajapaksa’s point. The Tamil Tigers he says were terrorists, we suppressed them. There may have been a few abuses at the margins but they were internationally recognised as terrorists and we had to deal with them. Do you have any sympathy for that view?

WAJID HASSAN: That is right, we have to deal with them, we can’t put them in a five star hotel, you have to find out who their links are, where they are, are they Al Qaeda or Taliban. You have got this problem across the road in Northern Ireland and all these things, other countries too have problems with human rights much more serious than Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka, you must support Sri Lanka because it’s come out of a major crisis and it is at such a place that it could cause fallout on other countries in the region. It need support on this terrorist thing.

DM: Sir Michael, you know the region very well, do you go along with that Sir Michael?

SIR MICHAEL ARTHUR: I agree with what he says on the pressure there but I just go back to your point that you made about David Cameron against Sri Lanka. Don’t forget, this is a collective Commonwealth Heads of Government pressure point on Sri Lanka. India, we have asked them this question why is Britain there, because India decided not to go, so there is plenty of international pressure on Sri Lanka which it has helped to show up. I make one other point about the value. Twice in the past, more than twice in the past, the Commonwealth has thrown people out because they were under military dictatorship, Pakistan is one, Nigeria is another and when they have come back into democracy they have come back into the Commonwealth and I think that’s another sign of a useful value from this club, this network of democratic countries across the world. A very important point.

DM: Okay, Roger Boyes, of course there are instances of countries who are not former British colonies wanting to join the Commonwealth.

ROGER BOYES: Well we have had already countries like Rwanda which was a Belgian colony and I’m not sure that I’m particularly proud to have Rwanda in the club I must say, given some of what Mr Kagame has been doing there. No, we have to have rules, we accept that it is a networking club as Michael said but networking clubs have rules and there is the question of who enforces these rules and how they should be enforced. I am not saying that … and Britain shouldn’t be the only enforcer in this, simply because it’s too easy for people to turn round and say well, these are British values or Western values that you are trying to impose on us when we are concerned with growth and poverty and getting on with the world. This is an argument but I think we should make common cause and the High Commissioner won’t like to hear this but we should make much more common cause with India about this, India and Canada, and form some kind of reform axis.

DM: Okay and on that note we must end it. Thank you very much indeed Roger Boyes, our thanks to Wajid Hassan and Sir Michael Arthur, thank you very much.