Efforts to document diplomats' experience in international negotiations need to be intensified - Saifuddin

KUALA LUMPUR: Efforts to document the experiences of diplomats involved in international negotiations, which is a part of the country's history, need to be intensified.

Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah said these experiences could be used as reference material in the future, especially for new diplomats.

Citing the initiative carried out by the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations (IDFR), he said the institute invited former ministry secretaries-general and ambassadors involved in several important negotiations to be interviewed and for their experiences to be recorded.

"For example, there are diplomats who have experience negotiating with North Korea. That's a very important experience (and an example) of how negotiations are conducted.

"Some things may not be published due to confidentiality; but for new diplomats, it is important to learn," he said at the IDFR-Albukhary 2021 Book Awards ceremony at IDFR, here, today.

Foreign Ministry's former secretary-general Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Mohamad's book entitled "Malaysia-Singapore: Fifty years of Contentions 1965-2015" was chosen as the winner of the award as it provided an interesting description of the relationship between the two countries based on his own experience.

It outlined the primary issues that plagued relations between Malaysia and Singapore in the last fifty years and the political, diplomatic, and legal initiatives taken to address them.

According to Saifuddin, the inaugural awards will be IDFR's annual event and may be extended to writing in other forms such as articles and papers or video publications.

Meanwhile, Abdul Kadir said he used simple English to explain the relatively complex and technical issues in Malaysia-Singapore relations to make it easier for readers to understand the book's content, and hoped the award would encourage other diplomats to share their knowledge and experience in the form of writing for future reference.

-- BERNAMA