scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1678232007

The First Minister has written to all 189 signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to seek observer status for Scotland at the forthcoming talks. UN chiefs in charge of the talks have apparently signalled they would be "sympathetic' to any application.

Not surprisingly, Westminster is not happy about this apparent interference in the reserved powers in foreign affairs. Nevertheless, the Scottish Government points out that, as the UK arsenal is held in Scotland, it has a legitimate interest in the talks and, moreover, Scottish parliamentarians are against the renewal of Trident: MSPs agreed by 71 votes to 16 that Westminster should ditch its plans to renew Trident and a majority of Scottish MPs have also rejected the replacement of Trident.

Is this another example of the FM supposedly "picking fights with Westminster" or another example of Salmond rightly projecting the role of Scotland in the international political arena ?

Good on AS for putting Scotland's cause to the fore as usual. As usual though there are the naysayers who do not want Scotland to be all it can be, most notably, Labour politicians like Cairns.

Jimbo wrote:
Good on AS for putting Scotland's cause to the fore as usual. As usual though there are the naysayers who do not want Scotland to be all it can be, most notably, Labour politicians like Cairns.

The observer status is certainly warranted and the Scottish Office MWP Cairns will only clucking and havering (and his arse will be making buttons) because the Scottish Government being involved in non proliferation of nukes talks will mean that newspapers will be forced to report more about the unique quandary that Labour in Westminster finds herself in.

The people opposed to nuclear proliferation consist of a majority of Labour's Scottish MP's in Westminster, a majority of MSP's in Scotland, and of course the Scottish public that David Cairns never mentions let alone represents when he basically acts as a Westminster mouth-piece.

It is obvious that the last thing pro trident Brown Cairns and the rest wish for is somebody like Alex Salmond perhaps mentioning for 2 minutes about what Scots really think about housing the Northern Europe Nuclear arsenal under the control of the American Government.

The fact that what Cairns called "SNP looney left policies" (being against trident) is one shared by his Scottish MP colleagues whom are rarely described as being "left wing" let alone "looney left" but they, like the majority of Scottish politicians and public alike are against Trident and Son of Trident.