But it will also be politically embarrassing for Mr Cook

But it will also be politically embarrassing for Mr Cook.The Independent understands that the five reports were sent to the Foreign Office after the beginning of February. ROBIN Cook misled the House of Commons last week about the Sandline affair, it was revealed last night, when it emerged that MI6 alerted officials to the sanctions-busting months ago. In a planted Parliamentary answer last night Mr Cook made the damaging admission that five intelligence reports seen by officials at the Foreign Office linked Sandline with the supply of arms or military equipment to Sierra Leone.
Last night both main opposition parties demanded that the Foreign Secretary should come to the House of Commons in person to explain himself.Only last Tuesday, Mr Cook had assured MPs: “At no stage over the past months was any intelligence passed to ministers or officials that suggested a breach of the arms embargo.”The disclosure shows just how much information was withheld from ministers by senior officials over the affair and also underlines just how deeply involved and well-briefed MI6 was about it. “It is a question of letting employers know that they want to travel.

Because we have more demand, we will be able to satisfy them,” Oakley predicts.. Inevitably, some vacancies will be filled by UK staff.In the IT industry, employers emphasise technical skills, personality and management potential more than an ability in foreign languages. However, language skills are only a plus when it comes to applications. As the market for fast-track graduate positions becomes more international, British graduates without those skills could even be disadvantaged. Engineers and computer scientists from France or Italy, for example, cannot graduate without a good score in their English exams. Most UK degrees in IT have little or no provision for formal language teaching.Recruiters say that some British computing graduates omit their language skills altogether on applications This is a mistake. “If you have a graduate with a second language, it will set them out,” says Paul Oakley at UUNet.Graduates should say that they want to work overseas when they apply for jobs.

UK- and US-based Internet service providers are setting up European operations. The result is more staff movement, both into Europe and across the Atlantic.UUNet runs the Pipex Internet service in the UK, and is now part of the US group Worldcom. UUNet now has operations in several European countries, including a large network operations centre being set up in Holland.”There is more and more international work, and we would expect a lot of the people moving to Europe to be graduates,” explains Paul Oakley, UUNet’s head of personnel. In particular, he expects engineers from the UK NOC, in Cambridge, to go to Holland.UUNet does not have a graduate training programme but instead hires graduates for specific vacancies. The company’s European operations are small but growing, and they are supported both from Cambridge and the United States There is a shortage of Internet engineers in Europe.

“Most of us find that teams with a mix of nationalities and cultures are much more rich in their approach to their work.”Graduates can find overseas postings in most areas of IT, including manufacturing, systems, software and communications The Internet, though, is a particular area of growth. “The company is quite dynamic, and there are opportunities in other offices,” he says. “They could be in other European countries, or in the US.”Even where a company hires on a country-by-country basis, working overseas is still an option. At Motorola, each business handles its own recruitment, and graduates are generally hired to work in their own country There are, though, some notable exceptions. One is the company’s Cadre 2000 programme, which aims to hire graduates from specific nationalities to work in emerging markets. Each Motorola employee fills in a questionnaire every quarter, where they can suggest how they would like to develop their careers.”If you are a skilled person, your career path is important, whether in your own country or beyond,” explains Mark Durrant, UK corporate communications manager at Motorola.