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Kadir on official visit to Britain
Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar left for Britain on Friday night, his fifth official visit since taking the job after the UPFA victory in April this year. Ignoring a Presidential Code of Conduct restricting the number of visits of cabinet ministers to four per year (with no exceptions made to the Foreign Minister), Mr. Kadirgamar's visit is to hold official talks with his British counterpart, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other government officials in London.

No official communique has been issued so far on the visit or on the agenda for discussion from either the Foreign Office in London or Colombo. Meanwhile, the famous Oxford University has decided to honour Mr. Kadirgamar, a one-time President of the equally famous Oxford (Debating) Union as an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, one of the College's of the University.

Mr. Kadirgamar accepted the honour prior to his departure to Britain, but his office in Colombo said that he would not be visiting the University on this visit as it was scheduled prior to receiving the communication from Oxford University.

Among the other Honourary Fellows of Balliol College are current senior-most Law Lord of Britain Lord Thomas Bingham, an exact contemporary of Mr. Kadirgamar, Mr. Chris Patten, former Chairman of the British Conservative Party, the last Governor of Hong Kong and presently Mr. Kadirgamar's counterpart for the European Union, former British Prime Minister Edward Heath, King Herald of Norway, Crown Princess Masako of Japan, former President of (West) Germany von Weizsacker and Nobel prize winner for Medicine Barouch Blumberg.

Apart from being part of a wide network of influential personalities around the world, Fellows of Balliol College are entitled to free student accommodation - if available - at the University when visiting Oxford, free meals at the cafeteria etc.,

Mr. Kadirgamar studied law at Oxford after passing out from the Law Faculty and Law College in Sri Lanka, and later took his oaths at Lincoln's Inn where he was earlier made a Bencher, a honour bestowed by the Inn to its more illustrious practitioners.

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