I'd like to write fiction. Perhaps at some stage.

I have real fears for Cuba based on the South American experience. Where you have had such a stern regime, as Fidel's [Castro], there is no culture of politics.

The noise that we can expect in the future will only increase and we'll be wishing for rural Portugal or something like that.

I have dipped into Ian McEwan and so on. I tend not to stick with one writer. But I dip in here and there.

Paraguayans have no Italian blood and are half Guarani [Indian] blood. And the Chileans call themselves "the English of South America," which actually couldn't be further from the truth.

There are no young people who know how to debate, who know how to vote, and who know how to persuade people to vote. And you have seen this in Paraguay and they are reaping the harvest now of fifty years of dictatorship.

Diplomacy was what I wanted to do. From really quite an early age and I think I had a false impression that diplomacy equals travel.