The Conservatives accused the Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, of abandoning the Labour government's commitment to an ethical foreign policy yesterday, after a speech in which he said Britain's relations with the rest of the world must be governed by "enlightened self-interest".
In what was considered a refinement of his statement when Labour came to power in 1997, Mr Cook emphasised the development of "universal values" but steered clear of referring to an ethical framework guiding foreign policy.
The government was not obliged to "put everything right", he said in a speech to the Royal Institute of International Affairs, "but to do what we can to make a difference". And he insisted the pursuit of upholding international human rights did not rule out contact with repressive regimes.
"Such dialogues can be uncomfortable to those who believe we best preserve the purity of our commitment to human rights by refusing to talk to the very regimes that need to hear our message. Such a policy may leave us with clean hands. But it is unlikely to provide their people with better rights."
To illustrate the benefit of "critical engagement" with such regimes, Mr Cook said contact with Iran and Libya had ended Tehran's support for the death threat against the author, Salman Rushdie. It had also secured compensation for the family of the murdered policewoman, Ms Yvonne Fletcher.
Mr Cook also used his speech to emphasise the importance of Britain's role in the EU, but he did not advance the government's position on joining the single currency and restricted his comments to saying only that Britain would "benefit" from joining a successful euro.
But with the government coming under sustained criticism for the sale of Hawk jet spares to Zimbabwe, the shadow foreign secretary, Mr John Maples, condemned Mr Cook's speech as a "funeral oration" for his ethical foreign policy.
However, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr Menzies Campbell, said the real test for the government was how it dealt with arms sales to repressive regimes: "Robin Cook may not have reaffirmed the foreign policy with an ethical dimension with which he began, but we are entitled to expect the government to take a much more principled position on the whole question of arms exports."