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• foreign secretary's speech anticipates more controversy over Britain's security and intelligence alliances
• allies against terrorism include those with poor human rights records, Hague recognises
The foreign secretary, William Hague delivered a most interesting and important speech on Thursday, entitled "Countering terrorism overseas".
It was studded with references to "torture". The terms "justice" and "human rights" appeared on almost every page.
The message was clear: Britain will is likely to get increasingly engaged in conflicts that will involve close cooperation with the security and intelligence agencies of countries that detain people without trial, and abuse, and even torture, them.
Britain must therefore build a series of "justice and human rights partnerships" with those countries, Hague said, "where there is both a threat to the United Kingdom's security" and where, as he somewhat euphemistically put it, there were "weaknesses in the law enforcement, human rights and criminal justice architecture".
In a keynote speech to the Royal United Services Institute, with Sir John Sawers, head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, listening in the front row, Hague said: "We have to build stability and the rule of law in other countries, living up to our values at all times".
Those values included "being absolutely clear that torture and mistreatment are repugnant, unacceptable, and counter-productive".
He was speaking against the background of deep concern over evidence that Britain's domestic Security Service, MI5, and MI6, were complicit in the abuse of terror suspects held by the CIA, and in the abduction of prominent Libyan dissidents subsequently abused by Muammar Gaddafi's secret police.
Hague referred to the recent attack by terrorists, said to be linked to or sympathetic with al-Qaida, on a gas facility in Algeria in which six Britons died.
It was the "largest and most complex attacks" on British citizens since the 7/7 London bombings, he said.
The foreign secretary was in effect serving notice that the British public should expect more stories of wrongdoing by foreign security and intelligence agencies which MI6 is working closely with.
These foreign agencies, in north Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world are Britain's allies in the common fight against violent terrorism.
They may not share the same values as Britain but Britain will be working on that, notably by teaching them about human rights and proper systems of justice.
That is Hague's message. He also referred to the Justice and Security Bill - dubbed the "secret courts" bill - which is now going through parliament.
He repeated the government's mantra that the objectives of the bill was to strengthen the accountability of the security and intelligence agencies and and that under the bill, "nothing now considered in public will be considered in secret".
Yet he appeared to agree, in answer to questions, that this was only when compared to the present Public Interest Immunity (PII) system when material the spooks do not want to disclose are not used at all in court cases.
Under the Security and Justice Bill, such material could be disclosed but only in secret court hearings.
Hague's assertion is thus misleading.
Yet at least he addressed the question of how to cooperate with other regimes fighting terrorists, a question, to be fair, that concerns Sawers himself.
Hague also emphasised that ministers themselves take many decisions about what MI6 should or should not be up to. As foreign secretary he is responsible for MI6.
Ministers spend much more time "on these things" than outsiders realise, he said.
That's fine. But it raises further questions about what Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time, knew about MI6's part in the abduction of Sami Al-Saadi and Abdel Hakim Belhaj to Tripoli in 2004.
Straw said after the rendition operation was exposed: "No foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing at any one time."
The episode is currently being investigated by the Metropolitan police.