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| MI6 link of British ambassador in Ireland |
| Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador to Ireland, worked closely with British Military Intelligence and MI6 during his 30 years in the Diplomatic Service. Roberts took up his post in February 1999. Roberts 51 worked in Paris alongside the late Christopher Ewart-Biggs, a former MI6 officer responsible for liaison with GCHQ in Cheltenham when both were serving in Paris in the early 1970s. Ewart-Biggs died in an IRA car bomb attack within 100 metres of his official residence at Glencairn, Co Wicklow on July 21, 1976, only two weeks after taking up his post as British Ambassador in Dublin. Outline of the Ivor Roberts intelligence career, 1968 Joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). He served as Third and later Second Secretary in Paris. 1970 - 1973 Head of Chancery in Luxembourg, 1978 - 1980 First Secretary in Canberra, Australia, 1980 to 1987 He worked in the FCO's West African, Arabian and Eastern European departments, 1994 Roberts was appointed Charge d'Affairs at the British Embassy in Belgrade, later becoming British Ambassador there. After leaving Serbia in the late nineties, he had been on secondment as Senior Associate Fellow of St Anthony's College, Oxford, which has long-standing links to MI6. He spent his time there writing an assessment of the Balkan situation for the British government. Before being appointed British ambassador to Irish Republic. |