COP28 conference meetings and Former First Minister meeting with President Erdogan of Turkey: FOI release

Information requested

• Documents containing all internal and external correspondence concerning the meetings of Scottish Government officials, representatives and ministers with the officials, representatives and ministers of foreign countries during the period of the COP28 conference in the United Arab Emirates, which took place from 30th Nov 2023 to 12th Dec 2023, and the minutes of those meetings.
• The length and date of any meeting with the Turkish delegation, and the president, Mr Erdogan, including evidence to support the first minister's claims that a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) official "chose not to stay with the Scottish delegation the whole day, and because of that they ended up missing the meeting", and the time that the invitation was extended to the FCDO relative to the time of the meeting itself.

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested attached to this email, including:

• Document 1: WhatsApp conversations between a Scottish Government official and a Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office official.
• Document 2: Internal Scottish Government emails regarding a meeting with the President of Zambia
• Document 3: Internal Scottish Government emails regarding a meeting with the Vice-President of Spain
• Document 4: Internal Scottish Government emails regarding meetings with representatives of France and Zambia
• Document 5: Email exchanges between Scottish Government officials and Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office officials regarding a meeting with representatives of Zambia

Exemption 38: Personal information of FOISA has been applied to this correspondence.

The answer to your question is that the First Minister met with President Erdogan of Turkey on 01 December 2023 for approximately 10-15 minutes.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Minutes for the majority of the relevant meetings referred to in your request had not been completed by the date of your request.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under sections 30: Prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs and 32: International relations applies to that information which has been omitted from this release. Under section 30 of FOISA exemptions have been made to remove some email addresses from the documents attached. Under section 32 of FOISA exemptions have been applied to some conversations with representatives of some foreign countries.

An exemption under section 27(1) of FOISA applies to some of the information requested you request about any meetings with the Turkish delegation and President Erdogan, because we aim to publish that information within 12 weeks of the date of your request. We consider that it is reasonable to withhold the information until that date, rather than release some of this information before the planned publication date. The information will be published here: Publications - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

Separate to FOISA, you may find it helpful to know that some of the information you have requested has now been published at the following address:

Meeting with Turkey and Lebanese delegations at COP28: FOI release - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202300389881 - Information Released - Documents 1-5

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13 page PDF

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272.7 kB