British ambassadors struggle with Arabic Source: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Richard Ottaway, the Conservative chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said that declining language skills had become a significant weakness. We have been pressing the Foreign Office on this for a long time. The weakness arises from the closure of the Foreign Office Language School by the last government and, to its credit, the Foreign Office is reopening the Language School and William Hague [the Foreign Secretary] is taking steps to remedy the situation. English is the dominant medium for diplomacy in the Gulf. Nonetheless, Mr Ottaway said that British ambassadors in these countries should still master Arabic. "You are far more likely to develop a warm personal relationship with the person you are dealing with if you can speak their language," he added. The Language School will reopen this summer and Mr Ottaway predicted an improvement in "two or three years." Rory Stewart, a Conservative MP and former diplomat, said that Mr Hague had "begun to repair the damage of more than a decade of underinvestment in languages, but it will take a long time." The earlier neglect was "based on the end of history assumption that in a globalised English-speaking world these old skills wouldn't be so relevant," added Mr Stewart. But the world has changed dramatically: we have gone to war twice and we need to cope with rogue states. Unless we invest in languages, we can only deal with the elite in the capital. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We would not send an Ambassador to a country without the appropriate language skills if they could not effectively conduct business on behalf of the British Government." She added: "We have improved and strengthened our language training programme, and are training up more staff in key languages including Arabic."