The language of diplomacy

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent: "Using the word itself - calling a spade a spade - would have mattered because, if it was genocide, how could you not act, however difficult it was? In a similar way, British officials in the early 1990s tended to describe the fighting in Bosnia as civil war rather than Serb aggression - the phrase implied that all the parties were as bad as each other and weakened the demand for intervention.

Perhaps a transfer of "limited administrative authority" would be more accurate. "