ALL too often I've had to write this article from the strange and exotic destinations to which my job sends me.

Those around me will testify that I've taken out the trusty yellow legal pad in some pretty unusual locations, from the dusty plains of the western Sudan to the overheated corridors of Brussels and New York.

But this week, I'm glad to say, I'm thoroughly at home - at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton.

There was some speculation in the press before the conference that the Party leadership would somehow try to avoid discussing Iraq. Tony Blair's speech on Tuesday showed how wrong that was. And my own speech today tackled the issue head on as well.

But I also used my speech to describe one of the most powerful impressions I've gained in the last three years: the way in which the local and the global are now more than ever two sides of the same coin.

In the past, perhaps, foreign affairs seemed rather remote from the concerns and interests of most people. And still today what we foreign ministers and diplomats do can appear distant from most people's everyday reality.

To some extent that's our fault: we may need to use better language to explain what we do.

But it's more than ever clear to me that what goes on in the rest of the world matters desperately to us here in Britain.

British jobs are affected by corporate decisions made thousands of miles away, or by collective decisions negotiated in Brussels.

Less happily, British lives - young lives, too often - can be blighted by drugs produced continents away.

And as Tony Blair and I have been saying this week, the scourge of international terrorism directly affects British people around the world.

The conclusion I draw from this - and the theme of all my speeches here in Brighton - is that Britain needs an active and an engaged foreign policy.

We can't sit on the sidelines - even if that option were open to us.

BEFORE closing this week I must say a word about Ken Bigley, the British man who has been kidnapped in Iraq. He has been my top priority since the day he was taken.

By the time you read this I do not know what the situation with Mr Bigley will be.

We all need to be extremely careful not to say anything which might make his release more difficult.

But what I can say is that it has been a real honour getting to know the Bigley family.

I'VE been in regular touch with Mr Bigley's mother and the rest of the family in Liverpool; and I've spoken to his wife Sombat in Thailand.

None of us can fully understand the anguish they've been going through - though those of us with children can perhaps begin to imagine the intense pain Mrs Bigley has been feeling.

The Bigleys' dignity, their grace and their generosity of spirit under the most unimaginable pressure, have been nothing short of inspirational.

I'm sure that I am speaking for all of us when I say the whole of the Bigley family has been constantly in our thoughts and prayers.