The Cabinet has a dilemma on its hands that has the serious potential to alter our foreign affairs. After internal debate, we think it's best to include the Assembly in this discussion and let them play a part in the decision-making process.

We have been invited to two conferences. The first is an Independence Conference that Europeia has invited us to co-host. The second is Lazarus' Regional Sovereignty Conference. While the Cabinet thinks there's no reason at all why we can't attend both, Europeia believes that Lazarus' conference is a competing one. Europeia issued an ultimatum to us -- we must show a "strong sign of good faith" and the only acceptable way to do that is to decline attending Lazarus' conference. (Europeia also warned us that they "won't be held responsible for the actions of some of [their] allies" if we do attend Lazarus' conference.)

We were approached about Lazarus' conference about 5 days after we were invited to Europeia's. There was no real conflict of dates that we knew about. Europeia had only given us a vague time frame of within a few weeks, while Lazarus approached us with concrete dates.

Given that these are two allies, we thought it was obvious that we should attend both, especially when we have a foreign policy agenda we want to promote. In other words, we believed (and still do) that it is in our regional interests to attend both conferences. Additionally, because this is the internet, there are no physical reasons why we cannot do so. There are only political reasons for why we cannot attend both, and those arose after we had already accepted both invitations.

We had some concerns with the direction of Lazarus' conference. Chairman Funkadelia has made a concerted effort to assuage those concerns. In all, there will be 5 GCRs attending, including us (if we go) -- The Pacific, The West Pacific, The Rejected Realms, Lazarus (obviously), and us. We have not been given a list of attendees from Europeia, nor have we been given prospective dates.

The Cabinet has been debating what to do, but we have not come to a consensus on the best way forward for the region. Europeia's ultimatum complicates what should be an easy decision -- participate in two interregional conferences our allies have invited us to attend. So, we think the Assembly should play a role in this instance, and help the Cabinet reach a decision.