The January draft of the Stormont community relations paper included ideas for, amongst other things, anti-sectarian classes, a buddy scheme for nursery and primary school children and an annual cultural awareness day.
The job, attached to the foreign ministry, requires Mr von Thadden to take a broad view ofrelations with France and to offer new ideas for improving them, inside and outside government.
But better relations with Europe are still hostage to an underlying clash ofideas between the two sides, above all the fatwa issued by the late Ayatollah Khomeini authorising the assassination of a British writer, Salman Rushdie.