AT the start of the summer a remarkable meeting took place at a country house in Oxfordshire to talk about Scottish independence.

The discussion was organised by the Ditchley Foundation, the forum for international study founded by tobacco magnate Sir David Wills in the late 1950s, and brought together 40 distinguished diplomats, academics and politicians.

Those present included ambassadors, high commissioners and other high-ranking representatives from Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Among the Scots around the table were prominent figures from both sides of the independence debate.

The pro-independence camp was represented by Stephen Noon, chief strategist at Yes Scotland; writer James Maxwell; and Lt Col Stuart Crawford, a former SNP defence adviser. Supporters of the Union (there were more of them, it should be said) included Michael Moore, the Secretary of State for Scotland; Lord Robertson, the Labour peer and former secretary general of Nato; senior LibDem MP Sir Menzies Campbell; and Tory MP and former diplomat Rory Stewart. Expert opinion was supplied by, among others, pollster John Curtice and Graham Avery, the Oxford academic and former Eurocrat.

The cast list may have been the first striking thing about the gathering but it was far from the only one. Perhaps even more interestingly, neither side has chosen to highlight the views aired and conclusions drawn amid the 18th-century elegance of Ditchley Park that weekend in early June. When the Ditchley Foundation published a precis of proceedings towards the end of the month the Scottish Government spent the day announcing a mandatory 5p charge for carrier bags while Johann Lamont reshuffled her shadow cabinet.

So what did emerge? The discussions focused mainly, but not exclusively, on the international implications of independence, especially the issues of EU membership, Nato and defence.

In his summary, Ditchley Foundation director Sir John Holmes, a former senior civil servant, wrote: "Overall no show-stoppers for Scottish independence emerged from our discussions," though he noted the process "might be far from trouble free".

The prevailing view was that an independent Scotland would have to apply for membership of the EU but "the result should not be in doubt". Opting out of the euro and the Schengen-free travel zone (which would probably be required to avoid border posts at Gretna) could be "finessed", the conference report said, but an independent Scotland would face "significant resistance" if it tried to keep a share of the UK's budget rebate. The conference also felt the SNP's timescale for negotiating EU membership, in just 18 months, "looked unrealistically short".

Joining Nato "could happen in theory relatively quickly and easily". However, the SNP's staunchly anti-nuclear stance was a "major complicating factor" with, it seemed, no easy answers. One question of many from the report was: "Would Scotland accept the protection of the Nato nuclear umbrella, and could it be a full member of Nato if it did not?" It also warned of "significant" defence and diplomatic start-up costs and felt the UK-US intelligence relationship "would probably not be available to Scotland, at least initially".

Potentially the most difficult issue to manage was the currency of an independent Scotland. Damagingly for the SNP, the conference felt the UK was unlikely to agree to share the pound in a formal monetary union and warned it could prove a "serious misjudgment" for the Nationalists to assume the UK Government's opposition to the plan was just a bluff.

Keeping the pound outside a currency union would leave an independent Scotland with greatly reduced control over its own economic policy, it warned.

In short, one of the most knowledgeable and high-powered gatherings ever assembled to discuss Scottish independence foresaw significant problems but nothing insurmountable. It is rather depressing to think this may be the most realistic appraisal of key issues we've heard, yet both sides in the referendum campaign kept quiet about it. Maybe it was neither scary enough for the Unionists nor reassuring enough for the Nationalists.