Foreign Affairs

Baroness Ashton of Upholland Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ashton of Upholland (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, when I was in office at the EU, I visited the Middle East more than anywhere else. In Sderot in Israel, I was presented with a sculpture of a rose, fashioned from one of the hundreds of Hamas rockets fired regularly at the town, and visited the places where children played underground to keep them safe. Sderot was targeted on 7 October by Hamas terrorists.

On my visits to Gaza, I would often visit a school for deaf children offering education and vocational training to those with an additional disadvantage in a place where children had few opportunities. It now lies in ruins. I am filled with overwhelming sorrow at what is happening and has happened and with shame that we have failed over decades to find a lasting, viable solution.

Meantime, the region risks falling into greater chaos. I am only too aware of the influence and control that Iran exercises in the region. It had been my hope that, after dealing with the nuclear issue, we would move on to tackling the problems that, in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen, see Iran exacerbate already deeply troubled states. We need longer-term thinking here. Twenty years from now, will we have curtailed and contained Iran’s influence? What will be the role of the key Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, in bringing stability and prosperity to their neighbourhood? I believe there is a need for even greater UK engagement in this area.

Ten years ago, I celebrated with Ukraine the signing of the long-awaited association agreement with the European Union. The country was already in conflict after the taking of Crimea and the invasion of parts of the Donbas, and the hope was for a plan to resolve Russia’s incursion and find a new future closer to Europe. Just before the pandemic took hold, I was in Kyiv in a cold winter. While I was there, hundreds of people were killed by bombs, guns or freezing weather as power stations were targeted in the Donbas. In Kyiv, I was told repeatedly that Ukrainians felt they were alone: left to deal with ongoing aggression by themselves. I worried then that Russia was waiting. Now, after two years of war, many of the people I stood with in Maidan a decade ago are gone.

There is a need for a new broad security architecture that is more than the important continued military engagement and NATO expansion, and which will provide economic and political security well into the decades ahead. In 20 years’ time, what of Russia? Do we need a plan for containment—to write the equivalent of the “long telegram”—and where do UK relations with the European Union fit in strategic terms in that time period?

Many countries, especially in what we call the global South, are no longer prepared to fall into line with our views simply because it is expected, even if the principle in question is one they accept. Discussing Ukraine, one African leader asked when we were going to pay real attention to what was happening on his continent, pointing to the 17 coups in Africa during the last six years and the 18 armed conflicts in 2021 alone.

Old relationships do not always translate into strong links, especially as economies grow and political alliances shift and develop. Their present and future growth depends on diversifying relationships or dumping old ones in favour of new. We need to forge these new relationships.

Too often, we describe crises as coming out of nowhere. Too often, it is because we were not looking hard enough. I learned a long time ago that there is no issue any nation can solve alone; it is in our partnerships and our alliances that we find the strength and resources to tackle problems. Governments need to think in decades, not years: to resolve problems that have taken decades or longer to bubble up and burst; to tackle underlying causes, not just manifestations, as they affect us; to understand the nature of long-term needs and commit to resolving them, and to do so based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Those are the values that Britain has been known and respected for across the globe. This is, above all, about our own long-term security and, looking across our world, it cannot wait.

Iran: Stability in the Middle East

Baroness Ashton of Upholland Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ashton of Upholland (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Turnberg for securing this debate. It is a very long time since I spoke in your Lordships’ House. Indeed, I was sitting where the Minister is, before I was whisked across the Channel into some kind of glorious exile. As noble Lords will know, during my time away, I led and chaired the negotiations with Iran for over four and a half years. In that context, I want to make just three brief points in the time I have.

First, one of the criticisms about the Iranian nuclear agreement—the JCPOA—is that it deals only with the nuclear weapons issue. If noble Lords reflect back to 2009, 2010 and the years that followed, the most pressing issue that we faced as a continent, and certainly in the region, was to ensure that Iran did not get a nuclear weapon. We had reason to believe it was months away from achieving that. This was, as I described it then, the boulder in the doorway that prevented us doing anything else about what Iran was doing in the region because we had to stop the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran. When we negotiated that agreement —other criticisms have already been raised that I could address, but I do not have time—we did so believing that it was not the last agreement but the first. It was meant to take away the boulder to enable us to tackle issues, including ballistic missiles, but especially what was happening in the region.

That brings me to my second point. In my many discussions with leaders in the region, particularly the Prime Minister of Israel but many other leaders too—I pay tribute to the Sultan of Oman, who recently passed away—they were very clear that the region itself wanted to be in control of what happened, how negotiations might take place and what type of decision-making there might be. In my view, it is important that we recognise that we must allow the region to determine how best it wishes to move forward. That is especially true when you think about the chaos of Syria and Yemen, and of what is happening in Lebanon and Iraq right now.

My final point is about this country. This country has a long and proud tradition of diplomacy. I witnessed it at first hand many times when I was working in the European Union. I pay tribute to the team of diplomats and technical experts who worked on the Iranian nuclear deal. Sometimes, in this House and the other place, one might think that it was a bilateral agreement. But there were brilliant British people and others working throughout to get the agreement to the place that we did. I single out Sir Simon Gass, who is now chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, for the work he did. Because we have that long tradition, I hope that as we look at where Britain should be in the future, we determine to try to use our diplomacy to work effectively in this region.