Ukraine, Syria and Iran

Baroness Falkner of Margravine Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, I say to my noble friend that I am extremely relieved to hear that the Foreign Secretary is travelling to Washington to have discussions with the US Administration but, more importantly, to have discussions with the International Monetary Fund. Can he tell the House how much leverage we have with the IMF? We know, of course, of its exasperation that €300 billion was expended on very necessary eurozone bailouts but that only €610 million was pledged to Ukraine before the crisis started in November. Perhaps there has been a lack of urgency on the part of the IMF-EU relationship with Ukraine that has led us to where we are now.

I also congratulate the Foreign Secretary on the very measured tone that he has taken in terms of Russia. We need to co-operate with Russia and Ukraine and we also need Russia on Syria. However, on Syria—I do not wish to detain the House, I will be brief—surely we need to be tougher with Russia because we have wasted, some might say, two opportunities now in Geneva without seeing any progress whatever. To what extent might we help the Free Syrian Army to gain access to weapons so that it can defend wives and children?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

On Russia and Syria, I remind the noble Baroness that the resolution passed on Saturday in the UN Security Council was passed unanimously. This demonstrates, to an extent, that the Russians are beginning to lose patience with the regime, which is bombing, starving and besieging its own people throughout much of the country. That is at least some step forward. Of course we engage with the Russians as actively as we can on these and a number of other subjects.

On the question of help to the Syrian National Council and the moderate opposition in terms of weapons, the Government take the position that the House of Commons showed its unwillingness to provide military support in Syria and that we will not change our policy on that until we have brought that issue back to the Commons. That may happen at some time but, at present, we are providing non-lethal assistance to the Syrian opposition and will continue to do so.