Middle East: Recent Developments

Lord Empey Excerpts

Friday 13th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for providing the opportunity for this debate. Like the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, I feel that the canvas is so broad that one cannot possibly cover it all. Therefore, I shall confine my remarks to just two areas. One is the spread of democracy in the region. It will be of little surprise to the Minister that I also wish to raise Libya and related matters.

I suppose no area of the world has undergone greater change in the past 12 months than the Middle East, starting with Tunisia, through Egypt, Libya and the turmoil in Syria, which has been referred to. Some say that the Arab spring was a new awakening. Some say that it was an inevitable consequence of many decades of suppression of human rights and democracy by various dictators. Perhaps the West’s relationship with some of those dictators is something that we now regret, but that is life.

Whatever the truth, the outcome of the Arab spring far from clear. The early warm welcome from western Governments has given way to some anxiety as radical Islamists begin to flex their muscles at the polls, as we saw only a week or two ago. What will the implications of the Egyptian election results be for the Arab-Israeli conflict? Will the conflict between the Egyptian army and the new President be resolved peacefully? We now await the identification of a new Libyan Government, following elections there last week. The Minister recounted a very moving illustration of what had happened in Libya in such a short time. We must remember that a year ago our aircraft were flying over that country in a major bombing campaign.

However, there is one thing that the West must learn. While it is right to encourage the spread of democratic government and help to end oppression, we must not assume that our model of democracy is the only version that should be adopted by other nations with different cultures and traditions. Are we really saying that the goings-on in this Building in the past week represent the gold standard for emerging democracies? Perhaps we should remember that we could appear arrogant if we dismiss other versions of democracy. The main thing is to see that the local people in those countries are able to participate fully in their own government and are not dictated to or terrorised at gunpoint. In general, the West comes across as a bit arrogant in promoting its particular version of democracy when there may be others.

I move on to a matter in which I take a keen interest, as the Minister knows; namely, the campaign for compensation for United Kingdom victims of IRA violence perpetrated using weapons supplied by the former Libyan regime. Gaddafi decided to launch a campaign against the United Kingdom and supplied boatloads of weapons to the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s. There is evidence that he was at it again as recently as last year, when he tried to help dissident republicans financially. I know that the Government have made strong representations to the transitional authorities in Libya about such incidents as the shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher, the Al-Megrahi case and, in general, about compensation for victims in this country of Gaddafi-supplied weapons.

The Minister also kindly arranged for me to meet his officials who deal specifically with Libya and has written to me on several occasions. However, I want to put one matter to him: I still feel that there is a lack of clarity in government policy on this issue. In his most recent letter to me, dated 8 June, the Minister said:

“The government remains absolutely committed to working with the new Libyan authorities to help address the crimes of the Qadhafi regime”.

Having spoken to his officials, I know that that is indeed what they want to do; they are talking regularly. We understand that in a country that has had vast swathes of its infrastructure destroyed and does not even have a solid central Government, it is very difficult to get precise agreement, particularly as we are awaiting, in the next year or so, the installation of a democratically elected Government under a new constitution, which will be drawn up over the next 12 months.

On the other hand, the Minister went on to say that the Government felt that individual compensation claims were best pursued on a private basis and that the Foreign Office will offer facilitation and support to campaigns seeking compensation. Therefore, I have some difficulty in understanding how you can argue that we are having a Government-to-Government negotiation on the wider issue of how this matter should be resolved. I support that and believe it to be a national issue since it was a terrorist campaign against all of the United Kingdom and people in all parts of it suffered. However, a conflict arises if you then say that you will support and facilitate private cases. That seems a disjointed policy. If private cases go on, it does not mean that every victim will get compensation or that every victim will apply for compensation. I support the national Government in negotiating with the Libyans at government level, but I do not understand how there can be a second tier at individual level that will, by definition, be haphazard and uncontrolled. I hope the Minister will address that matter.

I also believe strongly that it will not necessarily be as simple as expecting Libyans to write cheques to a series of individuals in this country. It may be that we will have to look at other means, be that through trade or some other mechanism by which we can help each other. It will be very hard to persuade elected representatives in Libya, with their infrastructure devastated, suddenly to support measures that would give their money to people in this country for something which, in fairness, the average Libyan had nothing to do with. We understand that it will not be simple but the Government must have a clear policy, which should be that we negotiate nation-to-nation, come up with solutions and try to implement them. I am not convinced that running a parallel policy of ad hoc applications for compensation from individual clients is necessarily right. There might also be a risk of certain individual victims being exploited by people who will take claims for fee purposes, whether there is any possibility of success or not.

I hope that the Government will address those two issues and I thank the Minister again for the opportunity to have this debate.