Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Yes, absolutely. Again, I want to pay tribute to many people who risk their lives to support the opposition and to many who have worked in the Syrian National Council, for instance, to set out a clear intention to create a better future for their country, but it is now important that they come together in a more effective way. I have often explained to them that in the history of this country when we have faced an existential threat, all parties have come together on a common programme. Syria now faces an existential threat to any peaceful or stable future; it has to do the same.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

If, in the right hon. Gentleman’s answers to questions, I have detected a change of tone from the previous insistence on regime change above all else, may I welcome that? Will he explain his own view that what we are faced with is a civil war—a civil war not just at the present time, with around a third of the people backing the barbarity of Assad out of fear of something worse from Sunni domination, but the continuation of a civil war following a simple collapse of the regime? What we therefore need is his insistence on a transitional Government.

[Mr Hague]

Since I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the need for a transitional Government, I do not want to disappoint him too much in respect of the start of his question. It is not that the western world has set out on regime change in Syria, but it is certainly our analysis, and it has been for a long time, that peace cannot be brought to Syria without the departure of President Assad. There is no viable peace; there is no peace that the people of Syria would accept without that. I am not changing tone or policy on that. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right about the need for a transitional Government. We agreed in Geneva at the end of June—with Russia, China and all other leading nations—about the need for that. What we do not have is the active participation of Russia in bringing about such a transitional Government.