Middle East: Recent Developments

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Friday 13th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, faced with the kaleidoscopic series of developments in the Middle East that has followed the Arab awakening and which seems set to continue for the foreseeable future, it is clearly right that we should be debating these issues again a mere four months after our previous debate. I am grateful to the Government for making that possible, even if I cannot resist commenting that it would be even better if they could find time to debate other major areas of foreign policy.

I welcome, too, the Minister’s extremely comprehensive and helpful opening contribution to our debate. It is right that we should be debating this because the Middle East, as other noble Lords have observed, matters to this country and to the European Union as a whole in a way, and to an extent, that few other regions outside Europe do. It affects our security, our energy supplies, the flows of migration and many other issues too.

There are of course difficult policy choices to be made, ones that we have not always made very skilfully or wisely in the past, between, for example, the role of appalled spectator and victim of events or, on the other hand, that of an intrusive actor intervening forcefully and often insensitively. A third option is as a sympathetic neighbour recognising that it is for the countries of the Middle East to shape their own future, but ready to help evolutionary change across the region once the initial process of upheaval has passed. I am glad that we and our allies seem, broadly speaking, to have chosen the third option, and I think that we will need both strategic and tactical patience in sticking to it.

On the positive side of the ledger since we last debated, one can reasonably place the Egyptian presidential elections and the recent elections in Libya. Both sets of elections are of course only the first stages of a long and complex process that still has far to run, but both have confounded the predictions of the pessimists, and both are remarkable and probably irreversible developments in two countries that have never before experienced free and fair multiparty elections. On the negative side of the ledger must clearly stand the continuing conflict in Syria, disfigured by increasing evidence of massacres of innocent civilians by the regime’s supporters and by the stalemate over international efforts to bring the fighting to an end and to initiate a transitional process away from Ba’athist dictatorship.

Somewhere in between on the ledger, I suggest, stands the unsatisfactorily dilatory process of talks over Iran’s nuclear programme and the absence of any negotiating activity at all over Palestine. Both these latter two issues mask an explosive potential that we ignore at our peril. I listened with great interest to my noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup’s description of the dangers that face us from a failure to achieve a negotiated solution on Iran, with which I totally agree.

In Syria, the arguments against any external military intervention—that, I suggest, includes the supply of weapons—still seem to outweigh the arguments in favour of a no-fly zone or the establishment of safe areas, even if the balance between them is not as clear-cut as it was at the outset. The international community’s responsibility to protect is still, I would argue, better exercised through diplomatic, humanitarian and economic action than through the use of force. The present stalemate, though, while the sectarian nature of the conflict becomes more and more marked, with disastrous potential effects on the future stability of the country, and while arms and military expertise pour in, particularly from Russia and Iran, is neither sustainable nor ought it to be accepted. I would be grateful if the Minister could say something about what we know about arms and military expertise flows that come from those two countries.

Surely we need to bring home more clearly than we have done hitherto that war crimes and crimes against humanity, by whomsoever committed, will one day end up before the International Criminal Court, and that the universal jurisdiction in the convention against torture already applies to those who are using these methods. Making these points is all the more urgent in the wake of the latest news we have had of yet another massacre by supporters of the regime.

More generally, is it not time that we went back to the UN Security Council and sought a mandatory resolution—that is to say, a Chapter 7 resolution—that would set stated timelines for Kofi Annan’s six-point plan and his transitional process to be accepted and backed that up by a clear threat of economic sanctions if that timeline was ignored? It is, of course, possible that the Russians will veto such a resolution. Their policy so far has been callous and opportunistic, and we have little or nothing to show for all the efforts to enlist their support for a genuine transition, but my experience is that you never find out just how firm that blocking position is until you put it to the test. Personally, I think that even if the Russians were to veto, our position would be better if we had put them before their responsibilities than if we allowed them to emasculate any resolution that we move forward in an attempt to get away from the deadlock. Meanwhile, I hope that the Minister can confirm that we and our allies are working closely with the Arab League and will urge consistently on the Syrian opposition the need for greater unity and for a public commitment to a democratic alternative to the Assad regime that will respect and protect all religious and ethnic groups in the country.

For Egypt and other countries now pursuing a peaceful process of evolution—countries such as Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen and Jordan—the challenge for the international community is principally an economic one. The success or failure of these processes of evolution will depend crucially on whether the new democratically elected Governments can offer better prospects to their rapidly growing young populations. That requires better trade outlets, greater skills, more inward investment, the establishment of the tourist industry and much else besides which, while not exclusively in the gift of outside countries, can be greatly facilitated and encouraged by their activities. Perhaps the Minister will say a little about what the European Union is doing in that respect and also about what is being done through such instruments as DfID, the British Council, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the BBC. Are their activities as well funded as they need to be? Are their efforts as well co-ordinated as they need to be if they are to be effective?

With the negotiations between the five plus one in Iran still continuing, however desultorily, it is probably wise not to say too much, but I regret—here I join the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, on one point that he made—that with all the emphasis on sanctions and the rumours of military action, the positive side of the equation—what Iran could hope for if it could satisfy the UN comprehensively about the peaceful nature of its nuclear programmes—is being marginalised and overlooked. Successful negotiations require benefits for all the parties to them, and we should not lose sight of that. What is not in doubt is that failure to reach a negotiated solution will bring seriously negative consequences for all concerned.

The moribund nature of the Middle East peace process while settlement activity in the Occupied Territories continues apace should bring solace to no one, although I sometimes fear that the Government of Israel regard it as better than any of the alternatives. If they do, I fear they are grievously wrong, and it will not be long before they find that out. Politics being politics and the central role of the US in any peace process not being easy to dispute, it is not likely that any serious movement will take place until after the US presidential election in November, but thereafter, a serious attempt to move ahead again will be the only alternative to a drift towards conflict. I say without any pleasure at all, having listened to a number of contributions to the debate, particularly that of the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, that of course the case for aid and trade is a strong one, but it is never going to do the trick on the Palestine issue. Politics will always trump aid and trade. Meanwhile, I hope that the Minister can say what the UK is doing to ensure that a conference on a Middle East weapons-free zone, scheduled for the end of this year becomes the start of a continuing process, and not a fiasco or a slanging match.

In conclusion, it cannot be said that the prospects in the Middle East are rosy. Nor, I believe, are they without hope. I hope that we can resist an obsession with the precise religious content of the Governments emerging from the new democratic processes and, even more, resist the vocabulary of Islamophobia. There is far too much of it around. The Governments of these countries are for them to decide. We should judge them by their deeds, not by their words or their religious beliefs.