Lord Polak
Main Page: Lord Polak (Conservative - Life peer)(1 day, 7 hours ago)
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Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I refer the House to my entry in the register of interests. In the Statement, the Foreign Secretary talked about the Manama dialogue in Bahrain. I was there, and I congratulate the Foreign Secretary for publicly calling for intense efforts to address the crisis in Sudan. She did it there, and that was the right place for her to do it. In the other place, Andrew Mitchell asked the Foreign Secretary to call Africa Union members to encourage them to encourage the US to take this awful slaughter as seriously as they have done with Gaza. Can the Minister tell us whether that is happening?
It is, of course, good news that that Resolution 2803 has been passed. I have returned from Germany today and, as my noble friend Lord Courtown quite rightly said, they have lifted the suspension on arms exports to Israel. The Minister said it is early, but they have done it. I therefore asking the Minister whether she will be recommending the same action. Also, will she now say to the Royal College of Defence Studies: enough of this banning of Israelis? At the time, it said that the reason it was banning Israelis was because
“the Israeli Government’s decision to further escalate its military operation in Gaza is wrong”.
That was on 15 September. The ceasefire took effect in October and we are now in November, so I hope that the Minister will call for that.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It would be a very good thing to get to a point where the process is embedded and the confidence is there to enable us to do that. I very much look forward to the day when these measures can be lifted, that is when we will know that there is stability in the process and confidence being built on both sides to enable us to do that.
On the African Union, yes, we do talk to its members. They attended the conference that we held, and I think that they would like to be able to do more. This is not a straightforward situation, and it is important that we stand alongside the African Union. There is something about African solutions to African problems. I would say that the situation in Sudan is a lot more than an African problem, and we need to be working very closely alongside them.