Western Sahara

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I am sure that the noble Lord’s vast diplomatic experience can be applied on a whole range of issues in all parties and all sides of the House, as well as in the political establishment generally. I am very grateful to him for explaining to me more clearly an area that I did know about, but with which he is more familiar than I am. When these phrases come up, I always want to establish exactly what they involve. In this case, the paper contains a very firm and useful series of suggestions about how we take the human rights monitoring mechanism forward, and I believe that it will form a basis for a more constructive approach than we have had generally in the past on this whole unhappy issue.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

Does my noble friend agree that this whole saga does not reflect very well on the United Nations organisation? It must be more than 15 years since I visited the temporary refugee camps in Algeria. Is there any news from the last visit that Mr Ross made to the region and the talks that went on in New York between the Polisario Front and the Moroccan Government earlier this month?