Syria-Jordan Border: Rukban Camp

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The plan has been put forward and we are familiar with it. It contains some challenges and we are still working through the detail. The UN has expressed some concerns about it. The briefing and support for the leadership of Staffan de Mistura and his reporting back to the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council within the next day or two will be crucial in determining what shape the response to that proposal takes.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister believes that Assad will, within the next 12 months, effectively gain control of Syria, with the help of the Russians. He might be a loathsome man—indeed, he is a loathsome man when one looks at what has happened—but the only way to help the poor, benighted people in that country is, surely, for us to have proper links with him and work to the future to look after them? Certainly the end of the civil war is one of the best things possible for the people of Syria because while it continues there will be more deaths and more refugees, and so it goes on.

[Lord Bates]

We are certainly supportive of the fact that the only real solution is for there to be a lasting political discussion. That is why we are putting so much energy into the Syria support group process in Geneva and at the UN. I accept that. There is a particular challenge faced by the effects of Daesh and it was right that the UK played its role as part of the international coalition seeking to drive it out of its bases in Syria.