North Korea: Nuclear Test

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, like others, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for obtaining this debate on a country rarely discussed in this Chamber, but one which uniquely suffers from perhaps the most oppressive regime in the world. It is no accident, perhaps, that its godfathers were Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, who did so much to bring this state into existence in the 1950s.

More than 30 years ago, I worked as the head of the Asia department of Amnesty International and one of the most remarkable documents that we published then was the testimony of a Venezuelan communist, Ali Lameda, who had worked in Pyongyang as a translator and editor and found himself caught up in its Kafkaesque workings, and was arrested and tortured for many years.

Thankfully, in today’s world there are few countries where one can say the human rights position is little better now than it was decades ago. But if one reads the reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the US State Department and the Foreign Office itself, it is clear that this is still the case in North Korea. In no significant manner is the human rights situation any better today than it was 30 years ago. That this is the case is abundantly clear from the report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK, referred to by several other noble Lords, and written by the Australian judge Michael Kirby and the distinguished Indonesian lawyer Marzuki Darusman, and published in February 2014. It reports:

“The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world”.

For decades, it argues, North Korea has committed,

“crimes that shock the conscience of humanity”,

which,

“raises questions about the inadequacy of the response of the international community”.

The international community must accept responsibility to protect the people of North Korea. This responsibility is a heavy one for the UK as we are one of only five countries that are permanent members of the Security Council. In that regard, can the Minister assure us that in our dialogue with China, enhanced by the state visit of President Xi Jinping last year, there are regular discussions about North Korea with Beijing? It must, and should, be part of our dialogue with China, the single most important country in terms of influence on North Korea. We also sit on the 47-member UN Human Rights Council, together with China. Can the Minister assure us that we will continue to use that forum to follow up the excellent work undertaken by Judge Kirby and Marzuki Darusman? As Michael Kirby himself stated:

“If the Human Rights Council is not the place to speak up about the atrocities … then where is the venue?”.

He went on to argue that the crimes against humanity were of such gravity that a case should in his judgment be taken to the International Criminal Court. Can the Minister tell us whether this has been considered with like-minded partners in the international community?

As the register of interests makes clear, I am a trustee of the BBC with a special interest in the World Service, where, indeed, I worked for seven years. In September 2015, the director-general, Tony Hall, declared that the BBC wished to reach out to ordinary Koreans through a new daily news programme via shortwave radio. The director-general wrote about this to the Chancellor on January 5 this year, outlining plans for a Korean service, among other World Service projects. There will also be an online presence. I am delighted that in a letter on 8 January, the Chancellor, George Osborne, agreed to provide £85 million of new funding for the World Service through a grant from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In due course, a proposal to establish a Korean service will be placed before the Foreign Secretary, whose approval is needed for the launch of any new language services. Such funding from the Government is imperative for the establishment and continuation of the new service. Some will inevitably question its impact on North Korea, although I am sure that it will gain attention in South Korea as well as the diaspora. However, there is growing evidence that North Koreans, especially those who have worked and lived in China—and hundreds of thousands have—have access to devices that would enable access.

The regime itself has recently allowed the French news agency Agence France-Presse, as well as Associated Press, to open news bureaux in North Korea. In due course I look forward to a BBC Korean service making its contribution to the improvement of human rights and security on the Korean peninsula that we all wish to see.

Daesh in Syria and Iraq

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

I apologise to the noble Lord—I could not read my own writing. I mentioned earlier that we are pleased to now be in the position where there will be a trained Sunni police force. It is the first step. Policing is clearly important as, when places are taken from Daesh, people will want to return to them but those places often have been booby-trapped with IEDs and police need to be in place to provide security while any remaining dangers are cleared. It is the only way for a community to be in a place and feel safe to set up its own council and organisations to run itself.

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

I welcome the Minister’s Statement, which was very good. I want to pick up on one aspect, namely the coalition that has been formed by Saudi Arabia. We need Saudi Arabia to defeat Daesh but, at the same time, we must be careful that it is not done on a sectarian basis. The Minister referred earlier to Haider al-Abadi, in the Iraqi Government. Iraq is not part of the coalition formed by Saudi Arabia, nor will it be. There are several other states that have abstained from joining that coalition, including states with a long history of combating terrorism. One example is Algeria, the largest country in the Maghreb, and another is Indonesia, the world’s largest Sunni Muslim state. I urge some caution in backing Saudi efforts for an alliance that is essentially Sunni and not Islamic. After all, what we are fighting for in Iraq and Syria is the preservation of countries with faiths of many denominations.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I agree that it is important that the Islamic military coalition should consider the interests of both Sunnis and Shias, but that should come in any event because there are Shia minorities within the coalition countries. Bahrain, which is a member, has a Shia majority population. The noble Lord is right, however, to sound a word of caution. We welcome the creation of the IMC to fight terrorism and we look forward to hearing further details from the Saudis on the IMC’s intended remit and scope. We want it to be able to work closely alongside the global coalition against Daesh to tackle the terrorist scourge.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, much of the comment in the press on the most gracious Speech as it relates to foreign policy has dwelt on the commitment by the Government to a referendum on our membership of the European Union, but I am pleased that in this debate we have moved over a terrain much greater, covering the Middle East, Asia and Africa, international human rights and the United Nations. My remarks will focus on some of those issues, beginning perhaps with the Middle East.

I was struck by the comment in the gracious Speech that the Government will continue to focus on degrading and ultimately defeating terrorism in the Middle East. That is quite an extraordinary remark, coming one week after ISIS captured not one major city in the region, but two—Ramadi, in Iraq, and Palmyra, in Syria—to add to its existing control of Mosul, the second city in Iraq. ISIS now controls about 50% of the territory of Syria, and somewhat less of the territory of Iraq.

Leaving aside the reality of a further deterioration in the situation on the ground, I am struck by how modest our contribution is in the struggle against ISIS. I take very well the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, that we should not be looking purely at the military struggle against ISIS. Our contribution is a handful of Tornado jets, now about 25 years old. That compares ill with other countries’ contributions. Australia, for example—a country much further away from the Middle East than we are—is contributing several hundred special forces on the ground, far outweighing the overall British contribution. How can this be, welcome though the Australian contribution is? After all, we are a member of the P5, with a population more than twice the size of Australia’s. Surely we should be shouldering our responsibilities to a greater extent.

What this and other indications underline is a further retreat from what I consider a meaningful and robust foreign policy, consonant with our permanent membership of the Security Council and, indeed, with our past history. The noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, underlined the importance of a political and diplomatic strategy to deal with the deep and profound problems in the Middle East, and I echo that, but I see no sign of that in the most gracious Speech.

Two main issues confront the modern Middle East. One is a vicious sectarianism between Sunni and Shia Muslims that has taken a deep and profound hold on the states of Syria and Iraq and that will be very difficult to remove. Indeed, Syria and Iraq, like Libya in north Africa, are now hollowed-out states bearing no resemblance to what they looked like 20 years ago. The reconstitution of those countries as nation states as we understand that concept is a very distant prospect that is likely to take decades, not years.

The gracious Speech was also striking in that sadly it said nothing about what used to be termed the Middle East peace process—a term that now ill fits the situation in Israel and Palestine. I can think of no point in the last 30 or 40 years when one could have been more pessimistic about the situation on the ground. That is despite the fact that in the leadership of the Palestinian National Authority, Israel has a partner in Abu Mazen— President Mahmoud Abbas—who is probably more moderate than any other Palestinian political leader. He is certainly far more moderate than any Palestinian leader could afford to be after his period in power. Israel should be looking for opportunities to move forward with a peace agreement, and our Government should be supporting that. We need to see more evidence of that, and its absence in the most gracious Speech is striking.

We also see in the most gracious Speech mercantilist attitudes coming to the fore, as in the comment that the Government look forward to an enhanced relationship with India and China. What about Japan? Japan is a democracy. There is no mention of that, or of the fact that it is actually the second largest foreign investor in the UK. India, of course, is a great democracy that we admire greatly, and a member of the Commonwealth. China, we need to remind ourselves sometimes, remains a one-party state, governed by the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of China. The economic realities on the ground may be far distant from any concept of Marxist socialism, but the politics remain that of a Marxist party. There is no freedom of expression in China. There is no freedom of religion. Religion is “tolerated”, but it is policed by state entities governed by the Communist Party. When I was in the Foreign Office during the Blair Government, I was actively involved in a human rights dialogue with China. It made very little headway. It continues, and I welcome that, but we also need to recognise some of the realities of contemporary China.

At precisely the same moment when the Government are looking forward to an enhanced relationship with China, Beijing is engaged in an increasingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, with frequent incidents with ASEAN countries but also with the United States keen to maintain freedom of the seas. Only this week, a United States Air Force aircraft was warned by the Chinese that it was approaching their territory and likely to be acted upon if it did not alter its flight path. The likelihood of a serious incident is, in my view, very real. Indeed, I remind the House of the incident over the island of Hainan in 2001, when a US aircraft was forced down and its crew detained for some weeks. That, or something more serious, could happen all too easily in the months and years ahead.

To the outside world, whether Europe, Asia or the United States, we are seen as turning inward. To our most important ally, for the past 75 years we have increasingly been seen to be, to use that very American word, worrisome, whether over the EU referendum, which is seen in Washington as dangerous and incomprehensible, or over a Chancellor petitioning for Arab or Chinese investment as if Britain was a financial haven and not a member of the P5.

I was in Washington last week and met many people from the foreign policy community, but I am sorry to say that many of them raised questions about the direction of this country’s foreign policy. Many of those people are close to the Administration of Barack Obama. Colleagues will perhaps remember the comments made, I believe, two years ago by Phil Gordon, the Assistant Secretary of State, about what he perceived as the lack of wisdom in Britain allowing consideration of a withdrawal from the European Union.

The Government have a major task on their hands in addressing the growing concern in Washington, which has been our closest ally for so many decades, about the direction of British foreign policy. One principal foreign commentator, Fareed Zakaria, wrote an article in the Washington Post on 22 May stating:

“Britain has essentially resigned as a global power”.

That is not an isolated view but one that is taking hold in the US media and in Congress.

I conclude by commenting on the remarkable speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Helic. I was deeply moved by it, partly because I served in the United Nations mission to Bosnia and Croatia in the early 1990s. I saw many terrible things during those years. Since then, I have been a prosecution witness in the trials against Milosevic, Karadzic and General Mladic. Some justice has been seen in the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, but I am struck that we are not going to see justice for the perpetrators of massive human rights violations in Syria and Iraq, whether by ISIS, President Assad or any of the other forces that are fighting there.

I am also struck by the fact that, in conformity with our tradition over the decades and the centuries, we have welcomed the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, as we have other refugees who have come to this country escaping war. I am deeply saddened by the fact that we have welcomed so few Syrian refugees. We have been watching on our television screens what is happening to thousands upon thousands of refugees trying to escape north Africa and come to the shores of Europe. I find it unfathomable—an expression used in Washington—that the United Kingdom has opted out of the agreement to accept 40,000 Syrian refugees. When we compare our figures with those of other countries in Europe, I am afraid that there is little to be proud of.

Iraq

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her statement. The situation in Iraq is dangerous and threatens not only that country but the wider Middle East and the security of the United Kingdom.

In the coming months we will see, I hope, the publication of the Chilcot report. That report will assess not just the invasion but the aftermath, on which I will comment because I believe that the occupation of Iraq is responsible for much of the continuing tragedy of that country. We need a clearer understanding of what has happened if we are to find a way forward.

Essentially, the Iraqi state was gutted and little put in its place until late in the occupation, and that action remains at the root of the present crisis. The fate of Iraq was then surrendered to a US vice-regal Administration led by figures who had scarce international, let alone Middle Eastern, experience. Not only was Saddam deposed but the entire armed forces were dissolved, as well as the ruling Baath Party. The only modern historical precedents were the fates of the German Wehrmacht and the Imperial Japanese Army in 1945 when those militaries were disbanded and the two countries occupied by Allied forces. Incidentally, I once accompanied the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, on a visit to Tehran, where President Khatami recommended the fate of the German army and Germany as a relevant example for Iraq post-Saddam.

Even today, 11 years after the invasion, Iraq pays a considerable price for those unwise decisions. It has weaker military capabilities than a smaller neighbour such as Jordan or even Kuwait. It has no offensive aircraft with which to stem the threatening advance of ISIS. Alone among the Arab states, Iraq has no jet combat aircraft, although some are now on order from the United States. The removal of Saddam, a cruel dictator, was followed by the unnecessary and foolish destruction of the state, for which the Iraqi people have paid a terrible price. That state has not been rebuilt. Its weakness, a deliberate action on the part of the occupiers, has prevented the emergence of a national political narrative and consensus, and has left Iraq prone to the rampant sectarianism that we see all too obviously today.

Despite the endeavours of Secretary of State Kerry on his visit to Iraq earlier this week, Prime Minister Maliki has spoken this afternoon in a television broadcast, promising no hope of greater representation in his Government for members of the minority Sunni Arab community, whose anger at what they perceive as his sectarian and authoritarian policies has been exploited by the jihadist elements from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Mr Maliki claimed that forming an emergency Administration that included all religious and ethnic groups would go against April’s parliamentary elections and he rejected that in no uncertain terms.

That is, to say the least, a deeply troubling response to the crisis engulfing Iraq. It offers little hope of forestalling further violence; rather, it entrenches the sectarianism of the present Iraqi Government. In that regard I hope there is no question of the UK sending military forces to Iraq or joining any potential US military action there. I should be grateful if the Minister could address that issue. At the same time I urge the Government to continue to press Prime Minister Maliki to see a national coalition as the only response to the threat posed by ISIS.

Earlier in this Chamber, we discussed the centenary of the First World War. One of its legacies, the Sykes-Picot agreement between Great Britain and France on the future of the post-Ottoman Middle East, finally looks to be unravelling. There will, of course, be no formal interment of an imperial diktat long resented throughout the region. In practice Syria and Iraq will continue to have their flags and seats at the UN but perhaps not much else, aside from capital cities and sectarian support limited to their core constituencies, the Alawites of Syria and the Shia of Iraq. The stunning assault of ISIS on northern Iraq last week began with the capture of Mosul. From there it has swept further south. What is abundantly clear is that ISIS, whose total forces may number no more than 5,000, owes much of its success less to its own military prowess but rather to the collapse of any remaining Sunni support for the Government of Prime Minister al-Maliki. Paradoxically, Maliki, who is closer to Iran than any Arab country, will rely on the US for any hope of reversing the battlefield humiliation or bolstering his fast deteriorating military position. And, in doing so, President Obama’s Administration would risk further alienating traditional Sunni allies, such as Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which have never hidden their contempt for Maliki’s Government.

To compound the success of ISIS in the unravelling of Iraq, Kurdish peshmerga took advantage of last week’s mayhem to seize by military means the long contested city of Kirkuk from Iraq’s central government. Kurdistan, with diminishing links to Baghdad, is a state in everything but name. It has its own armed forces and international airport and is now exporting oil directly through the Turkish port of Ceyhan, bypassing any semblance of deference to the Iraqi state.

Following his visit to Baghdad, Mr Kerry was the first US Secretary of State to visit the Kurdish region since Condi Rice in 2006. Greeting Kerry, President Barzani said that the time was fast approaching for the Kurdish people to determine their future—a further indication that the unity of Iraq is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to sustain.

The spectre before us is that of Iraq disintegrating. In that regard, I conclude by urging the Minister and the Government to call a meeting of the Security Council to discuss a rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq before it is too late. I am very concerned that no such meeting has so far taken place. Need I remind noble Lords that the United Kingdom is a permanent member of the Security Council? That is a privilege which comes with considerable obligations to the maintenance of international security, and the United Kingdom needs to take action in the Security Council.

Syria and the Middle East

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, we are holding this debate almost three years since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria—a war that has already claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people and left in its wake more than 1.5 million refugees. Despite the length of this conflict, the international community has struggled to contain the war, let alone bring an end to the violence and restore peace to Syria. In the length of the conflict, its nakedly sectarian nature and the inability of the international community to reach a consensus, it reminds me all too often of the war in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, where I served with the UN. Then as now, we struggle to bring humanitarian relief to the victims of the war and, despite all the hopes after the Yugoslav wars that a new era in the international management of conflict had dawned, those hopes have been dashed. Those hopes gave rise among other developments to the doctrine of the responsibility to protect—R2P in shorthand. The sad fact is that we have been unable adequately to protect the people of Syria.

The dangers of the conflict spreading to neighbouring countries, and especially to Lebanon, have been noted by many speakers this afternoon. On a visit to Lebanon a few weeks ago, I found UN colleagues anxious about the growing sectarian violence within the country and the extraordinary burden of more than 1 million refugees, equivalent to a quarter of the Lebanese population. Can one imagine 15 million refugees arriving in the United Kingdom and how we might cope? I pay tribute to what our Government have tried to do to help the Lebanese and to the extraordinarily able and energetic Ambassador Tom Fletcher and his staff in Beirut. Despite their efforts and those of many other countries to help Lebanon, the trends are not good. There have now been at least five bomb attacks on the Shia district of Beirut, Dahieh. The country’s second city, Tripoli, is wracked by periodic but sustained violence between the majority Sunni population and an Alawite minority openly supportive of the regime of President Assad and his Lebanese ally, the Shia militia Hezbollah. A few days ago there was an Israeli air attack on an alleged Hezbollah convoy. There have also been assassinations—above all of the former Finance Minister and leading moderate, and a personal friend, Mohammed Chatah, whose death by murder on 27 December last year I mourn.

Hezbollah, deemed by many to be the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world, was born during the 1980s Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and played a considerable role in prompting the eventual withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon. Its focus now is elsewhere: fighting fellow Arabs and fellow Muslims in Syria, who have dared to challenge Assad’s regime. That action, strongly supported by Iran, has left an Arab world dangerously divided between Sunni and Shia, which will take many years to heal. I hope that, in their necessary dialogue with Iran on the critical nuclear file, the Government and our colleagues in the P5, as well as Germany, are taking issue with President Rouhani and warning of the dangerous course that his Government’s allies are following in the Arab world. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness could clarify that.

I take this opportunity to welcome the two rounds of talks held in Montreux and Geneva under the able chairmanship of the veteran UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi. Of course it is disappointing that more was not achieved, but we should take some comfort from the fact that the talks did not break down and that no party walked out. Moreover, between the first and second rounds in Geneva, the head of the Syrian National Council delegation, Ahmad Jarba, visited Moscow, where he was received by the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov. This was certainly not welcomed in Damascus. Russia is now in the unique position of being the only P5 member with relations with both sides of the conflict in Syria.

The next important development was the adoption, which I warmly welcome, of Security Council Resolution 2139 last Saturday by unanimous approval of the Security Council. The resolution called on all parties,

“in particular the Syrian authorities”,

to allow unhindered humanitarian access for the UN. It also strongly condemned the use of barrel bombs, which, of course, are used by only one side to the conflict. In the light of this resolution, which offers some hope, I call on the Government to redouble their efforts with the Russians and the Chinese to find a negotiated end to this conflict. There has, I believe, been a subtle change in the position of the Russian Federation.

Diplomatic efforts need to be intensified. I believe that it was foolish in the extreme that the Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, seemingly had to withdraw his invitation to Iran to participate in the Geneva peace talks. If there is to be a negotiated settlement, diplomacy has to be inclusive, not exclusive. I have always believed that the model in this regard was the hawkish and viscerally anti-communist Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. In 1954 in Geneva, he was appalled at the prospect of shaking hands with the Chinese statesman and Foreign Minister, Chou En-Lai. In colourful language not appropriate in your Lordships’ House, he refused to do that. The point is that Dulles sat in the same room with representatives of a Government that the US had been fighting for the previous three years in Korea. If Dulles could do that half a century ago, the West should have been able to do so a few weeks ago in Iran.

This war has seen appalling acts of violence, cruelty and brutality that, in many cases, almost certainly amount to war crimes. Before Syria, it had become accepted that the international community would not tolerate such crimes. In the Balkans, we saw the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. I myself testified against former President Slobodan Milosevic, as well as the commander of the Yugoslav army, General Perisic. A special tribunal was formed for Sierra Leone, which has seen Charles Taylor indicted and tried. Above all, there has been the formation of the International Criminal Court, which has seen, among others, President al-Bashir of Sudan indicted.

It cannot be that Arabs and the Syrian people are less deserving of justice. As a P5 member we have a duty towards them. I would welcome any thoughts that the noble Baroness might have of government thinking in this regard. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which this Government and their predecessor have strongly supported, is now conducting a trial, in the absence of the accused, of the suspected killers of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and others in 2005. I ask the noble Baroness whether any thought has been given to extending the mandate of that court to look at the murder of Mohammed Chatah, who was killed in an almost identical fashion, by a massive car bomb, only a few streets away from the 2005 killing.

In Syria, we have few good choices. Absent a willingness by the Obama Administration to take a more forceful stance—for example, a no-fly zone, which had an impact in Bosnia—a negotiated settlement is the only option. We cannot do less for the Syrian people and we must do more to intensify our efforts.

Syria and the Middle East

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan]

My Lords, I welcome the debate. It has been an extraordinary period in the history of the Middle East and this weekend was no exception, with huge demonstrations in Cairo pressing for a more inclusive Government less dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and seeming progress in the Middle East peace process following talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine. We must hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu will respond positively in the coming days.

At the heart of the matter is the civil war in Syria, which threatens the fate not only of that nation but of the whole region. After more than two years of war and 100,000 dead, we are no nearer a solution. Despite the Prime Minister’s brave efforts at the Lough Erne G8 summit last month, all that could be achieved was a reaffirmation of the conclusions already reached in Moscow in the talks between Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov in May. As things stand there seems little hope of progress until the UN General Assembly meets in the third week of September in New York.

To say the least, a more urgent diplomacy is needed, one that seeks an agreement on an immediate ceasefire, the deployment of UN observers, unimpeded access for the international humanitarian agencies and elections in the next six months, supervised by the United Nations. These are the elements that the international community should try to come together on. As the gaps between the P5 seem so substantial, the Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, must assume the responsibility of seeking to make progress towards an agreement for the sake of the Syrian people and for the region, including engaging with the new Iranian Government, to be led by President Rouhani, who by the way was responsible for the only decisive freezing of Uranium refinement in 2003.

Wars can be won only in two ways: either through the victory of one party over the other or by a negotiated settlement. In the case of Syria, the former is neither desirable nor probable at this stage. I believe it was the great German statesman Otto von Bismarck who said that making peace was like making sausages; you do not want to look too closely at the ingredients.

There are some who reject any contact, let alone a potential agreement, with the Assad regime. Hateful and vicious as that regime is in many ways, there is no alternative. I remind the House that in the 1990s in Bosnia, peace came through the Dayton agreement, and that we negotiated with Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic. A few years later, we did so again with Milosevic over Kosovo. In the first UN mission in which I served, in Cambodia, the UN implemented the Paris peace agreement of 1991, agreed by the Security Council, which recognised the Khmer Rouge as a key party in the country’s future. Absent meaningful western military intervention, which we are ill fitted for after Iraq and Afghanistan, a negotiated settlement is the only way forward in Syria.

Despite temporary victories such as that at al-Qusair, President Assad cannot win back or reverse the erosion of his domestic and regional legitimacy. However, this cannot mean that his Government should not be a party to the talks that will eventually define the future state of a truly representative Syrian Government. Like it or not, his army remains the dominant military force. Moreover, it still has substantial domestic support.

The opposition, sadly, has lacked political and military coherence. Even if supplied with any amount of arms, it will not overcome these shortcomings. With notable exceptions such as George Sabra and the veteran dissident Michel Kilo, it is drawn almost wholly from the majority Sunni community. Not only the Alawite community but Christians, Druze and Kurds have not been drawn in any substantial numbers into the opposition.

I turn to Lebanon, where I served between 2008 and 2011 as UN special representative. Lebanon is the country most affected by the Syrian contagion, and one of its major political forces, Hezbollah—probably the most heavily armed non-state actor in the world—is substantially and overtly a party to the Syrian civil war. That reckless action cannot but have profound consequences for Lebanon and for the sectarian divisions that are now so raw throughout the Middle East. In Egypt only last week we saw the brutal lynching of four Shia villagers in a hamlet on the outskirts of Cairo.

What of the Lebanon? Sadly, the country is now an integral part of the geography of the Syrian civil war. The authority of its Government and institutions, never historically robust, has been undermined by the civil war in Syria. Hezbollah’s increasing involvement has inevitably raised sectarian tensions in Lebanon. This is seen most clearly in the second city of Tripoli, where the country’s only Alawite community has been involved in clashes with its Sunni neighbours, which have claimed tens of deaths over the past months. Even more serious were the clashes the weekend before last in the city of Saida between the army and an Islamist group, which claimed 35 lives.

I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to keep a close eye on the travel advisory for Lebanon. There are few exits from the country. In the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, most British and other foreign nationals were evacuated along the international highway to Damascus. Clearly, that option is no longer open. The one airport in Beirut is close to the Hezbollah suburb of Dahiyeh and is easily closed with one telephone call from Hezbollah. I am concerned that Lebanon could—I pray it will not—descend into widespread civil strife in a matter of hours.

Burma

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan]

My Lords, I, too, welcome this debate and commend the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating it and also for his long-standing interest in human rights in Burma. I first visited Burma in 1988, a few months after the suppression of the student revolt, which left many thousands of students killed. Brave students—braver than me—whom I met faced subsequent harassment and in many cases imprisonment. I worked then for Amnesty International.

I have visited Burma many times since, most recently in 2008, following Cyclone Nargis, which ravished the country and claimed more than 140,000 lives. Terrible though that tragedy was, it may well have been a turning point in modern Burmese history, forcing a reluctant and harsh regime to recognise that it could not cope with the scale of the disaster.

When I last visited, 12 months ago, I found a county much changed, despite the continuing human rights violations that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others have addressed this evening. That transformation is, I believe, the most significant in South East Asia since the ousting of President Suharto of Indonesia in 1998. Over the past 18 months, we have seen significant progress, although it remains one of the poorest countries in the region and one with a human rights record which, to say the least, needs to be addressed and improved greatly. There has been dialogue between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein. The sweeping victories of the opposition National League for Democracy in by-elections last April were described by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as,

“a dramatic demonstration of popular will”.

Two weeks ago, in the White House, President Obama received President Thein Sein. As President Obama recognised, the scale of the challenge facing Burma, in a difficult transition to more representative governance, is enormous. The country and its Government need all the international assistance, as well as pressure, that they can receive.

I commend our Government for the support that they have given to Myanmar and its people. In that regard, I believe that Prime Minister Cameron’s visit in 2012 was critically important and I wonder whether the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, has any news of a return visit by President Thein Sein, when many of the issues that have been brought up here this evening could be addressed. I commend the Government for what they are doing; in particular, DfID’s support in assisting the process of ethnic reconciliation. Can the noble Baroness also say more in that regard? I believe that the UK can, and should, play an important role and am especially pleased by the current visit of the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir David Richards. I hope that that visit will lead soon to the appointment of a British military attaché in Yangon. Any news on that would be welcome. The Burmese Government have agreed to many ceasefires—or, more appropriately, cessation of hostilities—over the years but they lack the will and the capability to transform those tenuous agreements into lasting political accords.

Several days ago, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned, the Government and the Kachin Independence Organisation agreed a seven-point peace pact. For the first time, in a striking development, the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy, Mr Vijay Nambiar, was present during that meeting. I hope that that is perhaps an indication of a greater involvement by the UN in helping Burma in this difficult task of ethnic reconciliation. The most difficult aspect of that at the moment, as has been rightly addressed, is the situation affecting the Muslim population of Rakhine state. The UK must follow that situation closely, and guard against further substantial breaches of human rights, but I believe that, equally and at the same time, we must tread a difficult path and support Burma’s leadership —Aung San Suu Kyi and President Thein Sein—in the very difficult path along which they are trying to advance their country.

Palestine: United Nations General Assembly Resolution

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. I declare an interest as a former British official in the Middle East and as a UN Under-Secretary-General in that region. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, referred earlier to the great Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, who once noted that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Now the boot is on the other foot. The Israeli Government have elevated a significant diplomatic setback in the UN—one in which it was supported by only one out of the 27 members of the EU—into a significant regional and international crisis. I fear that the hard-line stance of the current Government is resulting in a haemorrhaging of support for Israel itself. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, referred to support for the resolution from Islamist and third world countries. The fact is that all the democracies of the world, with three exceptions—the United States, Canada and the Czech Republic—voted against Israel or abstained. That in itself is a stunning development in the history of diplomacy in the Middle East, and one that Israel needs to take careful note of. Never has its isolation been so marked.

It says a lot of Israel and of the Israeli press that these developments are followed closely and in a critical way. The newspaper Haaretz this morning is more scathing of the Israeli Government than many of the remarks made by noble Lords. Even the centrist newspaper, the Yedioth Ahronoth, is critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s policies and where they are leading Israel. Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, have referred to the regional element of peace. Where do we stand on that? Israel has peace treaties, of course, with two Arab countries: Egypt and Jordan. Those peace treaties are being sorely tested these days. It is very difficult for a democratically elected President of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, to stand up and argue to his people that this peace treaty is right and must be adhered to. Jordan, wisely guided by King Abdullah, is also suffering great strains, and I fear there is no doubt that the majority of Jordanian public opinion is quite critical of those peace treaties.

We have heard much about Gaza. Where have Israeli policies led there? I will tell you: next week, Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, will enter Gaza, and he will enter as a victor in the eyes of Palestinians. I do not think Abba Eban would recognise Israeli diplomacy today. Israel must rescind the actions announced by its Government in the last 48 hours: namely the declaration of more and more settlements—another 3,000 dwellings—and that planning will begin for settlement in E1, the land block between East Jerusalem and the heart of the West Bank. Everybody knows what that means. It is meant to be the end of the possibility of a Palestinian state. If that were not enough, $120 million—£75 million—of taxes owed to the Palestinian Authority have been seized by the Israeli Government in the past few days. Prime Minister Erdogan—a strong critic of Israel—will also visit Gaza soon. This is not diplomacy, and it is not diplomacy that is serving the state of Israel. Time, in my experience, is running out for a two-state settlement. We would all bitterly regret that and, most of all, it would cause great pain for the state of Israel.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan]

My Lords, I shall confine my remarks to the Middle East, a region where for the past five years I have worked for the United Nations and Her Majesty’s Government.

As the noble Lords, Lord Howell and Lord Wood, and others have remarked today, the crisis in Syria shows no sign of abating. The UN mission led by Kofi Annan, for whom I have great respect, not least because he was my former boss, is clearly in trouble. The number of monitors is still barely above that of the much maligned Arab League mission and, after some early decline, the level of violence is on the rise again. More importantly, the 10 April deadline for removing heavy weaponry and troops from residential areas in their entirety has clearly passed and not been met. Yesterday, President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Russian television and showed no sign of compromise. There is no sign that he will accept the political accommodation necessary and implicit in the Annan plan. Having met the President many times, I regret to say that I do not believe that accommodation is in his DNA.

It is of deep concern that the crisis in Syria is already migrating to neighbouring Lebanon—a dangerously fractious country at the best of times. Some 10 people have died in the northern city of Tripoli in the past few days in clashes between the minority Alawite and majority Sunni communities. The leader of the Alawite community, Rifaat Eid, one of the less attractive Lebanese politicians of my acquaintance, is quoted in the Lebanese press this morning as saying that,

“calm in Lebanon can only be restored through the intervention of an Arab army … No one is capable of doing”,

this “except the Syrian army”. One of the greatest achievements of the UN was the 2005 withdrawal of that army after a 30-year presence. I regret that it is again time to look at other diplomatic options. I hope that this can be done at the Chicago NATO summit and the Camp David summit next week. Above all, Russia and China need to be cautioned that their continuing support for the Assad regime is as useless and short-lived as the support that they rendered to President Milosevic of Serbia in the late 1990s.

I was pleased that the Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, recently received the beleaguered Lebanese Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, who needs our strong support in these difficult days. We also need, with our partners, to make it absolutely clear that the international community will not accept any Syrian interference let alone intervention in Lebanon. As the trial of General Ratko Mladic has just started in the Hague and that of Charles Taylor is just ending, we need also to remember our commitments with regard to the established international norm of the responsibility to protect.

It is more than 30 years since the Israeli/Egyptian peace treaty of 1979, 10 years since the creation of the quartet which brings together the US, EU, Russia and UN and almost five years since the former Prime Minister, Mr Blair, assumed the post of quartet envoy. It is difficult to imagine a more powerful body on paper than the quartet but, having sat through many quartet meetings, I can think of no time in the past 20 years when the situation was more difficult if not bleak. It was not always thus. I take this opportunity to regret the withdrawal from politics of former Israeli Foreign Minister and Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, who tried under the last Government to advance the cause of peace. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surprised his own people with a political coup of great consequence in forming a coalition with the Kadima party now led by Shaul Mofaz. This gives Mr Netanyahu unparalleled political strength that no Labor Administration has had not for years but for decades. We must all hope that he uses this strength to accept and advance the two-state peace process.

The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, spoke eloquently earlier of the conditions of the Palestinian people— conditions I can confirm, having lived and worked there. I also believe that peace is vital for Israel itself. The progress of the Arab spring has highlighted Israel’s isolation in the Middle East. Governments once close to it, such as the Egyptian Government of President Mubarak, have toppled. Few Arab Governments now can speak openly in favour of Israel. It is time to see the peace process between Israel and Palestine advance again.

Middle East

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Friday 16th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan]

My Lords, I strongly welcome this debate, initiated by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I should declare an interest, as I was until last October a UN under-secretary-general in the Middle East and based in Beirut, from where I was able to witness the extraordinary political tumult we now call the Arab awakening, sweeping the region from the Maghreb to the Gulf. It is a wave of democratic fervour akin to that which swept eastern Europe in 1989. Lest we forget, that struggle for democracy also faced many difficulties—in Romania but, above all, in the former Yugoslavia.

In the Arab world, repressive regimes that failed to heed the voice of their peoples have fallen in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, whose rulers had governed between them for more than 120 years. The path ahead may be difficult, but the demonstrators in Tahrir Square have, I believe, captured the mood of the Arab peoples. That spirit is now strongest in Syria, the eye of the storm. The outcome of the struggle for freedom there may well determine the future of the Middle East.

I welcome the appointment, albeit late in the day, by the Secretary-General of his predecessor Kofi Annan as the joint envoy of the Arab League and the United Nations. Having accompanied Mr Annan and Ban Ki-Moon in many meetings in the past with President Assad, I know how difficult that task will be. President Assad is not likely to go gently into the night. Mr Annan’s endeavours are focused on securing a ceasefire, which is unlikely to be straightforward. We must be conscious, too, that like Bosnia, where I also served, this is not a level playing-field; the stronger side may ruthlessly exploit its position. In that respect, Assad is not far behind Milosevic.

In the absence of political progress, ceasefires are all too likely to break down. But I believe that even before a ceasefire, which I fear is some way off, it is of paramount importance that the Red Cross, the ICRC and the United Nations should have unfettered humanitarian access, and that this needs to be the demand of the civilised world. I believe, too, that the impasse in the Security Council needs to be broken, if necessary through an international conference, perhaps in Geneva, bringing together the P5, Germany, Turkey and the countries of the Arab League to chart a map of the road ahead. The Dayton conference in 1995 followed many years of conflict in Bosnia, and we cannot allow that to happen in Syria. I urge the Government to think of these possibilities and not to rule out an appeal to the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace resolution, which has been used in the past on issues where the Security Council was deadlocked. I join others in bearing in mind that awful crimes are almost certainly being committed in Syria; the relevance of the International Criminal Court should not be lost sight of in that regard.

The demise of the Assad regime could be a strategic game-changer in the Middle East. At one stroke, Iran would be deprived of its Arab ally and simultaneously the link between the revolutionary guards in Tehran and the Lebanese Hezbollah would be, if not severed, seriously eroded.

In Israel, the focus has been on the Iranian nuclear challenge and too often now, as in the past, political opportunities have been lost. Israel has long prided itself, rightly, on its vibrant democracy, but it has looked at the democratic surge in the Arab region with fear and a lack of empathy. Did it really expect the 84 year-old Hosni Mubarak to be succeeded by his son Gamal in the same way that Bashar al-Assad followed in the footsteps of his father Hafez? If so, it was a seriously flawed reading of the Egyptian political mood.

Some months ago I was in Madrid to participate in a seminar commemorating the famous conference of 1991, which did so much in its time to spur a peace settlement. In its wake came the Oslo accords of 1994. Later came the efforts of President Clinton, culminating in the 2000 Taba agreement. In 2007, President George W Bush convened the Annapolis conference. In the subsequent five years, I regret to say that there has been no serious momentum to settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It worries me that Israel may not in the future have such moderate interlocutors as President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. My former UN colleague the Dutch diplomat Robert Serry told the UN Security Council on 21 November last:

“Without a credible path forward … the viability of the Palestinian Authority … and … of the two-State solution … cannot be taken for granted”.

We are perilously close to that possibility, and it is the duty of the friends of Israel to sound the alarm.

This is a time of great hopes in the Middle East, but also of considerable fears. Unless the Syrian problem can be addressed, and addressed soon, it will migrate and one of its first victims could be Lebanon. Many references have been made in this Chamber to the complexity of Syria; that is of nothing compared with the complexity of Lebanon, whose constitution of 1943 recognises, if I remember correctly, at least 18 faiths. In Lebanon now, there is an awful fear of the future. Many believe that it may only be a matter of time before the conflict in Syria moves across the Lebanese borders.