Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, like many in your Lordships’ House, I did not expect a few weeks ago to be speaking in a debate today on the UK leaving the EU, but that is what we are now doing.

Formally, of course, it is the EU but, for all intents and purposes, there is little difference between the EU and Europe. In that regard we are joining the outsiders: Norway and Iceland, Switzerland, Albania—that country much beloved of Michael Gove—and the rump states of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro. We cannot build our future on relations with this small band of countries. It is abundantly clear that our non-European allies and economic partners, such as the United States and Japan, saw our future within, not without, the EU.

We now have to find our way in an uncertain and even dangerous world with few friends. Even before 23 June, it was clear that the Obama Administration was becoming increasingly critical of the present UK Government. Leaving is a rejection of the other, and a rejection of our long-standing partners in the European Union. In the United States it is often said that leavers are losers. History is full of departures with unforeseen results—among these, the Confederate States, which left the United States in 1860 to be defeated a few years later in a bitter civil war; and the League of Nations, of which the great Woodrow Wilson was one of the architects but whose country, the United States, refused to join, dooming the League of Nations from the start. President de Gaulle took France out of NATO, only to readjust a few years later when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. What sort of outcome is it when it is difficult for the friendliest foreign ministry in the world to find anything positive to say about a retreat from the world which, in itself, directly imperils the union of these isles?

I warn, too, as a former UN Under-Secretary-General, of the threat to our position as a permanent member of the Security Council. We are now the smallest and weakest of that group. Three members—the United States, Russia, and China—are great continental states with economies and populations much larger than ours, which is set to decline even further. Then there is France, which is soon to be the only EU state permanently on the Council. On its own, France will, I believe, increasingly seek to use its position to claim de facto to be the voice of the European Union. There is a real danger that just as our political strength has been depleted and our economic future looks uncertain, our moral authority and influence in the UN will decline.

It was not the Prime Minister of a Middle Eastern autocracy or a Latin American dictatorship but the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte who sadly said of the referendum outcome:

“That country now has collapsed—politically, economically … and you will have years ahead of you to get out of this mess”.

Those are harsh words but they are harsher when they come from one of our closest allies and a fellow member of NATO. They move me to ask the Minister what measures the Government anticipate taking to repair the UK’s reputation and global influence, and how they will counter the perception of UK isolationism, which is now, I believe, widespread.

The situation is complicated even further by the current Conservative Party leadership campaign, as noted by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. It is taking place at a pace that is incomprehensible for any other country. That in the 21st century we are taking a month or more to elect the leader of one of our great democratic parties, and our Prime Minister, is incomprehensible to anyone outside of these isles. We cannot live, especially at this time, without an active Prime Minister. He frankly cannot hide behind the closed doors of No. 10. On the contrary, there is a strong case for him visiting key allies and economic partners such as the United States and Japan, to calm nerves in Washington and Tokyo. This cannot be left for two months. And when I speak of two months, September is the opening of the General Assembly of the UN. Every Head of Government in the world will be present and we cannot be unseated.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, for the House’s information, the Prime Minister is attending the NATO summit this weekend. To suggest that he is not attending the current global summits is inaccurate.

[Lord Williams of Baglan]

I am grateful to the Minister. That is exactly the sort of thing I would like to hear and I hope the Prime Minister can do more in that regard in the coming weeks. We must be conscious, too, of NATO. In these times, when we are set to leave the EU, we must pay it greater attention, and I am glad the Prime Minister will be going to that summit. It is true that the vast majority of NATO members are also in the EU; that is, aside from Norway, Iceland, the US, Canada and Turkey. It is particularly important to make it abundantly clear that though we may—quixotically, as historians are likely to note—be leaving the EU, our commitment to the UN and NATO, and, for that matter, the Commonwealth, is as strong as ever. I call on the Minister to consider an action plan to demonstrate our internationalism at a time when most of the world will be agreeing with the Dutch Prime Minister.

Syria: UK Military Action

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, I should say at the outset that I support the Government’s proposal, albeit with some reluctance, principally because of the continuing absence of a meaningful political and diplomatic strategy worthy of the name and which should accompany military action. That said, three of the permanent members of the Security Council, the US, France and Russia, are already engaged in military action in Syria, which leaves us standing in the unhappy company of China at the moment. Moreover, many of our other key allies, including Australia and Germany, are involved, whereas we are not. I have just returned from a visit to the United States, where the perception of the UK in Congress, the media and academia is one of a declining power, rightly or wrongly. That should not dictate our policy, but it is certainly something we need to heed carefully.

If Parliament decides tonight to support the Government’s motion, I would urge that we pay greater heed to the urgent necessity of developing a meaningful strategy. It is not a strategy to say that Assad must go, but a caricature of one. When I joined the UN in the 1990s, we negotiated with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, who certainly killed far more people than Bashar al-Assad ever will. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, is not in his seat now, but I worked with him in the 1990s. In the Balkans we negotiated with Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, all of them subsequently arraigned before war crimes tribunals in The Hague. As a great German theorist, Clausewitz, taught us many centuries ago, the enemy can only be defeated on the battlefield, or negotiated with. The former is not going to happen in Syria, especially since the Russian intervention on the ground.

I would encourage the Government to be more imaginative in this regard. What we should be saying is that, yes, Assad must go, but there would be no intention of outlawing the ruling Baath party. After all, that was one of the greatest mistakes of the ill-fated Bush Administration invasion of Iraq in 2003. We need to develop a strategy of detaching Baathist rank and file, and the Alawite community that supports it, from Assad. That is a strategy—not simply wishing the man will disappear. We should also be mindful of the fact that Syria has a vice-president, Farouk al-Sharaa, a Sunni by background, who has been under house arrest for several years now. The UN has been denied access to see him. I ask the Minister if he can raise the question of Vice-President Sharaa and access to him with the Russian and Iranian Governments. I also ask the Minister to reflect on our position with regard to the Baath party generally. That would be helpful in developing a meaningful political strategy.

Finally, and most importantly, can the Minister inform us when the Vienna talks will resume? They have not convened since November 2015, and I believe that they are not due to do so until January. Surely that is unacceptable. We have seen terrible terrorist attacks and military counterattacks; we need, above all, to see more diplomacy.

Iraq

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, it was against a background of extraordinary danger and profound crisis in the Middle East that it was heartening to see one important diplomatic breakthrough this week: the meeting in New York on Wednesday in the margins of the UN between Prime Minister David Cameron and President Rouhani of Iran—the first high-level meeting involving heads of government of our two countries since the revolution of 1979, some 35 years ago. The Prime Minister is to be applauded for that initiative. Any enduring solution to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq will be impossible without Iran’s involvement. More urgently, we must explore what assistance Iran can lend in the battle ahead of us with ISIS, and in the long run in finding a solution to Syria’s bitter civil war, now in its fourth year. I should be grateful if the Minister could shed any further light on the Prime Minister’s meeting in New York. We need more diplomacy, not less diplomacy.

The Motion under debate in the other House—preparing for possible military action against ISIS—is certainly one that I can support. However, it specifically does not endorse air strikes in Syria, even though the threat from ISIS ignores national boundaries, and the United States and six Arab countries have already been engaged in military action in both Iraq and Syria for several days. Moreover, it is above all in Syria where ISIS poses the most immediate danger. It was in Syria that a British hostage, as well as two US hostages, were murdered.

Last Saturday, 20 September, some 67,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees fled Syria because of attacks from ISIS—in one day. By Monday, that number had reached 150,000. It is clear then that ISIS is carrying out the same ethnic cleansing in Syria that it undertook earlier in Iraq when it removed Christians and Yazidis from villages where they had been settled for centuries. It is also in Syria that the United States has publicly identified a new terrorist threat, which it has referred to as the Khorasan group. I would welcome a comment from the Minister on that.

In truth of course it is impossible to separate the actions of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. This debate is entitled, “The developments in Iraq”. In truth, it should be, “The developments with regard to ISIS”, wherever ISIS exists. While the actions of Gulf countries in supporting military action are to be commended, it is equally true, as President Obama suggested in his speech in New York on Wednesday, that the funding supporting ISIS needs to be cut off. Ironically, as he hinted, much of that funding is coming from the very same countries now involved in military action. Difficult though it is, they must be encouraged through very active diplomacy by the UK, the US and others to take drastic action if we are to eliminate ISIS.

We also need to recognise that much of the alienation of the Sunnis of Iraq stems from their treatment by the highly sectarian regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. I know that there is now a new Government but I think that Sunni Arabs are keeping a judgment on that Government. In Syria and Iraq, ruthless dictatorships have given way to a new tyranny which does not recognise national borders and which, through its active recruitment among some British Muslims, poses a direct threat to the security of this country. Given that this is unlikely to dissipate in the near future, can the Minister—here I echo the noble Lord, Lord Carlile—indicate where this leaves the Government’s Prevent strategy?

For today, the issue before us is military action with regard to Iraq, but for the future of the Middle East, and indeed our country, we must be looking more and more to diplomatic and political actions which will complement the military action that will be before us.

Ukraine (Shooting Down of MH17) and Gaza

Lord Williams of Baglan Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williams of Baglan (CB)]

My Lords, in the course of a week we have seen two terrible tragedies claiming hundreds of innocent lives. Other noble Lords have suggested that behind both crises, whether in the Middle East or in Ukraine, we need to see a more proactive diplomacy that is not limited to 30-minute telephone conversations or meetings of the EU Council, but one that resembles diplomacy of the past that confronted international crises. In the dark days of the Cold War, high-level western envoys went to Moscow to meet Kruschev or Brezhnev to address the great crises of the day and try to find solutions. We are not doing that in the case of either Ukraine or the Middle East. Of course it is awful that lives been lost in both cases, but we need to find a diplomacy that meets these crises.

In the case of the Middle East, diplomacy has collapsed. Perhaps it is no accident that events in Gaza follow on six weeks after the collapse of the Middle East peace process. We saw the resignation of the American envoy, Martin Indyk, because of the unwillingness of the Government of Prime Minister Netanyahu to come to an agreement with President Abbas. This is the background to this crisis and this Government must join with others in looking for diplomatic ways forward. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Government have avoided political solutions. We must impress on him the need for those.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

For the United Kingdom, my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are engaged in diplomatic talks and processes, and I assure all noble Lords that these will continue and that all our energies will be applied to achieving the kind of resolutions that we think are important for all parts of the world where there is conflict.