Exports

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

In terms of procurement rules—and I will talk in relation to exports, as procurement within the UK will be a different matter—we absolutely look at human rights, and discuss the subject regularly with many of the NGOs involved. We look at the relevant UN guidelines, and we will of course look to and abide by the appropriate and relevant guidelines from the UN. Government procurement is another matter and perhaps should be left for a different question.

[Lord Wright of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that it is wrong to talk about encouraging businesses to export without drawing attention to the worldwide resource provided by the Diplomatic Service? It is very anxious to do everything it can to help both businesses and chambers of commerce wherever they want that help.

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

That is an excellent point. I commend the ambassadorial network; I have seen its work both as a Minister and as an exporter. Its enthusiasm and positivity to assist the UK in increasing exports is to be commended. In fact, the work of the FCO and its focus on our export efforts has been excellent. We will continue to work very closely; of course, as a Minister I am part of FCO as well as being part of BIS, and that reflects the important role that the Foreign Office has in exports.

Syria: Humanitarian Aid

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to re-establish direct contact with the Government of Syria in order to facilitate secure access to the humanitarian agencies throughout Syria.

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, the UK is working with our international partners, including in the UN Security Council, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Friends of Syria core group, to ensure full implementation of the UN Security Council presidential statement of 2 October to allow free and unfettered access for the delivery of aid to all Syrians. As stated by the UN, the primary onus is on the Syrian regime to comply with these measures, and we are actively engaging with Russia to reinforce this message to the regime.

[Lord Wright of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, I hope that the Minister accepts that my call on the Government to resume contact with the Government in Damascus in no way means that I condone the appalling things that have happened in Syria on all sides—any more than I condone the many other breaches of human rights named by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, during his astonishing debate on 21 November. Does the Minister accept that nearly all the Governments named by the noble Lord enjoy diplomatic contact with Her Majesty’s Government, and that with one of them, Iran, we have recently resumed diplomatic relations? Given that the Syrian Government appear to have restored their authority over most parts of Syria in recent weeks, is it not time to resume our diplomatic presence in Damascus, both for the reasons mentioned in my Question, and to perform the necessary consular functions to protect the remaining British community?

[Baroness Warsi]

I of course hear the point that the noble Lord makes. There has been some limited contact in relation to consular matters. We have not formally broken all diplomatic ties with the Syrian regime. It has withdrawn its people from the embassy here, and we have done the same in relation to our people in Syria. We have maintained some contact via other embassies that still have personnel within Syria. We have felt that, in terms of progress on humanitarian work and in relation to the chemical weapons work that is going on, the UN is the right body through which to engage. That is the process that we have been adopting.

Syria

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The right reverend Prelate may be aware that the Geneva communiqué was for the first time adapted and supported by the UN Security Council as part of this resolution. That effectively means that the opposition and the regime have committed to being part of the Geneva II process. Which other states are part of that process depends very much on what they would be prepared to endorse, and whether they would be prepared to agree to the Geneva communiqué. At this stage, Iran has not done that.

[Lord Wright of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House who the Government expect to be the single representative of the Syrian opposition at Geneva II, given the deep divide between the so-called Syrian national coalition and the increasing number of jihadist groups that are said to include at least 10,000 foreign fighters, including, sadly, some from this country?

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord is right that the make-up of the opposition is incredibly complex. We have been working with the national coalition, which has now been recognised as the voice for the opposition by a large number of member states—most of our allies, including most of the Arab world and the Arab League. Therefore, it is the national coalition that we are working with and which we expect will represent the opposition at the Geneva II process.

Syria and the Middle East

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, in the light of many of the interventions made in the House today, including the very powerful arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown, I hope that the Minister can assure us that the Government will now urgently reconsider whether it is right, sensible, necessary, safe or effective to supply lethal arms to the Syrian opposition. I have seen, as presumably the Government have also, conclusive evidence that arms supplied to the Free Syrian Army by Saudi Arabia have ended up in the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, closely allied as it is with al-Qaeda. It is evidence that must call into question the noble Baroness’s claim, in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, last week, that the Government have been,

“incredibly cautious about ensuring that”—

any—

“equipment … does not get into the hands of extremists”.—[Official Report, 27/06/13; col. 858.]

The Minister has told us again today that no decision has been made to send weapons to the Syrian opposition. However, a recent meeting in Doha, at which HMG were represented, is reported to have agreed to provide urgently,

“all necessary material and equipment”,

to the Syrian rebels. The Minister has argued that one purpose of arming the rebels would be to put pressure on President Assad to come to the negotiating table. However, President Assad has told his Russian allies that he is ready to negotiate. We may not believe him but he has said that. As far as I know, no single element of the Syrian opposition has agreed to negotiate.

It is an oversimplification to describe this conflict, as I have often, as a Sunni-Shia or Arab-Iranian war. In fact, it started as an uprising, mainly by the majority Sunni population, against a brutal regime dominated by the minority Alawite sect, of which Bashar al-Assad is a member, and exacerbated—this is not often mentioned—by widespread deprivation in Syria caused by five years of drought. It has now become a regional conflict between Sunni and Shia forces, backed on the one side by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and on the other by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. The escalation of this proxy war, increasingly involving non-Syrian fighters on both sides, is a threat to the whole region and beyond. It is not a conflict in which Britain has a direct stake. What we do have is an interest in working energetically—as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has argued—for peace in an unstable area.

HMG are not alone in having consistently underestimated the extent to which President Assad and his Government can survive this externally fuelled onslaught. The military strength that Bashar al-Assad inherited from his father has also been underestimated. Of perhaps equal importance, so has the degree of support which the regime still enjoys from Syrian minorities and, indeed, from a significant proportion of the Sunni business community. The Prime Minister has claimed that we are trying to help form a transitional Government in Damascus which will respect the rights of Christians and other minorities in Syria. Perhaps I may remind the House of a book by William Dalrymple called From the Holy Mountain, in which he concluded that Christians in Syria in the late 1990s enjoyed greater freedom of worship and absence of discrimination than any other Christian community in the Middle East. We should not underestimate the very real fear of Christians in Syria, now much diminished in number but which until recently included a large number of Syrian exiles from Iraq, of any likely successor Government in Damascus. The same fear must be shared by the Druze and other minorities, including the very small Jewish and Yazidi communities. I am reminded of the couplet by Hilaire Belloc:

“always keep a-hold of Nurse

For fear of finding something worse”.

There has been regular, and sometimes strident, criticism of the Russians’ support for President Assad and his Government, both in the Security Council and over their supply of weapons for the Syrian armed forces. However, we should remember that the Russians are scared, as they should be, of the impact which a fundamentalist Sunni Government in Damascus would have on Russia’s own Muslim communities in Chechnya and elsewhere in central Asia, and indeed on the large Russian and Orthodox community in Syria. As the Russian Foreign Minister put it in an interview on 20 June:

“We need to [preserve Syria’s] territorial integrity, sovereignty, multi-ethnicity and multi-religious nature”.

We should also bear in mind the long strategic relationship which Russia has had with President Bashar al-Assad and his father. In the latter case, as I remember well, the Soviet Union had long had a treaty of friendship, dating back to the 1970s.

I would argue that the time has come urgently to reconsider our support for, and recognition of, a deeply divided and dysfunctional Syrian opposition, closely allied with Islamic terrorist movements. I believe that we should now try, with our European and American partners, to resume contact with what I have previously described in this House—I do not expect my noble friend and former colleague Lord Hannay to agree—as the legitimate Government in Damascus.

At its meeting on 22 June, the Friends of Syria Core Group, in which the Foreign Secretary took part, said that it,

“supported reaching a political solution … and affirmed their prior commitments … in favour of negotiations”.

I hope that the Minister can assure us that the Government still support the efforts of Ambassador Brahimi and will concentrate now on encouraging and supporting attempts by the Russians and the Americans to convene an international conference at which some end can be negotiated to this tragic and appalling conflict.

Whatever its effectiveness on the political track, we must also hope that a conference can help to raise desperately needed assistance for the refugees on a much more sustained and monitored basis. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s assessment of the current prospects for such a conference. I hope that we can also use our diplomacy to persuade our friends in the Gulf to think likewise, since it is they who will be more influential than any of us in dictating what happens in Syria in the coming months.

Gaza

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I hear what the noble Lord says but I think that he would agree that nothing in the Middle East peace process can be resolved by one group alone or by addressing only one issue, and that nothing there is simple.

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, have the Government taken note of the statement yesterday made by a Minister in Mr Netanyahu’s Government calling on Israel to annex as soon as possible all the territories not handed over to the Palestinian Authority in Oslo, and also describing the two-state solution as dead? How do Her Majesty’s Government propose to react to that?

[Baroness Warsi]

Her Majesty’s Government’s position on this matter is very clear. We of course continue to support a negotiated settlement, leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, with Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states and a just, fair and agreed settlement for refugees. That is HMG’s position.

Syria

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, I will address the first of the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Wood, and I will be as brief as possible.

Has the Minister read a very pertinent article in the latest issue of the Spectator, by my former colleague, Sir Andrew Green? He is probably better known to your Lordships as head of Migration Watch, but in this case he is speaking as a former ambassador to Syria, like me. Will the Minister please draw that article urgently to the attention of her right honourable friends before they take any decision? I note that the Statement says that no decision has yet been taken to supply arms to the rebels. The article’s headline is:

“Arm Syria’s rebels? That would be pouring petrol on a fire”,

and I beg the Government not to do that.

[Baroness Warsi]

I have not read that article, but I will make sure that I do and that it is brought to the attention of my colleagues. It is important that a wide range of views is fed into the debate when these decisions are made. I absolutely accept the noble Lord’s concerns about pouring petrol on a fire, but I think that he will agree with me that doing nothing is not an option.

Syria

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I do not have any information about the specific bilateral discussions we are having in relation to this particular incident. However, I can assure the noble Baroness that we are having constant discussions with the Russians in relation to the situation in Syria. These matters are now arising because we are failing to deal with the crisis in the region. We must deal with the issue of Syria. We keep taking this back to the United Nations. The Prime Minister has made his views very clear and I have repeated them on many occasions at this Dispatch Box. We are trying to seek agreement at the United Nations to move matters forward. In the mean time, Russia is one party with whom we seek to move further forward.

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, may I revert to the question of the arms embargo on Syria? Is the Minister aware that it was reported on the news this morning that the Foreign Secretary, in consultation with the French, would be arguing for the lifting of that arms embargo? Does the noble Baroness not agree that that would be a very serious escalation in our involvement in what is frequently described as a Sunni/Shia war, and that we ought to be very careful before getting involved with a group of very nasty people indeed in Syria who are aiming—as apparently we are—to remove the legitimate and secular Government of Syria?

[Baroness Warsi]

Where I disagree with the noble Lord is that I would not describe the current regime in Syria as one that is legitimate and represents the views of the Syrian people. I can assure him that no decision has been taken by the Government to change the nature of our assistance to the national coalition. We understand absolutely the concerns he has raised in relation to further arms. Our purpose in putting forward the amendment to the arms embargo is to create the space for and increase the chances of a political settlement. It is not to exacerbate the militarisation of the conflict which is already happening.

Syria

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating this Statement, which raises a large number of very serious issues. I will limit myself to three brief questions.

First, I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s assurance that we are activiely supporting the efforts of Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. However, will the Minister accept that our recognition of the Syrian national coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people not only amounts to a virtual declaration of war against President Assad’s Government but seriously undermines the already difficult mission which Lakhdar Brahimi is trying to carry out at the request of the United Nations and the Arab League?

Secondly, I am glad to learn that we are the second largest bilateral donor to United Nations relief efforts in Syria. However, does the Minister accept that giving massive assistance—the Statement mentions over £7 million—to a Syrian opposition, of which one of the most effective and murderous elements is the terrorist organisation, al-Nusra, contradicts our alleged efforts to get all parties to stop the violence?

Thirdly, I note that we have given training to more than 300 Syrian journalists. Does the Minister accept that a more balanced and objective assessment of the current civil war in Syria is needed, both of the extent to which President Assad still has the support of a significant part of the Syrian population, and of the extent to which terrorist activities by al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, and other extremist movements have contributed to the distressingly high casualty figures? We may, as the Statement says, have a moral obligation to save lives in Syria, but direct intervention in a Sunni-Shia war, and even the threat of providing military assistance in the future, can only precipitate a further deterioration of this tragic conflict.

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord raises a number of important issues. I understand his concerns in relation to what could be perceived by our recognition of the Syrian national coalition as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people, or the consequences that could flow from that. However, when a regime has inflicted such brutality upon its own people, it is right that we engage with a coalition of those in opposition. I can assure him that al-Nusra is not part of that coalition, and that it is therefore not in receipt of any funding that is being given to the recognised opposition coalition.

With regard to the balance of reporting that is coming out of Syria, it is right that we fund human rights defenders and journalists to take records and keep material for potential future prosecutions. The noble Lord will be aware, as will other noble Lords, that we must not allow a culture of impunity to exist at the end of such crises, and that there must, therefore, be accountability for the actions that took place during that crisis. The noble Lord will also be aware that for access and security reasons, it is very difficult for independent observers to be on the ground in Syria. It is therefore right and appropriate that we fund and support those who are there on the ground to take records.

Syria: Chemical Weapons

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, whatever the origins of the present problems in Syria, does the Minister agree that that country is now involved in a very dangerous civil war between Sunnis and Shias and that it would be disastrous for the British Government to become militarily involved in any way?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, we have always indicated that we must do all that we can to bring the fighting and bloodshed to an end. The noble Lord will be aware from my previous Answers that we have worked closely with the opposition, who have now formed a formal opposition, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, whom we have now formally recognised. We continue to support the opposition in trying to bring this bloodshed to an end.

Syria

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord is quite right to raise these concerns. Although there have been numerous newspaper articles and think tank reports, including those from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to anecdotal reports about the origins of these weapons of mass destruction, we are not aware of any firm and credible evidence to support this suggestion. In any event, UN sanctions on Iraq would not apply to Syria; we do, however, share concerns that Syria has conventional weapons on which chemical weapons could be used.

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, will the noble Baroness give the House an assurance that we are not providing any military assistance at all to the so-called rebels in Syria, which could only complicate the extremely difficult mission of Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi? Secondly, I ask her to assure the House—my Lords, I have forgotten what my question was.