Gaza Flotilla

Anas Sarwar Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Again, my hon. Friend adds to a strength of feeling and to points made that will be widely noticed and, I hope, taken note of in Israel itself.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary has quite rightly said that we need a credible and independent inquiry. This was an illegal act in international waters, involving citizens from many countries throughout the world. Surely the only way in which we can have a credible and independent inquiry is if it is an international, credible inquiry. Does the Foreign Secretary support that? If not, why not?

[Mr Hague]

We shall see about that. The hon. Gentleman may be right in the end, but, in answering his right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband), I referred to the fact that Israel has previously held inquiries—into some of the events in Lebanon in the 1980s and into the Lebanon war in 2006—that certainly were independent and credible by international standards, and that meted out considerable and, sometimes, severe criticism to the authorities in Israel. It is possible for them to do that. Today I have made the additional case that such an inquiry and investigation should have an international presence and, therefore, be not just an Israeli inquiry. But I have also not excluded this Government from advocating the sort of inquiry that the hon. Gentleman would prefer to see, if no other action is taken in the meantime.