United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an issue of real concern, on which we keep a very sharp focus. After Gaddafi supposedly came in from the cold, there was an agreement for him to give up weapons of mass destruction. He destroyed some of them, but he still has the supplies to which my hon. Friend refers. We have to make sure that there is absolutely no sign of their being used.

In terms of what happens politically and diplomatically, what is crucial is that the future of Libya is for the people of Libya to decide, aided by the international community. The Libyan opposition has made it clear that it does not want to see a division of its country, and neither do we. It has also expressed a clear and overwhelming wish for Gaddafi to go, and we agree with that too, but the UN resolution is limited in its scope. It explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi’s removal from power by military means. As I have said, we will help to fulfil the UN Security Council’s resolution. It is for the Libyan people to determine their Government and their destiny, but our view is clear: there is no decent future for Libya with Colonel Gaddafi remaining in power.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

On a wider point, it is a change in philosophy on the part of the UN and the international community not to tolerate those involved in the internal repression of their own populations. What is going to happen to leaders in other countries round the world who are indulging in Gaddafi-style behaviour?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and that is why UN Security Council resolution 1973 could be something of a breakthrough. The world has come together and said that what this dictator is doing to his people—within his own country, but totally in breach of international law and all sign of human rights—is wrong and can be stopped by all necessary means. In the act of stopping him, let us hope that that sends a message to dictators the world over.

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[Edward Miliband]

I am not sure that the Prime Minister and I are competing to call it the Blair doctrine. On the substantive question that my hon. Friend raises, he is right to say that we need criteria. I think that the responsibility to protect is of great assistance to us there. I think that it has been overlooked at times during our debates. It is endorsed by the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the passing of UN Security Council resolution 1973 represents a watershed moment, as the Prime Minister seemed to intimate, because of the way in which the international community now looks at the behaviour of Governments repressing the citizens of their own countries?

[Edward Miliband]

I think it is too early to declare it a watershed moment, but the hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that those who desire a world order based on principle as well as on power should support the resolution and the motion before us today. Whatever the flaws of multilateralism and the UN—and there are many—they are our best hope for the kind of world order based on principle that we want to see. If we can demonstrate that the international community has come together in the case of Libya to prevent Colonel Gaddafi’s action against his people, this will mark an important moment. We will have acted on the basis of a firm legal base.

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[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. I do not know the politics, aims, ambitions or anything else of the people in Benghazi any more than I suspect he does. We should be cautious about going to war on behalf of a group of people whom we do not know or understand and of whose aims we are not aware. Many were Ministers in the Gaddafi Government, again, only three weeks ago. It is a very short time.

There is a danger that we do nothing about Bahrain because of close economic and military involvement, despite the US fifth fleet being there. There is a danger that we say nothing about Saudi Arabia because of the vast arms market there. The former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, felt that Saudi Arabia was so important that he stopped the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the al-Yamamah arms contract. In Yemen and Oman, people are dying. They thirst for exactly the same thing. I was at a conference this morning of Bahraini opposition groups who made strong points. They said that they were not campaigning about human rights in Bahrain yesterday, but last year, the year before, the year before that and so on. Indeed, I first met Bahraini opposition groups who were concerned about the overwhelming power of the king in 1986 at a UN human rights conference in Copenhagen.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that action in Libya now helps the case for action in the countries that he mentioned later?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I do not believe that it does, because the economic interests in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain far outweigh any humanitarian concerns. I simply do not believe that it will happen.

However, we must use the opportunity to reassess our foreign policy, our arms sales policy and the way in which we get into bed with dictator after dictator around the world. We should also think for a moment about the message that goes out on the streets throughout north Africa and the middle east.

When Israeli planes bombed Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, I did not hear any calls for a no-fly zone over Gaza. F-16 jets pounded Palestinians, killing 1,500 civilians. We have to understand the bitterness of that period and the experience of the Palestinian people because many in the Palestinian diaspora, living out their lives in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt—all over the region—want the right to return home. They see the double standards of the west: interested in supporting Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people; currently intervening in Libya but doing nothing to support the Palestinian people.

We are in an interesting period in history. There was an Arab revolution in the 1950s, supporting the principle of pan-Arab unity. Nasser was one of its leading figures. That degenerated into a series of fairly corrupt dictatorships that still run the Arab League. None feels very secure when they attend Arab League meetings. Indeed, they go home as quickly as possible afterwards, lest there be a coup.

We are seeing a popular revolution for accountable government, peace and democracy on the streets throughout the region. We have been on the wrong side in selling arms and supporting dictators. We have not thought through the implications of what we are doing now in Libya. I suspect that we might end up in a Libyan civil war for a long time and that this is not the only occasion on which we will debate the subject in the House. This is the easy bit; the hard part is yet to come.