Middle East Peace Process/Syria and Iran

Douglas Alexander Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

May I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and for advance sight of it? I would like to start by welcoming the newly appointed Minister for the middle east, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson). I know that Members on both sides will wish to join me in recognising his significant achievement in helping deliver the London Olympics and I am sure that he will continue to bring the same level of commitment and, indeed, skill to his new role in the Foreign Office.

May I also take a moment to pay tribute to his predecessor, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt)? He is a man whose obvious talent, commitment and decency—qualities that are recognised and appreciated by many in this House—have not gone unnoticed by Members over recent years. He is a very significant loss to the Government and in all my dealings with him on the middle east I admired his skill, intellect and consistently courteous approach.

This month’s United Nations General Assembly was a moment where real progress needed to be made most urgently on the issue of Syria. Of course I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s call for further action on securing free and unfettered humanitarian access in the country and I welcome the Government’s announcement of an additional £100 million in humanitarian aid for Syria. But sadly, despite this significant additional UK contribution, the UN appeal after the UN General Assembly is still only 44 per cent. funded. Can the Foreign Secretary set out what steps the Government will take now to try to help to ensure that other donors turn unfulfilled pledges into cash commitments?

Since that General Assembly meeting last month, the destruction and disabling of missile warheads, aerial bombs and mixing and filling units within Syria has thankfully now begun. In particular, I want to commend the work of the British personnel working as part of the team carrying out this difficult and dangerous work on the ground in Syria.

Given that this is the first time that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been tasked with overseeing the destruction of chemical weapons armoury during a live conflict, can the Foreign Secretary provide any further details about how the mission is likely to proceed in the coming months? In particular can he offer the House any guidance with respect to negotiating access to sites currently within rebel-held areas of Syria?

On the middle east peace process, Secretary Kerry’s efforts to restart the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians deserve both our praise and our support. Delivering the necessary compromises from all sides will surely be a task aided by the active involvement of the United States. Can the Foreign Secretary clarify what role US special envoy Martin Indyk is playing in the substantive negotiations? When I recently met President Abbas, he emphasised the nine-month timeframe for these talks. Will the Foreign Secretary set out what progress would have to be made before March 2014 in order to justify a decision to continue negotiations beyond that allotted timetable?

Let me now turn to the issue of Iran. Back in August, I described the Government’s decision not to send ministerial representation to the inauguration of the new Iranian President as a misjudgment and a missed opportunity. At the start of September, I pressed the Foreign Secretary on the possibility of establishing a Syrian contact group, with Iran as a key member. Later last month, I pressed the Government on whether the Foreign Secretary would look to reopen the British embassy in Tehran as soon as it was practical and safe to do so. The Government appeared to give little consideration to these proposals when I first suggested them.

Today the Foreign Secretary cited his meeting with Foreign Minister Zarif and the letter dispatched by the Prime Minister to President Rouhani. While I welcome these recent decisions, I regret that it took so long for these important steps eventually to be taken. In recent months the Government appear to have misjudged their response to the signals emerging from Tehran, and as a result the UK risks being left behind by the absence of a clear strategy towards Iran. Disagreements not just over Iran’s nuclear ambitions but over domestic and international actions by the Iranian regime are profound, and cannot and should not be overlooked. However, it is vital that Iran continues to be encouraged to play a more constructive role, and the UK Government should be doing more to help to facilitate this change. In the light of this, I welcome today’s announcement of a chargé d’affaires having been appointed, but can the Foreign Secretary assure the House that this is an interim step on the way to establishing full diplomatic relations?

Labour remains of the view that the UK Government should maintain pressure on the Iranian regime to change its approach to nuclear enrichment. However, notwithstanding the decades-long difficulties in the bilateral relationship between Iran and the United States, it has, alas, been the American Administration, and not the British Government, who have better understood the signals and made the decisive advances towards improved relations with Iran. On Iran, it is time for the Government to catch up with our American allies.

[Mr Hague]

On the right hon. Gentleman’s initial questions relating to Syria, I think it will be the view across the House that free and unfettered access is of huge importance. He is right to say that the UN appeal for funds is currently 44% funded. As the House heard from my statement, we have done a great deal to make sure that some of that 44% is in place, and we are making a huge contribution ourselves. Our embassies and the Department for International Development’s ministerial team are engaged in a non-stop effort to build up the contributions from other countries. There is now the commitment to a pledging conference, which we hope will take place in Kuwait in January and which is the major international event to work towards in gathering greater contributions for the future.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s questions about the OPCW and how it will proceed, all the known sites for the holding of chemical weapons in Syria are within regime-held territory. We are not aware of the opposition being in possession of chemical weapons, so of course this work is focused, revealingly, entirely on the regime-held areas. What is meant to happen now, according to the timetable that has been established, is that all sites should have been inspected by the 27th of this month; that the regime’s production and mixing and filling equipment in relation to chemical weapons should be destroyed in the next few weeks, by 1 November; and that the details of how to proceed with eliminating all the material and other equipment will be decided by 15 November, with a view to the whole programme being completed in the first half of next year. It is an immense task, but it is good that the OPCW has arrived in Syria and that at the weekend the destruction began of some of the munitions involved. Of course, we will continue to watch this closely, and that includes, as I say, standing ready to provide further expertise as necessary.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s questions about the peace process, obviously the United States has a central role in this, including the United States special envoy. Many of the meetings—the seven rounds of negotiations so far—have been taking place on a bilateral basis, but it is envisaged that there will be closer American participation in those meetings over the coming weeks.

The ambition is to resolve the issues, including the final status issues, within six to nine months. That is the timetable to which the parties are working. It is too early to respond to the right hon. Gentleman’s question about what happens after March 2014.

On Iran, I hope there are no differences across the House about the direction of policy. The right hon. Gentleman asked us to catch up with other countries, but perhaps it is time for him to catch up with what the Government have actually been doing. I assure him and the House that there is no difference of view or approach between the United States, the United Kingdom and, indeed, other western allies. We are in different positions on diplomatic relations because some European countries still have embassies in Tehran. Their embassies were not overrun as ours was in 2011. By contrast, as is well known, the United States has not been in that situation for a very long time—since 1979. Of course there are differences between different countries, but all of us are trying to encourage the opening up by Iran, which the Iranian Ministers are presenting. There is no lack of attention to that.

It has been a long time since any British Foreign Secretary—we would have to go back to the days of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), as we frequently do on these subjects—had as many discussions in the space of a few days with the Foreign Minister of Iran. It is vital that our work to improve the functioning of our bilateral relations takes place on a step-by-step and reciprocal basis. Recently, even getting unhindered access for locally engaged staff to inspect and check up on our embassy premises has remained a very difficult matter, so the House will understand that building up trust and co-operation will be necessary before it will be possible to open an embassy again. We are, therefore, doing that on a step-by-step, reciprocal basis. I do not believe it would be responsible to approach it in a different way. It has been welcomed so far by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, as evidenced by today’s agreement on appointing a non-resident chargé for both countries. That opens the way to further improvements, as I said in my statement, including a view in the future to the full reopening of both embassies, but that will depend on the mutual building of confidence, good co-operation and trust, which has, of course, been missing in the past.