Syria

Douglas Alexander Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement, and for giving me advance sight of it.

On Iran, agreeing the terms of the deal in Geneva back in November was indeed an important first step, but the real test remains how it is implemented on the ground. Given the past conduct of the Iranian regime, it is now vital that the international community remains vigilant and stringently monitors the implementation of the first stage nuclear agreement in the months ahead.

Turning to Syria, a conflict that began nearly three years ago as an uprising against the Assad regime has since inflamed sectarian fault lines within the country and mutated into a proxy regional conflict, so delivering support to those most affected by the ongoing violence remains urgent and vital. Ahead of this week’s long-awaited second pledging conference in Kuwait, Baroness Amos has already stressed that the conference will need to raise much more than the $1.5 billion raised last year if it is to meet the scale of the humanitarian need.

The Opposition of course welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement that the UK Government have now allocated or delivered all our funding promises, but earlier today the Secretary of State for International Development confirmed that contributions from others have so far fallen well short. Will he therefore tell the House what action the Government are taking to encourage other nations to meet their obligations on past pledges, before further pledges are made in the coming days? We also welcome the Foreign Secretary’s efforts, along with the Friends of Syria group, to encourage the Syrian National Coalition to commit to attending the Geneva talks.

In the light of experience of such conflicts, such as the 15-year Lebanese civil war, and the apparent intractability of the factions fighting within Syria today, we all recognise the scale of the challenge, of which the Foreign Secretary spoke, involved in securing a full transitional deal in Geneva in the coming days. Yet surely the first goal at Geneva II, between the main international and regional players, could and should be to aim to secure a stop to the escalation and fuelling of the conflict.

That is why the role of Iran in particular may yet be crucial. Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said that Iran would take part in the Geneva II peace conference if invited without preconditions. He added:

“We support any initiative aimed at finding a political solution to the Syrian crisis.”

It is of course right to acknowledge the role that Iran has so far played in deepening and inflaming this conflict. Yet with the need for resolution now so urgent, does the Foreign Secretary agree that Iran’s claimed resolve to be part of the solution should now be tested, and if so, does he agree that one way of doing so is to bring Iran to the table at Geneva to participate in the conference?

A key priority for the international community at that conference must surely be to minimise the problems of overspill across the region by working with allies in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq. Will the Foreign Secretary set out what other steps, beyond humanitarian support, the UK Government are taking to help the Governments of Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon to respond to the growing internal political and economic pressure that the Syrian conflict is placing on them?

The rise of al-Qaeda affiliated groups in Syria, such as those the Foreign Secretary mentioned, is not of course simply a concern for Syria; they form but part of a crescent of crisis that stretches from Iraq to Lebanon. Will the Foreign Secretary set out his assessment of the extent to which British citizens are playing a role in these conflicts, and will he assure the House today that our agencies are sufficiently focused on these deeply troubling developments?

The challenges to be addressed by the Geneva II conference are of course considerable, but the process under way to secure the peaceful destruction of Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile offers us a point of hope amid the death and destruction still being witnessed in the country. The Government will therefore have our support in the coming days in their effort to secure real and substantial progress in Geneva next week towards a political settlement that ends the humanitarian suffering of the Syrian people.

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, including for the strong support across the House for our trying to do everything we can to make a success of the start of the Geneva II process. He is of course absolutely right to say that a beneficial early product of that could be measures that stop the fuelling and escalation of the conflict. That is why I have talked, as have Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov at their press conference today, about the great desirability of local ceasefires and improved access for humanitarian aid even before we all get to Geneva next week. These are of course things that could also be beneficial products of the process.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about the role of Iran. He said correctly that Iran has done quite a bit to deepen and inflame the crisis, including through much direct support for the Assad regime and its brutal treatment of its people. Our position on Iran depends very much on its readiness to work with the outcome of Geneva I. The invitation letter of the UN Secretary-General is clear about the purpose of our invitation to Montreux and then to Geneva, where we will carry on next week, which is to implement the original Geneva communiqué of 30 June 2012. Iran was not present at that conference, but all the other nations are united behind that communiqué. That includes Russia, which was represented there.

That is the basis of Geneva II. It is about bringing about a transitional governing body with full executive authority that is formed by mutual consent. A signal of support for that being our united purpose would be very helpful in getting Iran to Geneva II. There is no problem in principle in any quarter, and certainly not among western nations, with Iran coming, but there is the practical problem of whether it is prepared to play a constructive role if it gets there. We would welcome stronger signals of that from the Iranians.

On the questions about Jordan and Lebanon, a great deal of the help that I have described is humanitarian assistance. In the case of Lebanon, where there has been violence, we use our diplomatic presence in every possible way to help the authorities to calm the situation. We also give direct support to the Lebanese armed forces. We help to finance some of their border posts. I welcome the recently announced support from Saudi Arabia for the Lebanese armed forces. It is providing $3 billion of assistance to build up the Lebanese armed forces. We have assisted Jordan with a good deal of equipment, as well as with the support that I have mentioned.

It is clear that the number of British nationals who have travelled to the region to fight is into the hundreds. We are vigilant about that and all our security agencies are focused on it. It is important to make it clear that we are prepared to act to obstruct people from doing that. The Government have the right and the power to confiscate passports. When people are resident in the UK but are not British nationals, we can cancel their leave to remain in the UK on the basis of such activity. I stress, as I have stressed since April 2011, that we advise against all travel to Syria. We of course advise people against going to fight in Syria, but we advise against all travel to Syria even for those who go there for more laudable motives. We are very limited in what we can do to assist people once they have gone there.

Our work on the destruction of chemical weapons will, of course, continue.