Syria

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

This idea has been floated, although I think more in the media than by any of the Governments concerned. It can, of course, be an appealing idea when people are in such distress and suffering so much, but one then has to consider how safe havens would be created and how they would subsequently be policed. We know from experience in the Balkans in the 1990s that safe havens that prove not really to be safe are one of the worst things we can create. The creation of true safe havens inside Syrian territory would, in effect, require military intervention in Syria. That is not authorised by the UN Security Council and would require a massive military operation. The Turkish Foreign Minister was not proposing that, and that was not part of our discussion last week.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

While Assad’s actions are evil and those of the Russians and Chinese are woeful—my right hon. Friend is entirely correct on that—some of us warned during the Libyan intervention that we were in danger of playing into their hands and providing them with an alibi because we did not stick strictly to humanitarian action, such as when we were pursuing Gaddafi in the last hours of his life before he was executed by our allies. We are where we are, however, so where do we go from here? The fact is that the Chinese are impervious to grandstanding. The Foreign Secretary has been rather brief on the quiet diplomacy he is now going to engage in with them to get them to sign up to a resolution that, in terms, prohibits any repetition of the kind of action that took place in Libya.