Algeria

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. The hon. Lady makes an important point. As I tried to say in my statement, there are many long-standing, deep, difficult political conflicts that have to be resolved. Although there is never an excuse for the sort of terrorism that we saw over the weekend, terrorist groups and others exploit these grievances. An intelligent approach to trying to combat al-Qaeda right across the piece is to break up the different parts of this insurgency and deal with the individual problems, as well as undertaking the tough security response that I spoke about.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should use the extensive contact that we have had with the Algerians as a result of the tragedy to encourage them to use their considerable resources to combat the jihadists, whoever they are, in north and west Africa?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I have spoken to the Algerian Prime Minister six times, I think, in the last three days, and the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire, has had a number of conversations, as has the Foreign Secretary.

The Algerians have huge, long experience of fighting against extremist Islamism and their country had a very painful and difficult civil war. It is a country where we will want to thicken and deepen our diplomatic, political and even military and counter-terrorism contacts.