Deployment to Mali

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The commitment that we have made on the C-17 is for three months and the reason that we have limited it to three months is precisely because we would want at that point to review what impact, if any, any extension beyond that time would have on the air bridge to Afghanistan. Afghanistan remains our principal focus and we will not do anything that will impinge upon success there.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Nobody welcomes the deployment of British troops abroad, but the UK is right to provide support to France and to the Anglophone west African countries, which, in long run, ought to be giving the security guarantees that are needed in Mali. Will the Secretary of State explain why this is an EU security lead rather than a NATO security lead, what liaison there is between the EU and NATO, and what both bodies are doing to assess where the rebels and their armaments will go next so that we can have a regional response to the crisis?

[Mr Hammond]

My view is that this type of operation, where there is a military component and a much wider dimension within the country—a need to establish the rule of law and proper civil governance, and an ongoing need for economic development assistance—is ideally suited to EU involvement. At the moment, the French operation is a national operation, but the fact that the EU has been prepared to propose a training mission is welcome. There is, as yet, no NATO activity around this operation. It is a French operation first, then an EU and an AFISMA operation.

I should correct something that I said earlier. I said that the majority of Malians were Christians, but in fact the majority of Malians are Muslims. The ethnic split, not the religious split, puts the majority in the south.