Syria

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Of course we work with the Russians. We discuss endlessly with the Russians, in any case, if there is any way in which we can together resolve the crisis. On chemical weapons, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, working together, have made the progress that we have described.

I think that my right hon. and learned Friend goes too far in saying that we have no clout with the Syrian opposition. What he says is not true, in that stark form, of the United States and the United Kingdom. I have many extensive discussions with the Syrian opposition. I was with the leadership of the Syrian National Coalition in Paris yesterday and they do listen carefully to what we say. They know, of course, that we have sent them assistance in the past. It is not the lethal assistance that my right hon. and learned Friend has consistently called for, but we have sent a great deal of other assistance to help to deal with chemical attacks and to save lives.

We have had to put on hold the delivery of that assistance because of what happened at the Bab al-Hawa border depot in December. To deliver assistance to the opposition we have to have confidence, and this House would expect us to have confidence, in its destination and in who will have control of it. We can resume and increase such assistance when we are satisfied on that point. That is of value to the opposition, and they are conscious of what the UK can do to provide that support.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I draw to the attention of the House the fact that, as co-chairman of the all-party group on Iran, I visited Tehran as a member of an all-party delegation last week at the invitation of the Iranian Parliament.

May I press the Foreign Secretary on the issue of Iran’s attendance at Geneva II? Iran was not present in June 2012, but the circumstances were very different, not least of which was that President Ahmadinejad was President of Iran at the time and not the much more moderate President, President Rouhani. Lakhdar Brahimi, the distinguished UN diplomat, has himself called for Iran to be allowed to attend Geneva II unconditionally. I plead with the Foreign Secretary to back Mr Brahimi, and to have a conversation with Mr Kerry who seems to be saying, according to news reports today, that the current Government in Iran have to sign up to a communiqué that is now 18 months old, Geneva I, and to which they were not a party and had no decision on whether to attend because they were not in that Government.

[Mr Hague]

The 30 June 2012 communiqué is 18 months old, but it is also the basis of the Secretary-General’s invitation letter to the participants in Geneva II issued on 6 January—last week. That is the basis on which we are going to Geneva II. The Geneva I communiqué is the basis of that letter: that is what we will be there to implement. Geneva I is not, therefore, just an old thing from some time ago when not everybody was there; it is the Secretary-General’s basis for the conference. It is therefore not asking too much to ask those who participate to express their support for that and their readiness to engage in a conference on that basis.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Government have changed in Iran, and what we have been able to do on the nuclear issue has changed in that time. Nevertheless, from everything we can see, the active support of the Iranians for the Assad regime, which is now carrying out some of the terrible crimes I have described, continues today, even with a change of Government in Iran. That is the background and we must not forget that. That is why we are putting the pressure on Iran to say, “If you want to come, show very clearly that you are going to engage on the same basis as the rest of us.”