Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Jack Straw Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Our decision at the moment is that we will continue to supply non-lethal aid to the Syrian moderate opposition. Of course, we keep that decision under continuous review. As I said earlier, the situation in Syria is very different from the situation in Iraq. While ISIL is seeking to make it a single theatre, we have to respond to the realities on the ground in both countries.

These are vital steps, but the Prime Minister has made it clear that the political and humanitarian response in Iraq must be backed up by a security response that will defeat ISIL on the ground. The Government’s clear position is that there will be no UK combat boots on the ground in Iraq, but we have given our full support to the targeted air strikes conducted by the United States at the request of the legitimate Government of Iraq. With other NATO allies, and with the consent of the Iraqi Government, we have been delivering arms and equipment directly to Kurdish forces, as I have set out.

I know that many right hon. and hon. Members will, crucially, want to know whether we intend to go further in our security response. As the House will know, Secretary Kerry is currently in the middle east seeking to build a regional coalition of the willing to support Iraqi forces in the battle against ISIL—an organisation which, by definition, represents an existential challenge to all of them. President Obama will speak to the American people later today to set out his wider strategy for dealing with the threat from ISIL, including a possible expansion of US air strikes.

As the global resolve to tackle ISIL strengthens, we will consider carefully what role the UK should play in the international coalition. I should emphasise that no decisions have been made. However, as the Prime Minister set out on Monday, if we reached the conclusion that joining in American-led air strikes would be the appropriate way to shoulder our share of the burden, then, in accordance with the established practice, we would ensure that the House of Commons had an opportunity to debate and vote on that proposition.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I take the right hon. Gentleman back to his answer to the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) about the position of the Assad regime? The whole House shares his view that this is an odious regime, but surely what has changed is that two years ago it was rational to assess that the Assad regime could be removed. Is that still his view?

[Mr Hammond]

Our clear intention is to create the conditions where within the Alawite community and the community around the regime, the pressure builds to change the leadership—to remove Assad and those closely associated with him and replace them so that it is possible for the moderate opposition forces and the international community to envisage a political solution in Syria.

We are facing in our near abroad the most capable terrorist group currently operating anywhere in the world. We cannot underestimate the threat that it poses to regional stability and to our security here at home, and we must be prepared to intensify our contribution to action against ISIL if the situation demands.

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[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I draw to the House’s attention the fact that I am co-chairman of the all-party group on Iran and also co-chairman of the British-Turkish Forum.

I begin by echoing the sentiments expressed by my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary to the Foreign Secretary—a great post that I hope he enjoys. I always felt it was living history, but I had echoing in my head the words of Henry Ford: history was “one damned thing after another”. So it was for me, and so I think it will be for the Foreign Secretary.

John Maynard Keynes famously said:

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”

The information on Syria has changed. The Assad regime is not going to go and, with respect to the Foreign Secretary, I did not really feel that he was any more convinced than we were by the answer he gave. The situation has simply changed. I would not put any money on that regime now going, and if we want to deal with the greater evil, in my view there has to be communication—not a re-establishment of relations—with it. I firmly believe that those in the Government should follow up the entirely sensible suggestion from their hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and many others in this House that we need to see a restoration of the Geneva arrangements and, critically, we need to see Iran brought into that process as well, because there will not be a solution to the problems of Syria—and therefore to the problems of Iraq—without that regional agreement, which yes involves Turkey, but also has to involve Iran. With respect to the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway), we will not get a solution in Iraq unless we solve Syria as well, because that border is so porous.

Iran has played a constructive part in trying to defeat ISIL and in securing the necessary change in Iraq. The US Administration, as is well known, have been in direct communication with the Iranians and, according to well sourced reports, are now doing all they can to reach agreement with Iran in the P5 plus 1 talks on the nuclear issue. I greatly welcomed the acts of the Foreign Secretary’s predecessor in agreeing in principle to reopen the embassies in Tehran, but those were promised for May. They were pushed back to August and they have now been pushed back to some other date, yet to be defined. I ask the Foreign Secretary: why is this? I know the Iranians are not the easiest partners—a feeling which, I should say, is reciprocated by them—but the Administration in Tehran are under domestic pressure. They have a population desperate for links with the west, and if we build a partnership with them, we can do a great deal more than we have.

I hope, too, that the British Government will abandon their view that we should try to punish Iran through trade. We are the only Government doing this. As US-led sanctions against Iran were being tightened, guess what? Hard-nosed as ever, the United States was increasing its exports to Iran, to the benefit of its farming and its pharmaceutical companies. In Britain, we have been punishing our own companies—nobody else—by ensuring that trade with the Iranians plummets.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I completely concur with the right hon. Gentleman on that point. A Coventry-based company has worked with the Iranians in the past to produce their national state car. That company would like to do much more work with the Iranians, but because of these policies it is impossible to do so.

[Mr Straw]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The United States has gone out of its way to assist its own companies to ensure that they exploit, as widely as possible, the provisions in the sanctions regime—including those that were extended in the agreement with Iran of 24 November last year—and take up these opportunities, and western European countries are doing the same. Why is Britain failing to take these opportunities?

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I will be very brief. Just before history gets completely rewritten, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he thinks that pressure on the economy in Iran played any part whatever in bringing Iran back to the negotiating table to talk about its nuclear file?

[Mr Straw]

I am absolutely certain that it did, but the sanctions, led by the United States, allowed for the export from the west to Iran of agricultural products, food products and pharmaceuticals. Those concessions were exploited by the United States and western European countries. It is only the United Kingdom that has added to those sanctions, through additional, gratuitous efforts that simply hurt United Kingdom companies, not Iran.

Let me now turn to Israel and Palestine. Like everybody else in this House, I have no brief whatever for Hamas. It was I who introduced the Terrorism Act 2000 and then, as soon as it was on the statute book, ensured that Hamas, along with 20 other terrorist organisations, was proscribed as a terrorist organisation. I was right to do that then and it is right for it to stay as a terrorist outfit. Hamas breached every rule in the book by launching rockets against the civilian population in Israel, but, as the Foreign Secretary said, that cannot conceivably justify the wholly disproportionate response of the Israelis in allowing 2,000 mainly innocent men, women and children to be killed in the way that they did. Whatever they say, they did not have a care for the civilian population.

Now, as we have heard, the Israelis have decided to annex over 1,000 acres of Palestinian land near Bethlehem. I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary on their strong words—this was “utterly deplorable”, according to the Prime Minister, and illegal under international law—but what I ask is, what are we going to do about it? I say, with respect, that the Israelis do not care what is said by any western European Government. I used to think something different, but it is not the case; provided that this more right-wing and more extreme Israeli Government have the United States Congress in their pocket, which they do, they do not care about sentiment here. They would care if we were to do what we should be doing, which is to ensure that goods produced in the occupied territories with the label of Israel are treated like any other counterfeit goods and subject to strict rules and additional tariffs.

I am not in favour for a moment of generalised boycotts or sanctions against Israel, but I am in favour of an EU démarche on Israel to get it to pull back—and if it does not do that, we should withdraw our ambassadors and temporarily downgrade our diplomatic arrangements with the country. I am also strongly in favour of recognising Palestine as a state with a formal status in the United Nations. All the things that Israel said would happen if we were to do this have happened anyway—and with a vengeance.

Let me turn to the issue of Russia and Ukraine. I support the approach that the Government are broadly taking in respect of Russia. The brutal truth is that, at the moment, Vladimir Putin believes that he is winning by his own calculus, because he has more to gain than to lose in the region than the west does. The annexation of the Crimea is now a fait accompli, but I believe that over time these sanctions will hurt Russia. It is significantly economically weaker than we are. Its economy is half our size for a population twice our size, and it is over-dependent on energy. As well as maintaining sanctions, we must work out what we can legitimately offer Russia in the final negotiation and, above all, we must start to reduce Europe’s over-dependence on Russian hydrocarbons. That is what lies behind Russia’s belief that it can win. It must not be allowed to do so.

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[Mr Straw]

Does the right hon. Gentleman also accept that the welcome decision by both parties to have a larger aid programme cannot be a substitute for money spent on the more difficult areas of intelligence and diplomacy? As our aid programme increases so too must our diplomatic programme.

[Dr Fox]

I would go further and say that our national security and the need for hard power in a hard world should, in a time of financial constraints, take precedence over our aid programme.

I was involved in an interesting discussion at a meeting in Paris. I asked why it was that during the cold war we were willing to use the term “better” when it came to our values. For example, we would say that democracy was better than totalitarian rule, free markets were better than command economies and freedom was better than oppression. But when it comes to debates about Islamic fundamentalism, we are not willing to use the word “better”. I believe that religious tolerance is better than enforced orthodoxy, and that equal rights for women are better than women being second-class citizens. When I raised that point, I was told, “Well, nowadays, we can’t really say ‘better’. Things are just different.” If we believe that our values are different and not better, why should we believe, let alone convince anyone else, that they should follow what we have? We in the west are what we are not by accident but because of the value path that we have chosen to take. All the battles that we will face are to do with ideology, belief and values. It is not the capability of the west—of this country or the United States—that has been called into question; it is our will to enforce what we believe by peaceful means or others. If we are not willing to stand up for our values as a country, we will not only fail to shape the era of globalisation but diminish ourselves in the longer term.