Yemen

Jeremy Browne Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to this short but important debate. I start by paying tribute to you, Mr Speaker, for your recent visit to India—it is not the topic under consideration, but it was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)—which was greatly appreciated by the Foreign Office and Parliament. I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, a former Foreign Office Minister himself, for his long-standing interest in Yemen, which is born of his personal commitment to the country and a very contemporary interest. It is a constant reminder to the House and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the importance of Yemen to Britain’s national interests.

The British Government have a long-standing relationship with Yemen, and we have worked with its Government and our partners in the international community for some years to pursue security, prosperity and democracy in the country. The current situation is of increasing concern, however, and I am grateful for this opportunity to lay out comprehensively before the House the British Government’s current assessment.

As the right hon. Gentleman has already said, Yemen is in a sad state today. The political process is stalled, the economy is in tatters and ordinary Yemenis are suffering greatly. Security is fragile, violence is worsening and the country is fragmented and divided. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula will exploit and is exploiting that instability. The country will take a long time to recover, and the British Government are profoundly concerned by Yemen’s decline, a concern that is reflected at the highest levels of the Government and in the interest being taken by the most senior Ministers.

Yemen is stuck in political stalemate. The momentum behind the valuable initiative of the Gulf Co-operation Council—GCC—to broker a political settlement leading to a managed transition has been lost, and over the past 10 months we have seen widespread demonstrations throughout Yemen calling for President Saleh to step down and for democratic change. Tragically, the demonstrations have also frequently seen the use of excessive and lethal force by Government security forces, but regrettably the armed opposition, too, has been partly responsible for the frequent escalation of violence.

We have condemned in the strongest terms the use of excessive force against unarmed protesters, and we have called for restraint by all sides and for the Yemeni authorities to listen to the legitimate demands of the Yemeni public for change. We continue energetically to encourage negotiators on both sides urgently to conclude discussions on implementing a plan for political transition based on the Gulf Co-operation Council initiative. That plan, brokered by Yemen’s neighbours and with widespread international support, represents the best hope for a peaceful end to the crisis. It envisages a transfer of presidential power to the vice-president, the establishment of a national unity Government led by the Opposition and early presidential elections.

We welcomed President Saleh’s decree in September in which he authorised Vice-President Hadi to restart dialogue with the Opposition and to sign the initiative on his behalf. Along with our EU, US and GCC partners, as well as the UN, we have been working closely with the vice-president and the Opposition to encourage a speedy conclusion to discussions on an implementation mechanism.

It is important to appreciate, however, that our and, principally, our regional partners’ efforts are ultimately dependent on the willingness of President Saleh to fulfil his promise to agree formally to transition. To date, he has pledged on several occasions to pass all executive authority to the vice-president and then to step down, but each time I regret to say that he has reneged on his promise.

Our task, alongside our international partners, has been and continues to be to impress upon the Yemeni leadership that, in the absence of an agreed and sustainable political settlement, Yemen will continue to spiral downwards towards state failure and humanitarian catastrophe. We can already see that the country is fragmented and under-governed, with growing insecurity, especially in southern Yemen, and with frequent episodes of extreme violence, targeted largely at unarmed protestors.

The Yemeni authorities have lost security control over large swathes of the country, and the Government are barely functional, struggling to deliver services and to pay salaries. The current situation has the biggest impact on the wider Yemeni population, who are struggling to eke out an existence in an environment of food price rises, water scarcity and sudden upsurges in violence, so it is indeed a truly terrible situation.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank the Minister very much for what he has said so far, but there is a logjam: we have groups, in their particular positions, unwilling to give way. The President has said that he wants to go, the Opposition want to take over, and the Saudi Arabian Government and the Gulf Co-operation Council are involved, but what is the mechanism by which we break that logjam? We do not want a bloody revolution, so there must be something that we can do, with all the great diplomacy at our disposal, to try to break this logjam. What does the Minister think it should be?

[Mr Browne]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s assessment. I hope that the next passage of my speech will at least provide him with some assurance that we are seeking to make progress, while recognising that we inevitably face some restrictions and limitations on our ability to bring about the change we all wish to see.

The lack of urgent progress in Yemen towards achieving peace, alongside a worsening humanitarian situation, has placed the country increasingly under the international spotlight. Since the Adjournment debate on the subject secured by the right hon. Gentleman in April, the United Nations has begun to play a helpful political role in support of the efforts of the GCC, alongside our EU and US partners. A UN special adviser has visited the country five times and will be arriving in Yemen again shortly. We welcome the UN Security Council’s statements and, most recently, resolution 2014, which was adopted unanimously on 21 October. As the Foreign Secretary stated, that resolution represents a clear indication from the international community that the deteriorating humanitarian, economic and security situation in Yemen is a direct result of President Saleh’s refusal to agree to a political settlement.

That was also the view of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in October, which said that it would explore all available options if the political impasse persisted and the economic and humanitarian situation continued to deteriorate as a result. We, the British Government, will continue to work closely with our international partners and allies, including in both the EU and the Security Council, to support a peaceful transition. We look forward to the Security Council’s review on 21 November of the situation in Yemen in the light of the adoption of resolution 2014.

We have talked about the Yemeni economy. Its situation is truly desperate. Economic collapse and escalating conflict and violence is pushing Yemen into a humanitarian crisis. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the role played by the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan) in that regard. We share the UN Security Council’s grave concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation. Although a £15.4 million package of humanitarian assistance has been given, DFID continues to support a range of initiatives being carried out by non-governmental organisations, UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross to help to alleviate the suffering of Yemenis. DFID continues to be active in Yemen.

More generally, the current crisis has set back Yemen’s development by years. Yemen was already the poorest country in the middle east and faced significant challenges, including falling oil revenues, increased water scarcity and rapid population growth. There is political instability, violence, great poverty, economic hardship and, as a result, humanitarian suffering. It is very much the Government’s intention to approach Yemen in a broad co-ordinated way, drawing on our security and diplomatic expertise, as well as on our humanitarian and development knowledge.

Yemen’s human rights record is also very worrying. The high number of credible allegations of violations perpetrated by the authorities against peaceful demonstrators is disturbing. There have been numerous reports of detentions, civilians caught up in armed conflict, the recruitment of child soldiers and restrictions applied to the media. We have witnessed appalling violations by the security forces since the beginning of the protests, in particular in Sana'a on 18 March. Most recently, we have seen an escalation of violence by both sides in Sana'a in September, and the shocking use of heavy artillery to quell demonstrations. We estimate that more than 400 civilians have now been killed and that thousands have been injured.

I should like to use this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of all our staff in the embassy at Sana’a. The right hon. Gentleman said at the end of his speech how much he would like to be able to take a cross-party delegation from this Parliament to the Parliament in Yemen but was prevented from doing so by his concerns about the security situation. It is worth placing on the record the fact that the United Kingdom staff and their Yemeni colleagues have been operating in very difficult circumstances in an environment of high terrorist threat. Sana’a is now probably our most dangerous post world-wide—the most dangerous place for Foreign Office and other British Government staff to serve in. Our diplomats’ ability to operate has also been continually constrained by ever-present and unpredictable bouts of violence and civil disorder. Our staff are living in temporary container accommodation inside the embassy compound and have to cope with irregular electricity, and occasionally even water, supplies. Life for our local staff has often been even more difficult, with many living in areas of the city affected by ongoing violence and curfews. They have been constantly affected by frequent food, fuel and electricity shortages. Yet through all this, all our staff continue to show willingness, effectiveness and commitment in pursuit of our vital national objectives in Yemen.

That brings me to the crux of what I wish to say. The reason we maintain, at considerable cost and, in terms of hardship, a considerable burden on our staff, a diplomatic and wider British Government presence in Yemen is that we recognise, as the right hon. Gentleman said, the great importance of Yemen in its own right across the wider region and globally. As he said, it is important in security terms because the presence of al-Qaeda and other malign influences in Yemen means that they have the potential to visit themselves on us here in the United Kingdom. However, we also recognise it in other regards.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I hope the Minister will forgive me for interrupting. We also have responsibility because the Aden protectorate was, for a very long time, a responsibility of ours. I speak as someone who lived there for four years. We also have a responsibility to this part of the world because of that.

[Mr Browne]

I endorse the point that my hon. Friend makes. We have a narrow self-interest in security terms, but I hope and believe that we also have a wider enlightened interest, and a desire on humanitarian grounds to see the population of Yemen living more materially prosperous lives free from the degree of insecurity that they must feel on a daily basis. I hope and believe that not only because of the hard concerns about national security but because of a desire to see stability, peace and relatively greater prosperity in Yemen, the British Government are affording that country the degree of attention and seriousness that it clearly warrants.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to discuss Yemen’s manifold challenges and what he has said about them. I am sure that we will have other opportunities to discuss what I hope will be progress by the British Government and our international partners in the months and years ahead.

Question put and agreed to.