Africa and the Middle East

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman makes a number of assumptions in his question. I will not necessarily take issue with those assumptions. However, where we have placed asset freezes and travel bans on individuals purely because they are members of a regime, as is the case with the European Union asset freezes and travel bans—we are not talking here about United Nations Security Council travel bans—when an individual ceases to be a member of that regime, it follows that a change in those restrictions should be discussed; otherwise there would be no incentive whatever for members of the regime to abandon its murderous work. When the situation changes and the reasons the restrictions have been placed on an individual change, of course the restrictions should change as well.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

When we first intervened in Libya, the length of our commitment was talked of in briefings in terms of weeks; now it is months. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that if there is a stalemate on the ground without a ceasefire, we could be talking years?

[Mr Hague]

I am not sure that I have ever referred to days, weeks, months or years, and I am not going to start doing so now. I think that to do so is futile. We will implement the United Nations resolution. We should not be put off implementing that resolution if it takes time, just as we might have been very pleased if it had not taken many days at all. I do not think that we should say of something of the gravity of the protection of the civilian population of Libya, with all the consequences that flow for north Africa and the wider middle east, that we will do it for only a week or for 10 days. It is important to carry through the authority of the United Nations, and we are not putting a time limit on that.