Syria

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My right honourable friend made a comparison with the horrors in Bosnia at the end of the previous century, when militias claiming to be acting in the name of one side or another may or may not have been condoned or even have been instructed by the authorities. To answer my noble friend’s question, that comparison reflects on the assessment that we have to make of the present situation. It is hard to tell how much these murderous attacks—village against village, region against region—are, at the very lowest level, simply the settling of old scores or, at a higher level, people who are inspired by one side or another to think that they can put a label on themselves and go and murder everyone in sight. Perhaps, at the highest level of all, they are actively receiving orders and encouragement from the Syrian regime. Those are all possible, and there is evidence that at all levels there are those sorts of motivations. However, you cannot distinguish and draw lines in all these cases; you cannot say that all these horrors and the revolting, outrageous and evil killing of children are ordered from the centre. If they were, that would reinforce everything that we fear about the nature of the regime, but I do not think that that is the case in every instance; there are probably other evil motives at work as well.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, at a time of the cooling of the right to protect and humanitarian intervention, I was puzzled by one word in the Statement. It was the word “compelling” in this passage:

“we will argue for a new and robust UN Security Council resolution aimed at compelling the regime”.

Given the Russian and Chinese position, surely there is no prospect of such a resolution. If these are not just empty words, that could mean only military intervention outside the UN framework, which is most unlikely to happen. Who would lead that? There was talk this morning about drones targeting or showing the way for the targeting of opposition areas. Do the Government know who provides and controls these drones?

Amid all the horror, there is increasing concern about the way in which a likely Sunni-dominated successor regime would deal with minorities. Do the Government share this concern, especially with regard to, as the right reverend Prelate has mentioned, the Christian minority within Syria and the many refugees from Iraq who are there? If so, what are the Government doing to ensure that as far as possible there will not be a regime that persecutes minorities, as other Sunni-led regimes in the area do?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

On the last point, I addressed that very point when it was raised by the right reverend Prelate. The position of the Christian minorities is of great concern. To answer the question about what the Government are doing, as I said earlier, my right honourable friend, officials and representatives of HMG have constantly urged the Syrian opposition to extend tolerance and a full place to ethnic and religious minorities, and that embraces Christian minorities. That is what we are doing.

As to the word “compelling”, the noble Lord is very skilled and active in these areas, but I think he is slightly misreading its meaning. I go back to my earlier point that with the full co-operation of the Russians and the Chinese—if we could get it, which at present does not look very promising, but great efforts are being made—there would be a compelling and effective stranglehold. It is possible to switch off a society and to close down a regime altogether and make further governance impossible by cutting off basic utilities, power and all ingoing and outgoing supplies, but that is impossible as long as these two great nations, Russia and China, and a few others, are carrying on with trade and supplying equipment and arms. It is not realistic to imagine that without Russia and China we would resort to arms. That is pointless. It is a dead end. Russian and Chinese co-operation are essential for the stranglehold to work, and that has got to be the path of compulsion that we go to before we come to even grimmer possibilities. However, as my right honourable friend repeated, all options are on the table. There are steps ahead that we can take and which we will take, and we will work night and day to hold dialogue with Moscow and Beijing because they have a vital role in this process.

I cannot comment on drones. I will not comment on intelligence aspects, but if I have any more knowledge, I will gladly write to the noble Lord; at the moment, I have none.