Lord Avebury
Main Page: Lord Avebury (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Lord Avebury's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Warsi
The noble Lord raises important points. He will be aware that the Minister for Africa is visiting Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC. We have strong relationships in the region, not just through our aid programmes, and it is important that we use them to further stability in the region. The noble Lord may not be aware that aid to the Ugandan Government has been temporarily suspended as a result of evidence emerging from an ongoing forensic audit of the Prime Minister’s office.
Lord Avebury
Considering that with 20,000 armed men and a budget of $1.4 million MONUSCO has been unable to protect the civilians of Goma from the aggression of M23, does the Minister think that it is time to consider more than just reviewing the mandate of MONUSCO? Has she seen the French proposals to give MONUSCO an aggressive capability? Will she discuss that with it to see whether we could support it in the Security Council accordingly?
Baroness Warsi
The MONUSCO mandate, as the noble Lord is aware, is specifically to protect civilians. They do not have, as he says, a more aggressive mandate at this stage but I will take what he has said on board and feed it back.