North Africa and the Middle East

Lord Campbell of Pittenweem Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman does not overstate his case. The words that he uses are wholly appropriate to the words and behaviour of the President of Iran. I do not have direct evidence of Iranian interference in, for instance, the affairs of Bahrain—although many would suspect such interference and influence—but with Iran’s links to Hezbollah and Hamas, I do not think that it is currently playing a positive role in bringing about peace in the middle east.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

Does the Foreign Secretary accept that economic progress in such countries will be an important buttress to democratic progress? Does he also agree that a unity of purpose both among European Union and NATO members and across the Atlantic will give us the best chance of achieving the objectives that he has set out?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, very much so. Again, that brings me to my next point.

There are many international organisations, such as the United Nations and the World Bank, that will have an important role to play in supporting democratic development in the region. However, there is a particular onus on European countries to be bold and ambitious. In a sense we have been here before, when we helped the young democracies of central and eastern Europe. The nations of north Africa are not European and will not join the European Union. Nevertheless, this is the most significant watershed in the external relations of the EU since that time, and we must be ready with a positive vision for the region that can act as a magnet for change.

Over the past two months, the Prime Minister and I have made the case in EU meetings for a transformed EU neighbourhood policy that supports the building blocks of democracy in the Arab world, offers incentives for positive change and targets its funding effectively. The German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, and I wrote to our colleagues last week calling for a comprehensive partnership of equals between the peoples of Europe and the European neighbourhood, underpinned by deeper and wider economic integration and using the many instruments at the disposal of the EU to promote freedom, democracy, the rule of law and human rights. We believe that this transformation partnership should bring all the EU levers and incentives into one policy, and give the greatest support and benefits to those countries reforming fastest, with clear conditions attached.

We have proposed a path towards deeper economic integration with the European market, in clear stages leading up to a free trade area and, eventually, a customs union, progressively covering goods, agriculture and services. We are calling for an increase in the number of scholarships and grants, access to the resources of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the re-apportionment of EU funds in favour of democratic reforms, the removal of existing quotas for countries that disregard the fundamental values of the EU, and consideration of an EU regional protection programme for north Africa to support the protection of displaced persons and to improve local infrastructure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alexander]

A trend seems to be developing whereby those on the Government Benches ask three questions under the guise of a single intervention. On the issue of arms exports, it is a matter of record and the records were rightly published transparently by the previous Government. I have also made it clear that if changes need to be made in relation to the consolidated agreement between the European Union and ourselves on arms sales, I will support the efforts of the Governments in that endeavour.

On the second issue, may I make a general point and then a specific one? The general point is that in trying to understand the stimulus to the changes that we are seeing across north Africa and the middle east, it is indisputable that engagement with the outside world has contributed, in part, to the extraordinary courage, passion and bravery that we saw from demonstrators in, for example, Tunisia and Egypt. In that sense, it is important that the default setting of the international community should be engagement with countries, even where there are profound and long-standing disagreements.

On the specific issue as to whether it was appropriate in the early years after 2001 to engage directly with Gaddafi, I find myself in agreement not with the hon. Gentleman, who is a Back Bencher, but with his Front-Bench team, who generously but wisely have recognised that foreign affairs at times involves dealing with those with whom one has profound disagreement in the service of a greater good, which in this case is the security of the United Kingdom and the broader international community. We were trying to address a situation in which Gaddafi had, by any reckoning, armed the IRA—he was responsible for the largest arms shipment to the IRA—and so had actively sponsored terrorism against United Kingdom citizens. He was also in the course of developing a capability for ballistic missiles, for nuclear missiles and for other weaponry. There is and will be the opportunity to look more broadly at what other lessons can be drawn from our engagement with Libya, but I do not resile from the difficult judgment that was exercised at the time to engage with Gaddafi, notwithstanding his record, in the service of what I think was the right judgment to make British citizens more secure.

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

May I take the shadow Foreign Secretary back to his expression of disappointment at the tentative nature of the international community’s response? Does he understand that those of us who were in the House during the Bosnian crisis feel some familiar echoes from that period, when the response of the international community was equally uncertain? Should we not have learned lessons from that unhappy period?

[Mr Alexander]

As so often, not only in recent days, but over many years in this House, the right hon. and learned Gentleman speaks with great authority and wisdom. I was coming on to a passage in my speech where I was keen to suggest to the House that it is illuminating at times to take, momentarily, that longer view and to appreciate the full extent of the failure that we have seen over recent weeks.

In different times and, admittedly, in different circumstances, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen said of the Kosovo conflict:

“We ran a military campaign and in parallel we ran an information campaign. Both were professional and focused but it was, to my mind, the information campaign which won it.”

He went on to say:

“Publics across the world got the message that we meant business and that we were absolutely committed to achieving our objectives summed up succinctly as ‘NATO in, Serbs out, refugees home’. The Kosovars watched and were reassured by our resolution and in Belgrade the generals and the Serbs generally began to understand that once NATO had taken on a mission, it was simply not going to fail. And as they got that message their resolution crumbled and even though their immediate military advantage remained, they gave up.”

Sadly, the clarity, coherence and effectiveness of that communication have not been matched in recent weeks by the international messaging to the Gaddafi regime.