Eastern Mediterranean: Turkey, Cyprus and Syria

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I feel privileged to follow the masterly survey by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, of this tumultuous and fragile region. I think he is quite right, while taking us around the whole area, to avoid going too deeply at this stage into the even greater turmoil of the Syria-Iraq situation and the beginnings of the end of the post-Ottoman settlement. That is a major issue with huge implications for this country and requires in due course a full day’s debate in your Lordships’ House on all the implications that flow from it.

I will concentrate on a narrower aspect today, and simply ask: what can we in the West salvage and what further can we pick out in the way of a winning thread for the UK’s strategic interests from this general situation in which there is so much turmoil and grief and, I fear, more grief to come?

One slightly more cheerful aspect is that the region as a whole is changing very fast. Issues which seemed intractable only a few months or years ago are beginning to change. One aspect of that new scene is the energy dimension in the eastern Mediterranean, with significant new gas resources discovered off Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon and offshore from the Nile Delta, in which Turkey is also very interested. I think that the Lebanon aspect has to be put on the backburner for the moment, regrettably, because of its political difficulties. It does not yet have a president and its politics are very tricky indeed. As the noble Lord, Lord Starkey, reminded us, it has been almost submerged by a colossal influx of Syrian refugees. I do not think it will be able to carry forward new policies for developing its offshore resources, but the others can. Israel has gone fast ahead already with gas from the Tamar and, shortly, the Leviathan fields in very large quantities, which could be exported through an Israeli pipeline, possibly through Cyprus, north and south, into Turkey or by other means. So there are new chess pieces on the board quite suddenly. I should like the Minister and her colleagues to think about how they can be rearranged and what could be gained from them.

What are the new pieces on the board? First, Turkey continues to want to join the EU, but it wants a reformed EU and finds the present, protracted process, which has gone on and on with chapters opening and closing, humiliating. Secondly, both Northern Cyprus and the republic want to be in on the gas developments when they come. They may be anticipating the benefits a little, but the gas is there. Thirdly, Egypt also wants access to gas in its region, the Nile Delta. Indeed, Israel is now supplying gas to Egypt, which is a remarkable turnaround from the situation that used to exist, when Egypt was supplying gas to Israel.

Anything which helps Egypt at this stage to meet its colossal economic difficulties and which stabilises it is something we should support. Some of us have just had a chance to talk to General Fattah al-Sisi, the new president. It is clear that if Egypt can be a rock in this region, there is a chance that some kind of stability can be injected into the region generally, but if Egypt fails, we are looking into a black pit. After the disastrous wobble that some people had over Mr Morsi, who was clearly a major setback for Egypt's recovery, we should now be quite clear in our support for General al-Sisi.

Israel wants to diversify its export routes. The north and south Governments in Cyprus want to move, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, reminded us, but negotiations are extremely slow. I had a chance to hold some talks with Mr Özersay, the TRNC negotiator, and he explained to me some of the difficulties the other day, but there is a will to make progress.

All this creates a possibility of a sort of grand bargain for the region in which Britain could play a useful and even beneficial part. Britain should support Turkey on EU reform. We are natural allies in wanting to be in the European Union, at least from my point of view, but it needs to be a reformed European Union. I think practically everyone is agreed on that.

We could ask Turkey to be supportive and to encourage TRNC to move positively, as it is already trying to do, and we could urge the republic in the south to be readier to share gas with the north and with Turkey. We could ensure that British companies are fully involved. Just as a warning, Russia is already there, signing agreements with Israel and obviously very involved in Cyprus and in its recovery from its financial woes. We could remind Cyprus that it is a member of the Commonwealth and to look for its needs for finance to the rich Commonwealth countries for investment, which it badly needs. I do not think that Cyprus will get enough gas to build an LNG export plant as it hopes, but certainly some gas developments are possible. Some gas could come from Israel for export.

There are plenty of snags and territorial sub-sea border disputes in all that I am saying. It is not straightforward at all. But it is just possible that out of it the Cyprus reunification process, which some of us have been involved in for more than half a century, could at last begin to go forward. That would extract one win out of a generally deteriorating situation in which of course the so-called Arab spring is turning out to be far from a spring and more a scene of Arab anarchy and difficulty which we now have to tackle with renewed skill and diplomacy—of which Britain has a plentiful supply. We should use it and not be ashamed of the fact that we know rather more about this region than almost any other country.