United States: Foreign Policy

Lord Hylton Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hylton (CB)]

My Lords, if we look at the Middle East, it seems full of conflict and unpredictability; much the same could be said of American foreign policy, particularly in that region. I would therefore like to describe a new and positive initiative.

Since 2014, the Finnish Government and the British charity Forward Thinking have developed the Helsinki Policy Forum. I declare an unpaid interest as a trustee of the charity. The forum is so called because it first met in Helsinki, and it aims to increase dialogue between key powers so as to develop shared analysis, with the help of participants from the UN and international bodies, together with leaders in business and NGOs. It is well aware of the influence of religions in that region.

The forum tries to ease tensions and prevent conflicts and to identify policy proposals that can be implemented in practice. In three years, 95 such recommendations have been made, and I am glad to say that a large majority have been taken up by Governments, parliaments, think tanks and the media. The aim is to find win-win approaches that serve the common good, so that all may benefit. A meeting on Syria, for example, included Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The ability to call together high-level officials from major states stems at least in part from 13 years of painstaking and patient work by Forward Thinking with the political and religious extremes in both Israel and Palestine.

In the absence of formal institutions for preventing and resolving conflicts, the forum works in three ways. First, it raises awareness, to alert and prevent; secondly, it builds confidence through face-to-face meetings, to address a widespread lack of trust in the region; above all, it seeks to highlight mutual and wider common interests—a small example of the latter was the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia for Iranian pilgrims to take part in the 2017 hajj.

Between larger meetings, the forum holds working groups on single issues such as economic co-operation or migration. It is always in close touch with foreign policy groups in Berlin, Rome and Istanbul, as well as the Davos World Economic Forum. I commend the Helsinki Policy Forum to our Government, and indeed to your Lordships, and to all who want to see a more co-operative and peaceful Middle East. What has been done shows once again the value of neutral ground and independent facilitation. As Sir Jeremy Greenstock, our senior adviser, wrote in Forward Thinking’s recent annual report, in the context of international relations and interests the Middle East is the canary in the mine.

I conclude with two probably controversial questions, for which I take full personal responsibility. Will Her Majesty’s Government move from condemnation to a better understanding of the history and current evolution of national resistance movements such as Hamas and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party? Will they make plans for dismantling sanctions on Syria, given that those probably do more harm to the Syrians than to the current regime? I do not want to provoke the Foreign Office, but I will just say that these questions arise from my many visits to Israel and Palestine, including Gaza, and also to Turkey, Iraq and Syria.