Gulf Countries and Qatar

Lord Luce Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Luce (CB)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Desai. I certainly go along with his cautioning words about this current, dangerous dispute. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Collins, on his quite brilliant sense of timing in bringing up this issue now. I agree with all the noble Lords who have said that this dispute is dangerous. The countries of the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are on the verge of pressing a self-destruct button. It is urgent that they pull back quickly and try to unravel this dispute. We debated the Middle East last week and, as we all know, it is in absolute turmoil. However, relative to their neighbours, the Gulf states have hitherto managed to remain relatively stable over the decades. They are all friends of ours and it is in all our interests that these differences between them are resolved satisfactorily. We all know that there have been long-standing tensions and disputes between those countries: border disputes between Bahrain and Qatar and between Saudi Arabia and some of the other neighbouring states. However, they are now playing with fire, particularly in the current atmosphere in the Middle East. They could be pushing Qatar towards the hands of Iran, which is no help to anybody.

In some of the speeches so far, noble Lords have reflected on the reasons for this current tension. One is, of course, the current turmoil in the Middle East, with the arguments and disagreements which have emerged on which Islamic groups and militias should be supported in Syria, Libya, Yemen or Lebanon. Beyond that, as other noble Lords have said, there is the Saudi/Iranian tension: the rivalry for regional power status through proxy wars on both their parts, which provides a tinderbox that could blow up at any point into a wider conflict. The third reason is Qatar and its history. With its wealth since the 1980s, it has wanted to strike out independently in its foreign policy, without much clarity of purpose, in countries like Sudan, Libya and elsewhere. It has practical arrangements with Iran—the fresh water pipeline and joint co-operation on gas production—which make sense and are good. However, even since the 1960s, Qatar has tended to support the Muslim Brotherhood, much to the disagreement of many of the other states. There is much to discuss about the Muslim Brotherhood, which believes more in the unifying of religion and politics as opposed to the views of other Arab states. Let us remind ourselves that the Wahhabi movement, which emerged in the 18th century, has from time to time done quite a lot of damage in terms of fomenting violence. I do not want to overstate this but I think that we have to take both points of view into account.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, and others emphasised and made absolutely plain the interdependence not only between the Gulf states but internationally as well. Qatar has the Al Udeid air base with United States troops and is the main supplier of liquefied natural gas around the world, including to Asia and Europe. Indeed, one-third of our LNG imports are from Qatar. Thirty per cent of all the daily gas supplies of the United Arab Emirates are from Qatar. As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, the investment overseas is something like £254 billion, so the interdependence is enormous. No country can afford to damage that. Therefore, we come to the question of our position. There has been a slight tendency to suggest that we should intervene and do this, that and the other, as we are a post-colonial power. However, we are a long-standing friend of Gulf countries. It is in our interests to remain positive in the dialogue that we have with them. After all, we also have to accept that in the last recorded year, £30 billion-worth of trade was done between this country and the Gulf. There are 166,000 British citizens in Gulf countries. Therefore, the Gulf is very important to us, but in my view not just in terms of trade and security but also in terms of people-to-people contact, education, healthcare and culture. It is important that we have this link in all fields.

As has been implied already, the GCC has not been a powerful grouping of nations. Nevertheless, it is a forum for them to get together. They are all different countries, as we know. Oman, for example, is quite distinctive and through history has had a very close relationship with Iran. That is, and should be, very valuable, to the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, at this time of tension. We can argue about whether their monarchies are likely to survive but that question was argued about in the 1970s and they are still there. We might contemplate what might happen if they did not survive. The alternative could be far worse.

Therefore, the question is: what should the United Kingdom Government do? First, we should not interfere and take sides. Secondly, we should not accept that external powers, including us, should be asked to choose between their relationship with Qatar and their relationship with the other Gulf states. That is unacceptable. We must do whatever we can in this post-colonial age to look at constructive ways forward. I suggest one thing only, and I would be very grateful to the Minister if she could comment on it. Last December in Bahrain, our Prime Minister formulated a strategic partnership between the GCC and the UK, and attended that important meeting. It set out the common interests between ourselves and the Gulf countries. I highlight specifically, and ask the Minister to comment on, the following.

Two paragraphs in the communiqué refer to counterterrorism and counterextremism, including in relation to Daesh and al-Qaeda. They also refer to the need for us to address the acute threats posed by these organisations, and to set up a working group on counterterrorism and border security and to look at the financing of extremist groups. The second paragraph refers to the countering of external and internal threats, where we agree to co-operate and set up a national security dialogue. That gives us the basis upon which we can establish and try to discover more common ground with all our friends in the Gulf—not just Qatar but Saudi Arabia and all those countries. This agreement gives us the forum and the framework in which we can try to do that.

I would like to think that the dialogue has already started—I would like to hear from the Minister whether it has. We should be establishing what groups and what individuals in the Middle East pose a threat to stability in the Gulf and to Britain and the West as well. We need to define what we mean by “Islamist groups” and establish how much damage each of them can do through an effective system of monitoring which can identify where secret funding is taking place. In this way we might contribute, in a modest way perhaps, to restoring trust and stability. I will be grateful if the Minister expands on this to say what we are doing about that new and important agreement.