Mali

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My understanding is that this money will indeed come from the contingency fund and that currently no extension or upper limit has been set. However, all these things are under discussion because, at the moment, we are still awaiting the ongoing discussions in that area to find just what the extent will be.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, as the worry is about mission creep, can the Minister confirm that the training by our troops is going to take place in Bamako or in the countries providing the African forces and that our troops will not be training the Malian troops in the advance guard?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Our troops will largely be working with the Anglophone nations there: Nigeria, which is taking the lead, Gambia, Sierra Leone and Ghana. Their training will be in such areas as economics, the law of armed conflict, human rights and good governance. That is the sort of range of aspects where our troops are very well equipped to play a training role, but there is no suggestion from this initial engagement that they will go further than that. We certainly do not wish them to be involved in a combat role.