Libya

Lord Trimble Excerpts

Friday 1st April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trimble]

My Lords, I shall comment only on Libya, and indeed on only two aspects of it, avoiding the temptation to follow a number of other points that have been raised by noble Lords, as in the time available it would be better to concentrate my remarks. Of the two points that I wish to make, one is quite short, although I shall deal with the second at greater length.

The short one relates to the character of Gaddafi’s forces. When this situation began, I noticed press reports that Gaddafi was calling in debts from sub-Saharan countries that he had helped in the past. In particular, I noticed reports of troops being flown in from Eritrea and Zimbabwe—presumably to replace desertions from Gaddafi’s army. I have heard recently that similar support has come from Chad and Niger. Can the Minister confirm that that is the case? Can he also confirm that it is contrary to Security Council Resolution 1973? Is it still happening? What is being done to interdict these reinforcements, and do they not now constitute a very substantial part of Gaddafi’s army?

I can understand noble Lords’ concern that coalition forces should not intervene directly or invade Libya, but I think we should recognise that some other countries have already done that. There is not an even playing field in this respect and we should be more alert to the problem. We are not talking about fighting Gaddafi’s forces; these are not Gaddafi’s forces, and we should deal with that as well. Parenthetically, one thing that we should not do, but which Resolution 1973 appears to do, is to hide behind the pretence that these are mercenaries. I do not think that they are.

The other matter relates to the actions of the European Union. On Monday and Tuesday, 14 and 15 March, members of your Lordships’ EU Sub-Committee C visited Brussels. As noble Lords will know, that was a few days after David Cameron and Mr Sarkozy had been rebuffed by the Council of Ministers over the proposal for a Libyan no-fly zone. The sub-committee was primarily concerned with an inquiry into south Sudan, but we also took some evidence on Libya and I want to refer to some of that.

However, what I found most telling was the dinner that had been organised by UKREP on Monday, which was attended by several representatives from other member states at ambassadorial level. One should note that this came after support had been indicated by the Arab League. During the evening, I was struck by the vehemence of the rejection of any form of help for the Libyan democratic opposition. Not all but most of those present were using almost any argument they could lay their hands on to avoid dealing with a very clear problem right on their own doorstep. They ended by asserting that it was now too late to do anything —something that was nearly true on the subsequent Saturday but was certainly not true on that Monday.

On Tuesday, we took evidence from Mr Mingarelli, the director of the Middle East and Southern Neighbourhood, External Action Service. He brought out a more substantial problem with a no-fly zone. He said:

“Everybody says that only NATO has the capacity to mount such an operation … quickly. I have heard our chief of military staff, General van Osch, saying that it would take a long time for the EU to mount such an operation while NATO could do that rather quickly”.

Mr Mingarelli also commented on regional support. He said on the Tuesday that,

“I was yesterday in Cairo. Amr Moussa told Lady Ashton very clearly that the Arab League requests the Security Council ... to impose a no-fly zone. ... Amr Moussa was a little amazed yesterday because Lady Ashton was asking for clarification of his position. He said, ‘But there is nothing to clarify. It is clear. Look at our statement. We request the Security Council to take all necessary measures to impose a no-fly zone for the sake of protecting civilians. So what more do you want?’”.

There are some external matters that the European Union can handle, an example being trade. However, an urgent crisis with a potential military dimension is quite another matter. The EU seems instinctively to shy away from such, even in cases such as Libya, where inaction would produce a worse case, even from a purely internal EU outlook. I think that it is bad to shy away from such problems. It is even worse to create arguments against action to cover up an inability or unwillingness to act. Moreover, it is positively dangerous to pretend to be an actor in a situation while lacking the will and the capability to act. When you do not have the will and the capability, you should withdraw with such grace as you can muster instead of intermeddling in the situation to frustrate other people. That, I fear, is where the EU has left itself.

Now, it could be said that in a sense it did not matter—that Britain and France got the Security Council resolution a few days later—and it could be said that an extended debate on the issue was perhaps no bad thing. Indeed, Alistair Burt, in giving evidence to our committee, very gallantly and diplomatically took that line, and I hope that our European partners will reciprocate his consideration in due course.

More realistically, the French Foreign Minister is reported to have said that these events have killed the Union’s CSDP. I think he is right in substance but, unfortunately, I see that the Union is returning to playing games rather than being a player. I refer to the draft Council decision on a European Union military operation to support humanitarian assistance in Libya, which I understand is due for decision today. Our sub-committee became aware of this just yesterday morning. Of course, humanitarian assistance is a good thing but that has been there from the outset. The question, then, is: what is the EU military element going to do if it is attached to such an expedition? I see that the draft Council decision—it may have changed by this afternoon—recites that Egypt and Tunisia have,

“agreed on a possible EU military presence in their respective countries”.

That can mean only that humanitarian assistance is going to be delivered across the borders from Tunisia or Egypt and that an EU military presence will be there. However, what is that military presence going to do? The directive goes on at great length about the various operations and about establishing strategic control to rest with the Political and Security Committee, as well as various other things, until it finally staggers down to Article 8, where it says that consultation will take place with the African Union and NATO as appropriate. This does not seem to be a coherent way of planning a military operation which is ongoing, particularly when we bear in mind the way in which some of these countries have acted in these matters. I hope that HMG are in a position to get a better outcome if a decision is taken today. However, I leave that to the Minister.

I conclude with another gem from Tuesday’s evidence. It was given by Commissioner Fule, which I hope I am pronouncing correctly, who explained the European Union’s neighbourhood policy. He concluded:

“The neighbourhood policy, so far, is a set of instruments that will take us from point A to point B, but we have never defined point B”.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Trimble]

Wait, my Lords. He continued:

“We always hide behind words like ‘creating a tone of stability, prosperity and peace’”.

The noble Lord, Lord Radice, intervened, “And democracy”. Commissioner Fule replied:

“We have never used that word”.

Therein lies another problem.