Egypt
Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Alistair Burt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the tone and content of his remarks, and particularly for his appreciation of the work of our consular staff in London and Egypt. I think that he and I see the political situation there in very similar terms.
In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question on consular staff, we have 20 members of staff at Cairo airport. They are very visible, because they are wearing orange bibs so that people can see them. I understand that we are the only Government who have staff there. Indeed, a number of them slept there last night in order to be on hand constantly to deal with any issues and to show a degree of solidarity with the British citizens who were required to spend the night at the airport because of the curfew restrictions. We hope we have enough people in place to do the job of answering all the questions.
In terms of EU support over a period of time, Egypt has an association agreement with the EU, which is implemented through a jointly agreed action plan. Although Egypt has implemented some of its commitments on economic reform, progress has been more limited on political and social reform. Indeed, the engagement with the EU contains vital steps on political and social reform—those are pressed on all nations that wish for such relationships. It is only to be hoped that reform ideas will be further implemented as a result of the events that we have seen taking place.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the middle east peace process. He is right that this situation has come at a very difficult point in that process. An awful lot of work is being done to try to get the parties closer together. Egypt has been an ally in terms of moderate Arab opinion, and of course made its own arrangements—a peace agreement—with Israel some time ago. Clearly, whatever Government emerge in Egypt, and whether the president continues or something else happens in due course, our strategic interests remain the same. We clearly hope for a Government in Egypt who see the middle east peace process as the absolute bulwark to the solutions that are needed in that whole region, and who see that it is crucial to proceed with the process. I know that those concerns are shared in Israel.
I welcome what the hon. Gentleman said about media restrictions, and we are pressing Egypt extremely hard on those matters. Egypt has international commitments to freedom of expression, which has been severely curtailed by restrictions on the internet and electronic media. Our sense is that that actually does no good at all, because of the way in which information spreads these days. Clamping down on one media simply squeezes the bubble and more information appears elsewhere. For all sorts of reasons, not least in respect of getting information to people when there are security difficulties, which we need to do, it would be best not to stop information spreading.
The Prime Minister has had conversations with US President Obama, as the Foreign Secretary has with Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Again, there is a common feeling that the demands of the people in Egypt for political reform have been long-standing, and that they are not going to go away, whether they are suppressed or repressed. The only way forward is to look for a proper political process that will give an orderly transition to a state of government of which political reform, free and fair elections, and an acknowledgment and acceptance of free expression, are key parts. On that, the US and UK are absolutely agreed.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman mentioned support for the people of Egypt. As I indicated earlier, it is not for this country to decide what Government there might be, but there are principles that underpin a stable society. Openness, transparency, accountability and a free political system are, in fact, not agents of dangerous change, but the foundations of political stability. The Government share that view with all in the House. We hope that there is an orderly and peaceful transition towards such a future for the people of Egypt.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
The Minister has acknowledged that while the departure of President Mubarak would be welcomed on democratic grounds, it would also remove one of the most powerful forces for foreign policy moderation in the middle east. Does he also acknowledge that Egyptian public opinion is far more radical on the peace process and other issues than the President has been, and therefore that the emergence of populist Government could carry the risk of Egypt aligning itself more with Syria and Iran, which would have very disturbing implications for the prospects of peace in the region?
Alistair Burt
My right hon. and learned Friend makes an important point. Egypt’s place in ensuring regional security and helping towards finding a way through the very difficult problems in the middle east is well known. No one quite knows what will come out of the greater involvement of the democratic process, but it is to be hoped that Egypt’s strategic interests are in regional stability and in furthering the peace process. It will be a matter of free and public debate as to how that argument continues, but this country’s strategic interests and those of others are best served by a Government of whatever sort who recognise my right hon. and learned Friend’s point—that is a Government who ensure stability in the region, and as I indicated earlier, a Government who help all parties to move towards a middle east peace process settlement as quickly and effectively as possible.
European Union Bill
Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Cash
Not disappointed—absolutely appalled.
The sovereignty of Parliament is the most important principle of the United Kingdom constitution, and has been since 1688, as confirmed by constitutional authorities without question until very recently. Indeed, the greatest judge in recent times, the late Lord Bingham, who died only a few months ago, stated in the Jackson case in 2005:
“The bedrock of the British constitution is…the supremacy of the Crown in Parliament.”
I fear that the sovereignty of Parliament is in grave danger, however. There are judges in the Supreme Court whom Lord Bingham himself felt it necessary to name in black and white in chapter 10 of his book “The Rule of Law”, published shortly before his death. He publicly criticised their judgments and their attitude to parliamentary sovereignty. In the Jackson case, Lord Hope, who is now deputy president of the Supreme Court, said that
“parliamentary sovereignty is no longer…absolute”.
He went on to say that, “step by step”, it “is being qualified”. In his view, the rule of law, enforced by the courts, is the ultimate controlling factor on which our constitution is based. Lady Hale, who also remains on the Supreme Court, agreed with Lord Hope.
The fact that that case did not relate specifically to EU law does not alter the fact that the views expressed by Supreme Court judges can be as easily applied to cases involving EU law as to another judicial matter, contrary to the suggestions being put forward by the Minister in evidence earlier. It is not an answer to the question, as the Prime Minister has sought to suggest in a letter to me, for the Minister for Europe to state in his evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee that the Government are not seeking, and have never sought, to provide
“an all-embracing doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty.”
The Supreme Court justices, who have a process of selection outside the Judicial Appointments Commission, have a significant critical mass of those with profoundly Eurocentric credentials. I mention this because the sovereignty of Parliament, which is a constitutional doctrine of the United Kingdom, is also under threat by virtue of the European Communities Act 1972. The construction placed on legislation emanating from that Act affects the daily lives of the electorate in almost every sphere of present-day activity. According to the Government themselves, such legislation affects at least 50% of all economic laws in the United Kingdom, including those that impose burdens on businesses small and large that, according to the best estimates, have cost £124 billion since 1998.
The threat comes not only from the common law radicalism of such judges but from the EU law itself, which claims constitutional supremacy over member states’ constitutions. We have also seen cases of terrorists appearing to get away with things and people not being deported when they should have been, as well as a whole range of other matters occurring under the European Human Rights Act, which, as I have said, is mirrored by the new charter of fundamental rights in the Lisbon treaty. We are witnessing a vast increase in the volume and impact of such legislation on the British people, and this is resulting in the anxieties I have described. Those anxieties could be allayed by my amendments, however, and it is time for us to turn the tide and make it clear exactly where we stand.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
My hon. Friend is undoubtedly correct to say that the role of the courts has increased significantly, but is not the ultimate test of the sovereignty of Parliament whether Parliament can amend the law, either on domestic matters, when the courts have interpreted the law to our dissatisfaction, or in relation to our international treaty obligations, from which Parliament should always have the right to withdraw if it so chooses? Given those circumstances, the sovereignty of Parliament ultimately remains available to us.
Mr Cash
I am extremely grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for that. I agree with the sentiment; the problem is the practice. The difficulty is not only the tsunami of laws: attitudes within the Supreme Court, particularly since the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, have so enhanced its independence that, in conjunction with the arguments it is beginning to present, very serious questions are raised. It was the same with the Bill of Rights of 1688—it was not an Act, but it is regarded as one of the central instruments of our constitution—when Parliament said that it was going to put its foot down and set down a marker that Parliament was sovereign. That is what I am saying in my amendments.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Is my hon. Friend not in danger of being so learned as to confuse himself about his own amendment? The sovereignty of Parliament was not created by an Act of Parliament, and it has never depended on an Act of Parliament. How can its restatement in an Act of Parliament given any real added value to its legitimacy?
Mr Cash
Precisely because the courts have moved further and further down that route, as I explained when quoting Lord Hope’s speech. The Supreme Court has been given independence under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. I see a slight smile appearing on my right hon. and learned Friend’s face.
Oral Answers to Questions
Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hague
I do not think that the NATO summit showed irrational optimism; I think that it showed realism about the situation in Afghanistan. Bringing together all 48 troop-contributing nations of the international security assistance force in one of the sessions at the NATO summit in Lisbon underlined the fact that there are now more countries engaged in what we are doing in Afghanistan than at any stage before. We in no way minimise the fact that there are enormous challenges ahead of us on Afghanistan. Today I have laid before the House a written ministerial statement that updates hon. Members on where we think we are in Afghanistan. Many of those challenges, including in development, remain.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
The Lisbon statement said nothing on the future of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. As the Foreign Secretary will be aware, the United Kingdom gave up its tactical nuclear weapons in the 1990s, as militarily useless and politically irrelevant. Will the British Government now support multilateral negotiations between NATO and Russia, so that tactical nuclear weapons can be removed from Europe as a whole?
Mr Hague
As my right hon. and learned Friend will be aware, we said at Lisbon that NATO would remain a nuclear alliance to meet current and future threats, which does not directly address his point. The statement at Lisbon recognised the role that the alliance can play in supporting wider disarmament and non-proliferation efforts. We agreed at the summit to reviewing how NATO implements those principles. It will discuss all the strategic threats facing the alliance, and the capabilities that we need to meet them, including nuclear deterrence and missile defence. The argument that my right hon. and learned Friend presents will be part of that review.
Oral Answers to Questions
Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Hague
The right hon. Gentleman’s question encapsulates why it is in Israel’s long-term interests to seek agreement on a two-state solution. He is quite right to say that there is a danger to the talks, and therefore to any subsequent talks, and it is vital that all the parties involved are able to get through the end of September with the talks alive. We therefore look to the Government of Israel to take all the steps necessary to renew the settlement moratorium; we have made that quite clear to them. If they were able to do that, it would no doubt contribute enormously to the talks being able to proceed further.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
Does the Foreign Secretary agree with the recent statement by the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States that the possession of nuclear weapons by Iran would constitute such a threat to the security of all the states of the middle east that all options—including, if necessary, military options—must be considered if it became necessary to prevent such a situation from arising?
Mr Hague
I have always argued that all options should be kept on the table, and that the option of military action should not be withdrawn from the table. I have also always stressed that we are not calling for that or advocating it. We do not want to relieve any of the pressure that is currently on Iran, but I must emphasise that I am not advocating military action.
Oral Answers to Questions
Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Alistair Burt
I must say as clearly as possible to the hon. Gentleman and to the House that we regard the settlement policy as wrong and not in the interests of the peace process. That is a position that has been made clear to the Israeli Government over a period of time. It is essential, as he mentioned, that confidence measures are built on both sides. This is an immensely complex process, but there is no doubt that the settlement policy has been seen as a bar to progress in the peace talks. We therefore urge that the moratorium on settlements should remain past September, when it is due to come to an end.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that land swaps of Israeli territory for Palestinian territory, which has already been discussed in the past by Israelis and Palestinians, would form, at the very least, a significant part of a potential solution to the problem outside East Jerusalem? Does he also accept, however, that for the two-state solution to work, the proposed Palestinian state must have a high degree of both territorial integrity and economic viability?
Alistair Burt
My right hon. and learned Friend will know better than most—although most of the House knows as well—that one of the great ironies of the situation is that the draft agreement between the two sides is already well enough known. It has been spoken of many times, and land swaps play their part. We remain of the view that a two-state solution is the thing to be sought, with a universally recognised and secure Israel next to a viable and sovereign Palestine. The work being done on the peace process currently, through the proximity talks, is being much encouraged by this Government.
UK Policy on the Middle East
Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
I congratulate you on your appointment, Mr Deputy Speaker. I also commend my hon. Friend the Minister and the shadow Minister for what were two powerful and profound speeches on an important matter.
The subject of the debate is the middle east. One might therefore expect it to be concentrated on the views of the Arab world, as well as on those of Israel, yet one of the great ironies is that the three most important countries involved in the region—in the sense of being engaged in proactive action at this moment—are Israel, Iran and Turkey, none of which is an Arab state. Part of the difficulty that we face has been the inability, for various reasons, of most of the Arab world to take the kind of proactive role that might have been expected.
In the time available, I want to concentrate on Iran. I want to ask a number of questions, but I want also to offer possible answers to some of them, including to the point raised by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) in an intervention a few moments ago. The first question is: are we right to single out Iran for its almost-certain nuclear arms programme? Often we are told, “Well, there are other nuclear weapons states. Why should Iran be singled out in this way?” I believe that the answer to my question is that we are right to do so, and we are right for two reasons. Compared with the existing nuclear weapons states, Iran—or, more particularly, its President—has gone out of the way to be bellicose in his language, to be threatening to at least one other country in the region and to have aspirations for the aggrandisement of his country, with a willingness to use weapons for that purpose.
However, linked to that is the undoubted fact that, unlike in the case of previous nuclear weapons developments, undesirable though they might have been, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it is painfully obvious not that it will use them directly, but that a consequence will be a destabilisation of the region and the almost near certainty of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey feeling it necessary to go in the same direction. Therefore, the middle east as a whole would become a region with a significant number of nuclear weapons states, with all the awful consequences that that could imply.
That is the first question. The second question is, therefore: is current policy working? Manifestly it is not. We all know that it was meant to be based on carrot and stick. What better carrot could there have been than President Obama’s offer of a grand dialogue with Iran and the normalisation of relations? Instead, that was thrown in his face. There were not even failed negotiations; the negotiations never began, because Iran rejected that possibility. We know also that sanctions—important though they are, and much as we welcome the latest decision by the United Nations Security Council—will not by themselves achieve a change of heart in Tehran.
I therefore come to the third question: is it possible that a policy of diplomacy and pressure could work? Is there a scenario in which it might work? The answer, I believe, is yes, if two conditions are satisfied. First, Russia and China are crucial, because although they supported the resolution last week, we know that their support is grudging. We also know that they have consistently taken on board their short-term considerations—in particular, their trade relationships with Iran and other aspects of their foreign policy—rather than standing four-square with the rest of the Security Council. Russia in particular, as a neighbour of the middle east and Iran, and with a large Muslim minority in its own territory, has as much to be concerned about by a nuclear-armed Iran as any country in the west, as does China, because of its particular position. Russia and China, therefore, if they look to their self-interest, ought to be able to share the position of the United Kingdom, the United States and others on the need for a total uniformity of view on the question of pressing Iran.
However, it is not just Russia and China; it is also the Arab states that I mentioned earlier. Anyone who goes to any of the countries of the region—and I have been to most of them—will find that, in private, people will say that they are as horrified as we are at the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran. But try getting them to put their heads above the parapet—try getting them to support publicly what the United States and the Security Council are trying to do—and all sorts of reasons are given as to why it is too difficult, why it would be unpopular in their countries and why it all depends on what Israel does, along with various other excuses.
That would not worry me but for the consequence of that resistance to coming out and sharing people’s real views, which is that Ahmadinejad is able to say to the world, “This isn’t the international community versus Iran; this is simply the United States and its closest allies.” What we need is not a coalition of the willing, but a coalition of the relevant. We need those countries of the region to join the west—and, I hope, Russia and China—to take a common position on the issue. That is what happened in the first Gulf war, when Kuwait was being liberated. Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia publicly supported—with troops, as well as through diplomacy—what the United States-led coalition was doing. Pressure could work, therefore, but until that change takes place, it is less likely to do so.
The main point that I want to concentrate on in the time left is if the methods that I have described do not work—I refer now to the intervention of a few minutes ago—what then do we do? Do we simply say, “Well, that’s too bad. There’s nothing we can do”? There is the question of the military option. People have rightly pointed out that the downside is a pretty dreadful downside. If military action is taken by either the United States or Israel, it will almost certainly lead to Iran enabling Hamas or Hezbollah to become even more proactive and attack Israel, as well as fomenting mischief in Iraq, with the price of oil going sky high and the straits of Hormuz perhaps being closed.
All that is true, and I cannot say that it would not be likely to happen. However—and this is an important “however”—all those things would be relatively short-term events, and I stress “relatively”. They would last a few days or a few weeks, or perhaps two or three months. An Iran with a nuclear weapon, however, would be around for years to come—for ever. Therefore, it is not good enough simply to say, “There is a downside. Therefore, the military option cannot be considered at any stage.” We have to come to a judgment on the balance of advantage. Is the balance of advantage to accept major problems if military action was taken, if—and this is an important “if”—it would remove the nuclear threat from Iran?
However, everything that I have said on this issue depends on whether the military option is a real option. Would it actually deliver? That is the fundamental question that Britain, America, Israel and the wider international community have to consider. I do not have time to go into the detail, but I make the point that the objective must be to come to an honest judgment. If diplomacy fails, if sanctions do not work and if there is no peaceful alternative, then we will have to come to an honest view on whether the military option—whether by the United States or Israel—would destroy Iran’s nuclear capacity or, even if it did not, so degrade it as to make Iran unable to have nuclear weapons for a good few years to come.
I conclude by simply saying this. In this rather imperfect world in which we live, it is not good enough to ask, “What is the perfect solution to this dilemma?” The real question that we have to ask—or at least that Governments have to ask—is what is the least bad option? If the military advice was that we could either remove Iran’s nuclear capacity or degrade it for a long period, Iran must realise that, at some stage, that might be what happens. It would not be an ideal solution, but it might still be better than the alternatives.
Foreign Affairs and Defence
Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Hague
I am merely saying that there are a range of issues for the Government to address. I explained earlier how our concentration in our collective discussions on international affairs has been very much on Afghanistan. The three meetings of the National Security Council that we have had so far have concentrated overwhelmingly on Afghanistan. We have not yet determined the exact action that we will take on universal jurisdiction. However, that is after two weeks in office. As I said, the former Government had a good deal longer to try to deal with these things.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
Although most of the comment so far has concerned Tzipi Livni and visitors from Israel, the Foreign Secretary knows as well as I do that these powers could be used against any visitor from many other countries around the world, including the United States. If there are any difficulties in reaching an early decision, I hope that those who are cautious about making such a change will bear in mind that this is not simply about Israel but about the United Kingdom being able to welcome visitors from many countries and not being prevented from doing so by some technical aberration.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
I welcome the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) to the club of former Foreign Secretaries. May I pay tribute to the work he did as Foreign Secretary? He served his country well during his period in office. It is clear that he now has his mind on other matters—indeed, he indirectly referred to it in his speech. The country will face the unusual situation of two brothers vying for the highest position in their party. I must tell him that the precedents are not encouraging. I am thinking not so much of Cain and Abel, because so far as we know, the two brothers in this contest are very amiable towards each other, but of Moses and Aaron. The right hon. Gentleman will recall that sadly, Moses never reached the promised land. That was left to Aaron, who turned out to be his younger brother. We must wait and see what the future holds.
I also congratulate my right hon. Friends the new Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Defence. I have been privileged to have been involved with both Departments and—as my right hon. Friends will already know—they are two marvellous Departments to look after, each unique in its own way. The special role of the diplomatic service is different from that found in any other Department, and the armed forces clearly have their own role.
I was sad that the right hon. Member for South Shields made a rather snide remark about the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham). He was my Parliamentary Private Secretary, is well known in the Foreign Office and was an entirely suitable appointment. He will serve it extremely well.
I was especially pleased that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said—and the Prime Minister has agreed—that the new Government do not wish to preside over strategic shrinkage, because they wish to maintain Britain’s role in the world at its previous level. That is important at a time when both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence will face the serious prospect of heavy cuts. I make one particular point to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. Although he will have to absorb his share of the cuts, I hope that he will not be tempted or persuaded to allow any embassies or high commissions to be closed. That has been the temptation in the past, but the damage that it does is disproportionate to the relatively minor savings achieved. Closing the high commission or embassy in Vanuatu, Costa Rica or Niger may sound as if it would only upset those countries, but in fact the whole region—be it Africa, Asia or the Pacific—would interpret it as a sign of growing disinterest on the part of the United Kingdom.
The closure of such embassies or high commissions by a Conservative Government might have another ironic consequence, because it would create a vacuum, that I predict would be filled by the new External Action Service of the European Union. British interests would have to be represented somehow, and it would be ironic if our withdrawal led to the European Union having to fill the gap. I hope that the Government will not succumb to that temptation.
Jeremy Corbyn
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman share my concern at the large number of embassies and missions that have been closed in Latin America and the growing centralisation of diplomatic representation in Mexico and one or two other places, which is seen as offensive in many of the smaller countries in that region?
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Yes. I recognise, of course, that at this moment we can keep only a modest high commission or embassy in some places, but a micro-embassy is better than none at all, because it can be built on when the financial situation eases.
I turn now to the wider question of the foreign policy that has been pursued over the last 13 years. It has been an extraordinary period. It is often forgotten that we have been virtually continuously at war for most of that time—in Kosovo, in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. There has never been such a period of uninterrupted military action. Some of these wars have been wars of choice, and some have been wars of necessity. Kosovo and Iraq were wars of choice. We had not been attacked, nor had any of our allies, but in both cases the Government of the day—led at the time by Tony Blair—concluded that there was some reason to initiate those wars in the name of liberal interventionism. Afghanistan is different. Although there may be equal concern and nervousness about the outcome, Afghanistan has been, and continues to be, a war of necessity, because it originated with the al-Qaeda attack on the United States, and it is important to recognise what flows from that.
A war of choice is different to a war of necessity. With the Falklands war and the first Gulf war—provoked by the invasion of Kuwait—winning the war was relatively straightforward. Conventional forces were used to expel the Argentines from the Falklands and the Iraqis from Kuwait, the wars were over and the mission accomplished. However, when a decision must be made to initiate a conflict that is not simply the expulsion of an enemy from a given bit of territory, but rather to eliminate a future threat, the situation—as in Afghanistan—is much more complex and cannot be addressed in traditional terms.
The problem has been increased by the tendency in the early years of the Afghan situation for the Government to try to win public support for what they were doing by talking of the need to eliminate poverty and corruption, to build democracy and to achieve equality for women in Afghanistan. Those are all worthy objectives, but they have very little to do with the reason we were there in the first place. We all know that the elimination of corruption, the improvement of women’s rights and the growth of democracy will take a generation, but by putting them on an equal footing with the need to eliminate the threat from terrorism, we were bound to give the impression that because those objectives had not been achieved within four or five years we had failed in our strategic endeavour.
The reality is that the primary aim of our presence in Afghanistan has already been achieved. We have eliminated al-Qaeda as a credible force within Afghanistan. They are now in their caves on the border, struggling to survive, although I do not claim that they do not represent a threat in other parts of the world. However, their ability to use the sovereign state of Afghanistan to plan and launch attacks around the world has been eliminated and the objective now is to ensure that that is irreversible. However, that requires a political as well as a military solution, as others have said. It requires the ability to create a Government in Afghanistan who, more than Mr Karzai does at present, represent the overall spectrum of Afghan opinion. The UK has had to contemplate a coalition to deal with our national problems, so it is not too much to expect Afghanistan also to see the need for movement in that direction.
I shall suggest the ingredients required over the next few months—even the next two or three years—to make the progress we wish to achieve in Afghanistan. First, we need to support the surge that is taking place at the moment. The decision by President Obama to increase troop numbers was correct, and the way in which the NATO forces are operating sends a message to the Taliban that we do not simply intend to try to end our presence in Afghanistan as quickly as possible regardless of the consequences. Secondly, we need a major effort to develop links and contacts with those in the Taliban who are not committed to al-Qaeda and who have more interest in Afghanistan than in international terrorism. Many of them come from the Pashtun section of the population, which is 40% of the total, so they need to be part of the new Afghanistan whenever possible.
Thirdly, we need to insist on Afghanistan and Pakistan improving their relationship with each other. It is not often realised that the hostile relationship between those two countries goes back to 1949. The Durand line—the border between the two countries—has never been recognised by Afghanistan, and the assistance that elements in the Pakistani Government have given to the Taliban has been significantly influenced by their fear of Pashtun nationalism and the belief that elements in Afghanistan have not reconciled themselves to the existing border. If Afghanistan, under President Karzai or whomever, wishes to have our full and unqualified support, the least that we should expect from it is a greater effort to ensure a cordial relationship with Pakistan. Unless those two countries work together, not just in name but in substance, the prospects of achieving peace look difficult indeed.
Fourthly, by all means let us have economic and social development in Afghanistan, but let us emphasise that as a long-term strategic objective. It will take a generation and although Afghanistan rightly deserves to be one of our priorities for such expenditure, it should not be linked—for the reasons that I mentioned earlier—to the military effort, which is based on different principles.
Fifthly, we need to build more regional support. Unique to Afghanistan—and therefore very different from Iraq—is that when these matters were discussed in the Security Council of the UN, there was unanimous support for the operation that NATO is undertaking. Both Russia and China have powerful reasons for wishing us to succeed in Afghanistan, but we are not using the potential co-operation from those countries, especially China, to build the necessary support.
Finally, when we look to a future in which NATO forces can be gradually run down—when that can be done safely and wisely—we should seek to achieve a treaty relationship with the Afghan Government so that even after NATO ground forces have gone, we continue to provide air support, the services of special forces and other measures to ensure that in those parts of Afghanistan that its Government may not yet control we will be able to prevent any reappearance of the Taliban or al-Qaeda in a way that would damage our interests.
We can look forward to a more satisfactory outcome to this dilemma. I salute the Government’s intentions, and I was delighted by the early visit made to Afghanistan, which demonstrates their determination to implement a successful strategy in all our interests.