Syria

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

As I said in my statement, we are increasingly concerned about the regime’s possible use, or possible willingness to use, chemical weapons, and we are always concerned about any transfer of those weapons to other groups or other countries in the region, as are many of those countries. We send the strong message that I conveyed in my statement—and the President of the United States himself has conveyed a similar strong message—about the use of chemical weapons by anyone, including the Syrian regime.

It is important for the Syrian regime to hear the message that the world will be determined that the individuals responsible are held to account if chemical weapons are used.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I strongly support the Foreign Secretary’s stand on this very difficult issue. Will he tell Mr Bogdanov this afternoon that, with 1 million fled and as many as 100,000 dead, the Syrian catastrophe now stands comparison with the Rwandan genocide, which led the international community to adopt the responsibility-to-protect doctrine in the first place, and that Russia should engage with coalition forces or face the prospect of a jihadist regime, which neither we nor it would want?

[Mr Hague]

Basically, I will tell him that—yes. That is part of the argument I stated earlier: Russia is rightly concerned about international terrorism—Russians have experience of that themselves—and if this situation goes on for many more months or years, we will see a much greater opening for such international terrorism. This is becoming a human catastrophe of immense proportions, so my hon. Friend can be confident that I will make this argument to my Russian counterpart in the robust terms he would want.