Mike Gapes
Main Page: Mike Gapes (The Independent Group for Change - Ilford South)Department Debates - View all Mike Gapes's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Ellwood
I do not agree with what my hon. Friend has said, but I agree with the direction of travel he wants. Russia has influence over Assad. We are speaking with the Russians. John Kerry is in Geneva along with Lavrov, al-Jubeir and others, acknowledging the urgency of getting a renegotiated cessation of hostilities so we can get humanitarian aid back in.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister referred to the long term. Can he tell us how long is long term? He also made reference to the vote in this House in 2013. Is not the real failure the fact that our Government and the United States Government did not impose no-fly zones and humanitarian corridors when they could have done in 2011 and 2012? Now it might be very difficult to do so. That is the real failure. Non-intervention is not necessarily the best policy.
Mr Ellwood
I am a former soldier, and I looked at the idea of no-fly zones and humanitarian corridors. I even wrote some papers on it when I was on the Back Benches. The trouble is: who implements them, and what authority would they have to be in the country? We wanted to take Syria through the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court, and guess who vetoed it: China and Russia. That is the difficulty we have. We have to ask ourselves how we would implement and enforce such a no-fly zone. I concur with the spirit of what the hon. Gentleman says, but these are the realities of where we actually are.