Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Alan Duncan(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
The most important thing we can do is to enhance our bilateral relations by visiting. No Minister has visited Belarus for many, many years, if at all, and I intend to do so at the earliest opportunity.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
As well as the physical rebuilding of Mosul, one of the ways to reassure the people of Mosul is to devolve power to them, for which the Iraqi constitution allows. Will the Foreign Secretary urge the Iraqi Administration to look seriously at devolving power to the people of Mosul?
ISIL in Syria
Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Alan Duncan(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir Alan Duncan
May I implore the hon. Lady to appreciate that the search for certainty in the middle east is a vain hope? The watchword I learned 30 years ago when I first went there was, “If you’re not confused, you don’t understand.” It is a very complex world in which we are deciding to act.
Let me move on to my second point. Again, I address this to the Leader of the Opposition: we must not underestimate the extent and nature of the danger we face, and say that because it is all over there, it is not over here. The phenomenon of ISIS/Daesh is not only a vicious force running rampant through that miserable space between Iraq and Syria; it is also fuelling those who would readily walk up the main street of a major city with a suicide bomb or carrying a Kalashnikov. So I urge those who say that air strikes would increase that danger not to give into that narrative: these people are already targeting us now.