Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Tapsell Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

All the decisions that were made and set out in the communiqué at the end of the Somalia conference are to be taken forward by different authorities, and in this case by the authorities in Somalia, through the creation of a new constituent assembly and, then, a more legitimate and representative Parliament. That is a process that is there to be engaged with by people who want to be part of a peace process and want now to transform the position of their country. There will be some who are irreconcilable and wedded to violence, which is why the parallel agreement on expanding the funding of the AMISOM—African Union Mission in Somalia—forces is also important. This process is to be taken forward in Somalia, by Somalis, under the Garowe principles.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

May I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend and the whole of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on their remarkable diplomatic and organisational achievement in convening such a widely attended conference? With an estimated 600,000 Somali refugees now living in Kenya, we now have an unusually valuable opportunity to ensure that our overseas aid expenditure goes on resettling them in their own country, before they unsettle Kenya.