Syria

Richard Ottaway Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is very important that the regime and the national coalition are ready to negotiate in a second Geneva conference on the basis of what was agreed at Geneva last year. A large part of the discussions that I had with the national coalition last week was that they must be ready to do that at any time, and that their own dissociation from the use of chemical weapons must be made as clear as possible. They received that message very, very strongly from me last week, and they will continue to do so.

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

When the House debated this matter in August in our response to the chemical weapons attacks in Damascus, we were working on the basis of an extremely short assessment by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Since then, the USA has published a detailed analysis, as have the French and others, and Human Rights Watch has concluded in a very detailed report that the regime was almost certainly responsible for the attacks. To take a requirement cited by the Leader of the Opposition, does my right hon. Friend agree that the evidence against the Syrian Government is now compelling?

[Mr Hague]

The evidence is compelling. In my view, it has always been compelling because, as was clear even at the time of our debate two weeks ago, there was no plausible alternative explanation. It is true, of course, that as time goes on and medical and soil samples are analysed, the evidence gets even stronger. The actual evidence is there, so yes, it is compelling. We now await the report of the UN inspectors. As I have explained before in the House, they do not have a mandate to attribute blame, but of course we hope that their findings will nevertheless be of significance.