NATO Summit

Richard Ottaway Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am a little bit more optimistic than the hon. Gentleman. The case today is that Afghanistan ground is forbidden to al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda training camps. Post-2001, there were training camps in Afghanistan, but there is none now because of the action that the allies and the Afghan security forces have taken. The question is this: if the allies withdrew now, would the Afghans be able to sustain that? The answer today is no, but the answer by 2014 should, we believe, be yes. Of course there is a lot more help to be given and a lot more capacity to build, and a lot more troops and police need to be trained up, but we can see some success already, because the number of plots that we face from that part of the world has declined, partly because of the action we have taken.

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

I congratulate the Prime Minister on the positive outcome of the summit and, in particular, on the fact that the United States has moved away from 2011 as the date for withdrawal, and towards 2014. However, is not Iran the elephant in the room? It does not appear in the declaration—at least not in substance. Will my right hon. Friend say what the attitude of his partners is towards Iran and, in particular, towards sanctions, which, at the end of the day, is the only weapon that we have?

[The Prime Minister]

There has been good progress on that. The UN Security Council resolution on Iranian sanctions was helpful. The European Union went beyond that and introduced further sanctions. When you look around that room, with all those NATO partners and ISAF partners, you see that there is a pretty good consensus on the need for sanctions and the need to apply them properly. There is a conversation that we go on having with allies such as Turkey about the importance of not seeing any slippage in the sanctions. There are some early signs that they are having some effect on the Iranian regime, but we have to keep that up. As my hon. Friend says, we do not have many other weapons to force a change of mind on the Iranians. The sanctions are a weapon that we have, and we should use them to the best of our ability.