Yemen

Debate between Richard Ottaway and Tobias Ellwood

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, with his personal connections to the country, for the expertise he brings to the House and for his leadership as chair of the all-party parliamentary group. I appreciate the urgency of the question, but we were not going to make a statement because the situation continues to be fluid. What we say today could well be outdated by tomorrow. The Prime Minister is under house arrest, the President has moved to the south and the leader of the Houthis made a 75-minute statement on television yesterday but did not declare that he was now the leader of Yemen. The situation remains extremely fluid.

The right hon. Gentleman sums up the situation accurately and I agree with him. Strategically, Yemen is an important country for Britain. We have historical connections with it and we have devoted much work to it. I am pleased that he has had the opportunity to speak to my counterpart in DFID about the work we are doing to provide political stability and economic direction as well as improvements to security. He mentions the attack on Charlie Hebdo, and that is a reminder to all countries—not just those in the region but those further off, including Britain—of how terrorism and extremism can leave a region and move much closer to home. We heed his words very carefully.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the United States embassy. It is located in a different part of the city from ours and has its own evacuation programme. Each embassy must make its own judgment on what is necessary. The number of Britons operating in Yemen is extremely low and there are good connections between the embassy and those who choose to go against the travel advice I mentioned earlier.

The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned the Friends of Yemen. Let me elaborate on that. That is the organisation run through the United Nations that is co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and Britain. It comprises more than 40 countries and the past couple of years up to $8 billion has been granted to Yemen to help with political, economic and security reform. We must obviously assess the changes that have taken place, but the peace and national partnership agreement is critical. That is a document that has been signed by the President and agreed by the Houthis and given the sentiment expressed in the 75-minute speech I mentioned, we hope that all parties can come around the table and work towards a peaceful solution.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is a spoiler and an example of extremism. The worry about the Ma’rib region, which the Houthis are now pushing into, is that there are pockets of al-Qaeda and there will be a conflict of extremism there unless there is an agreement. That is what we are now working towards.

[Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

I welcome the question of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and agree with the sentiment contained in it, as well as with the Minister’s response. I welcome his tone. The Minister says that our embassy remains open, but can he assure me that if the situation deteriorates measures will be taken to get our staff out and to protect them? Finally, there are media reports about a connection between the Charlie Hebdo attack and the situation in Yemen. Is the Minister in a position to comment further on that?

[Mr Ellwood]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs for his question and the manner in which he asks it. He asks at what point we should evacuate the embassy. I will speak to the ambassador later today and evacuation plan is already in place, but it has not yet been activated. I will speak to the ambassador and ensure that the House is updated if the situation changes. He asked about the connections between al-Qaeda and the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It has been reported that there is a link and that the individuals were trained in Yemen. The French authorities are working on that and we are working closely with them to provide support in their endeavours.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Richard Ottaway and Tobias Ellwood

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

First, I pay tribute to the work my right hon. Friend did as Minister with responsibility for the middle east. I am grateful for the support he has already provided me with, and I hope it continues. He rightly says that we must participate, with other nations, in looking for a long-term solution. A cessation of the violence will allow the opportunity to tackle the underlying causes of instability in the Gaza strip, without which the long-term security of both Israel and Gaza will not be secured.

[Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

The Israeli defence forces have detected 18 Hamas-built tunnels and found 45 others extending from Gaza into Israel. Many of the tunnels in Gaza originate in civilian areas, beneath homes, greenhouses and mosques. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is quite understandable that Israel seeks to find these tunnels and destroy them to protect its country and its civilians?

[Mr Ellwood]

It is worrying that on 8 July a Hamas spokesman called on civilians in the Gaza strip to serve as human shields. We have seen on television the pictures of those tunnels, and I have seen reports that 20% of the concrete that goes into Gaza is put to use in making them. That is a shocking indictment of the priorities of Hamas and it needs to change.

North Africa and the Middle East

Debate between Richard Ottaway and Tobias Ellwood

Thursday 17th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my predecessor as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Leaving aside his international adventures on behalf of the Labour party, I agree with everything that he said. I also pay tribute to the excellent speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames). No one has a better knowledge of the Arab world than he has. There was much power in what he said. I particularly agree with the important point that the EU has a role to play in this.

It was Comrade Lenin who said that revolution is unpredictable but when it comes it comes very quickly. I think that the speed with which everything has happened has caught us all very much on the wrong foot. With hindsight, we should have seen it coming after last year’s food riots in Egypt, brought about by unsustainable levels of population growth and the fact that 50% of its population is under 25. The other factor that combined with others to form the prefect storm is the role of the internet as the method of communication of those young people, which the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) referred to. The situation is fast-moving but has a long way to go. I watch with concern how things are developing in Bahrain and possibly in Saudi Arabia. I believe that things will get worse before they get better.

I support what the Prime Minister said in his statement on Monday: that we must encourage freedom, democracy and an open society in the Arab world. He said that against the background of the EU resolution calling for broader market access and political co-operation. These are desperately important factors, but there is a whiff of inconsistency here. We have lived with this situation since the second world war, and the reason we have turned a blind eye to much of this is that we want the energy resources of the region. I think that we should give those countries time to make the transition. In Britain, 300 years passed between the civil war and women getting the vote, so we should not be driven by the drumbeat of the 24/7 media. We should give those countries time to develop their reforms as they come naturally.

The major issue of the day, and the one I have been most concerned about for some weeks, is the no-fly zone. The Prime Minister set out three conditions that would have to be met before he would support a no-fly zone: regional support, a demonstrable need and a clear legal basis. With the resolution of the Arab League, there is clearly regional support. Demonstrable need is subjective. We have moved on from the slaughter of innocent women and children and now have a civil war in Libya. In truth, we will be taking sides, and the rebels are armed. I think that we have to look at the clear legal basis very carefully indeed, because we can see the mess that we got into in Iraq because of the uncertainty over whether there was a clear legal basis. What we need is clarification.

The need for a UN chapter VII resolution is crystal clear, but I would be surprised, and relieved, if we got it. Whether or not Russia or China will veto it remains to be seen. If we do get it, we can all row in behind the Government because we will have a clear legal basis. I wish them well in their efforts in the coming hours to achieve that.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s very powerful speech. He mentioned the Prime Minister’s three conditions. I humbly urge caution, in the words used by the Arab League. It is an important symbolic gesture, bringing together a collective voice, but it has no power. The organisation is made up of Foreign Ministers who have no organisational power over many of the dictators to whom they report back. In making a statement and linking it to their respective Governments, they have as much power as the Foreign Affairs Committee has when it produces a report.

[Richard Ottaway]

In that case it has great force. Joking aside, my hon. Friend makes an important point, but we cannot ignore a resolution of the Arab League. It is indicative of the way things are shifting.

My concern is that we might get a legal basis that is not clear. If we do not get a chapter VII resolution, the fallback situation would be what is known in the UN as a responsibility to protect. It is not clear whether that is a part of international law. It suggests

“collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII”.

It sets as high a hurdle as a chapter VII resolution. We are yet to see how things will develop, but I would be rather surprised if we were to get that through. We would then be left with a legal basis that was not clear. If there is another doctrine, I would very much like to hear it.

Yesterday, the Government added a fourth condition: the national interest. In the Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday I asked the Foreign Secretary how he would reply to a request from a country such as Ivory Coast, where genocide was going on, or Burma or Somalia—there are plenty of places with internal conflict. He replied that that has to be judged on a case-by-case basis, and that is under the national interest. If we intervene in Libya, will that set a precedent that will be relied on by those countries?

That means, in effect, that we are picking our countries. Let us be clear exactly what that means. It is a reincarnation of the Chicago doctrine introduced by Tony Blair 12 years ago. It is worth reading the speech that he made in April 2009 in Chicago, 10 years after his original speech in Chicago. He said that it

“argued strongly for an active and engaged foreign policy, not a reactive or isolationist one: better to intervene than to leave well alone. Be bold, adventurous even in what we can achieve.”

That is a pretty gung-ho approach. I am not saying that the current Government are being gung-ho, but it is a warning about how we could get carried away unless we sit back, are rational and address the need for a clear legal basis.

We then have the problem of what will happen if another Arab state behaves in the same way as Libya does. We have seen what is going on in Bahrain, with the state of emergency. We all heard reports on the radio this morning of protesters being killed. We cannot intervene in every case. We could end up with a very awkward situation where one Arab country provides aircraft to help police the no-fly zone and then ends up attacking its own people. Then what is our national interest?

I would add a fifth condition. If this does not succeed, we must have a strategy. There has to be a plan B. Where exactly is this leading? My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has great experience of the no-fly zone in Bosnia, and there was a no-fly zone in Iraq. In both cases, we had to put in ground troops to seal the deal and finish the job. A no-fly zone in Libya is most likely to end up with a stalemate in which the rebels cannot lose and Gaddafi cannot win.

European External Action Service

Debate between Richard Ottaway and Tobias Ellwood

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Richard Ottaway]

That is my point, and I do not believe that the subsequent demands have changed things at all.

The negotiations of the past few months have highlighted the continued existence of widely diverging views about how the EU should make external policy, and the scale of the change of mindset that will be required in some quarters to focus on the generation of a more seamless external policy for the Union. Whether or not one believes that the EAS is workable or necessary in the first place, the manner in which it has been achieved hardly gives rise to optimism that there can be effective implementation of EU policy.

My hon. Friends have set out emotive views about the EU, and on behalf of the FAC I shall simply concentrate on the nuts and bolts of the system and pose a few questions to the Minister. The assessment of the deal between the Council and the European Parliament, which is now before us, may depend very much on the legal status of the additional declarations and statements that Baroness Ashton has now agreed to make. The explanatory memorandum refers to those as “accompanying” the decision and as

“forming part of the overall political agreement”.

I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify the legal status of those documents and the degree to which they are relied on.

I would welcome reassurance from the Minister that the deal now before us does not give the Commission or the European Parliament any greater power over the budget for the common foreign and security policy. With the abandonment of the Western European Union by the previous Government, there is now a bit of a lacuna in that area of oversight.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) raised the way in which the High Representative delegates her responsibilities. The Lisbon treaty did not create a wholly new, specially fashioned position but was intended to encourage greater coherence in the EU’s external policies simply by giving three different jobs to the same person. That raises the question of who is to deputise for the High Representative when she cannot be in several places at once. The Minister responded to that point, but some further clarification would be welcome. How is that done? Where is the procedure set out and what is the authority for it? Who is the Foreign Minister of Hungary speaking for? I know that he is speaking for the High Representative, but where does he get his brief and to whom does he report?

The new EU delegations to third countries and international organisations are to be upgraded from the existing European Commission delegations. The increased role of those delegations seems to me potentially one of the most significant changes resulting from the Lisbon treaty, both for the EU and for national foreign ministries. Does the Foreign Office see any need to issue specific guidance to UK posts about how they should work with the new EU delegations, particularly as regards the sharing of information and intelligence?

[Mr Ellwood]

Has my hon. Friend had the opportunity to meet Ambassador Ušackas, the new EU representative in Afghanistan? He passed through London and is now in Kabul, but his remit and how it sits with United Nations directives and those of the international security assistance force is unclear. We have signed up to the ISAF mission, but we are also part of the EU and are therefore expected to form part of the ambassador’s mission. There is a dichotomy in interests.