UK and Georgia

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under you, Mr Betts.

I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Georgia. I have just returned from Georgia’s European week, which I attended with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and the shadow Europe Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David). Other friends in the Georgia group, from other parties, were in the country earlier this year.

It is also a pleasure and honour to have the Chairman of the Georgian Parliament, Mr David Bakradze, with us. He has already met Mr Speaker, and we will be meeting the Foreign Secretary this afternoon.

I have a series of questions to put to the Minister, and I hope that he will write to me if he cannot deal with them in his speech.

Ninety years ago, Georgia was a peaceful, social democratic nation, which had escaped the clutches of imperial Russia. Schools, trade unions, co-operatives and votes for women were all established on the Black sea, but that was intolerable to that son of Georgia Mr Stalin, who sent in the Russian army to crush the spirit of freedom and to re-colonise Georgia.

Fast forward eight decades, and Russia looked unhappily on the rose revolution in Georgia, just as it looked unhappily on the orange revolution in Ukraine and on efforts in the other Baltic nations once occupied as Russian colonies to establish their freedom fully. In 2008, matters came to a head with the invasion of Georgia by Russian land, sea and air forces. The tiny Georgian forces fought valiantly and actually shot down a number of Russian aircraft.

However, having occupied large swathes of Georgian territory, Russia did not seek a repeat of 1921. One reason was the courage of the then Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, who flew to Georgia in August 2008 with other European leaders to show personal solidarity. At the time, the Prime Minister told the “Today” programme:

“One of the most important things we continue to do is stand by Georgia, give Georgia support—support in terms of rebuilding the infrastructure that’s been smashed and broken, support in saying ‘You will be welcome as members of the EU and NATO.’”

I believe that the Prime Minister was speaking for the broad mass of the British people in 2008, when he referred on the BBC to the

“alternative of appeasing Russia and saying, ‘All right then, Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states, these are your backyard, you can do what you like there and we’ll just turn a blind eye’. I think that would make our world far less stable, far less secure. Russia has to understand that she has lost an empire, just as we lost an empire. You have to come to terms with that and it does take time.”

I am not sure whether, during the remainder of this Parliament, I shall again quote at such length and with such agreement the words of the Prime Minister, but he was right then, and his comments remain right today. Will the Minister repeat the Prime Minister’s words, and confirm that the Government’s view is still that the presence of Russian troops and the de facto annexation of the territory of a sovereign UN member state—Georgia—is not acceptable?

The Prime Minister will be aware that two small countries, which were no doubt offered suitable inducements, have offered to recognise the occupied Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. One is Nicaragua, which is currently seeking to negotiate an EU association agreement. Will the Government make it clear to our good friend, Baroness Ashton, that the UK will veto any such association agreement while Nicaragua maintains its recognition of the illegally occupied sovereign territory of Georgia? Might is not right, and the fate and future of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia require careful handling and a new approach. It cannot be right, and does not serve the interests of the people who live there or the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, notably from Abkhazia, who are keen to return home, to maintain the fiction that these are independent states.

There will soon be elections in both Russia and Georgia. On past visits, the Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili, told me that he would not seek to stay in office or imitate Mr Putin, who seems to alternate between being President and Prime Minister of Russia in the time-honoured way of pre-1989 Russian rule. I hope that Mr Saakashvili maintains that principled decision, because one of the curses of the post-Soviet political space is the failure to understand the need to have what the French call alternance—a change of Government and a change of leader. The desire of leaders to stay in power for ever debilitates all democratic politics.

There is a genuine problem with the lack of coherent opposition in Georgia. Many are opposed to Mr Saakashvili, but even the most diehard of his opponents would find it hard to disagree that the opposition spends as much time in opposition to itself as to Mr Saakashvili. It seeks short cuts to power, such as staging street protests with windy claims that Mr Saakashvili will be ousted.

Last year, I was in Georgia when the opposition created a tent city around the Parliament, and stopped Georgian MPs attending to their parliamentary business. I listened to the speeches then, just as I saw with hon. Friends the demonstrations last week. I gently pointed out that it is a denial of democracy to try to prevent elected parliamentarians from attending their Assembly, Congress or Parliament. The demonstrations 10 days ago turned nasty when a handful of opposition militants covered their faces in cagoules—we might call them balaclavas—which are the symbol of the extreme right throughout Europe’s political history, and used sticks to attack people and the police. The police certainly overreacted and tragically there were deaths, just as there was a death at the London G8 demonstration three years ago.

The Minister for Europe rightly called for an investigation, and there must be no effort to brush what happened under the carpet, but equally the message must be that deliberate provocation aimed at inducing an overreaction with a view to destabilising the country is the antithesis of democratic European politics. I should be grateful if the Minister will write to me with details of the serious allegations that the people who were arrested in Georgia, some of whom were carrying explosives, were apparently sent on the order of forces outside the country to plant small bombs as part of a deliberate strategy to create tension and destabilisation in Georgia.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend referred to the demonstration in Tbilisi some 10 days ago, and to elements of the demonstration who were intent on causing trouble. Will he confirm what I saw there: individuals with sticks, weapons and balaclavas who were clearly intent on making trouble rather than having a peaceful demonstration?

[Mr MacShane]

My hon. Friend is right. He never misses a good demonstration if there is one to witness or take part in, and his witness statement is an important correction to the view that the violence came only from the state security services, even if in my judgment—I have spent too much of my life at too many demonstrations—there was an overreaction by the state authorities.

A strategy of deliberate tension will not help the people of Georgia, who need bread and roses, jobs and freedom, and the patient establishment of democratic norms and values. This morning, Mr Speaker did his opposite number, the Chairman of the Georgian Parliament, the honour of receiving him, and I hope that the Minister will tell the House today that the Minister for Europe plans to visit Georgia shortly. We must not forget the sacrifice of Georgian troops standing side by side with our own in Afghanistan. Five have paid the ultimate sacrifice, and I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Aldershot, has recently paid a visit. As we approach the third anniversary of the Russian invasion and the Prime Minister’s solidarity trip to Georgia, I hope that he will go there again soon. Will the Minister say something about the plans that the Foreign Office might have for a ministerial visit?

Georgia is a loyal friend at the United Nations, and when I met President Saakashvili 10 days ago, I urged him to recognise Kosovo because, for understandable if mistaken parallels, Tbilisi is on the same wavelength as Moscow, not its Euro-Atlantic friends. It would be an important diplomatic step for Georgia to line up with this country, and the bulk of the European Union and the world’s democracies, by offering diplomatic recognition to Kosovo.

Mr Saakashvili has insisted that Georgia will never be the first to use force in the event of further military aggression or pressure from Russia. He has said that he is willing to meet President Putin and Prime Minister Medvedev in any place and at any time to negotiate a settlement. Will the Minister assure us that when the Prime Minister goes to Moscow in September, he will urge the Russian leadership to meet Mr Saakashvili and negotiate on a Government to Government basis, instead of continuing with the highly ad hominem abuse that Moscow directs towards the Georgian leader in a manner that demeans the honour and dignity of a great nation such as Russia?

Will the Minister speak to coalition Members of Parliament who serve on the Council of Europe? Many members of the Council were shocked to find that Conservative MPs sit in the same group as Kremlin-controlled Russian MPs, and thus failed to support moves to hold Russia to account for its invasion and occupation of Georgia. As the Minister is a Liberal Democrat, perhaps he will have a word with one or two—at least one—of his Liberal Democrat colleagues at the Council of Europe who take a similar position and seem keen to get into bed with Russia.

Will the Minister confirm that the installation of S300 missiles in Abkhazia is in violation of the ceasefire agreement that was signed with President Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union in August 2008? Will he confirm that the EU, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and other international monitors, are denied full access to Russian occupied territories in Georgia, in violation of the Sarkozy-Medvedev agreement? I have seen the new internal line of occupation and European division deep in Georgian sovereign territory. How sad to look through sandbagged bunkers over barbed wire, at Russian soldiers under a Russian flag glaring down their gunsights at me. Surely that is not the Europe in which we wish to live two decades after Soviet communist tyranny came to an end.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

Thank you, Mr Betts, for the opportunity to conclude this short but important debate; it is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) on introducing the topic with his customary panache and considerable wisdom; it is an important opportunity for hon. Members to consider our relationship with Georgia. We all benefit from the right hon. Gentleman’s long-held interest and active approach towards Georgia, and I am pleased to join him in welcoming the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament to this short debate. I am also pleased that the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament has had the opportunity during his time in London to meet the Speaker of our Parliament, and that he will meet the Foreign Secretary this afternoon.

Georgia matters to Britain, and its stability, democracy and prosperity are important. The Government are keen to build on our excellent bilateral relationship and help Georgia to become a leading example of a country that has made a successful transition to democracy and an open market economy. Georgia is a key energy transit route and provides a corridor from central Asia to Europe, which importantly bypasses Russia. That makes Georgia an important partner and offers good prospects for United Kingdom trade and investment. The right hon. Gentleman also touched on existing economic opportunities, and the Government are alert to those opportunities and are working to develop them.

Since the rose revolution, President Saakashvili’s Government have embarked on an ambitious reform programme that combines modernised law enforcement bodies, market liberalisation and the building of democratic institutions. Georgia has made a great deal of progress in a relatively short period of time.

[Mr David]

Does the Minister agree that one of the most impressive changes to have occurred in Georgia is the transformation of the police force? The Georgian Government have acted speedily in that area to bring about not only change but a transformation in a short space of time.

[Mr Browne]

I have not had the same opportunity as the hon. Gentleman to see those matters at first hand, but I am delighted that he feels that important progress has been made. Such progress is a key trait of a country that is increasingly embracing those values to which we in Britain attach importance.