House of Commons Hansard Debates for 9 May 1995

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Atlantic Treaty Organisation has not worked. If anything, it has been to the disadvantage of United Nations troops, wherever they may have come from.

If we have to withdraw, I urge that there must be NATO supremacy. If we are having our bluff called by brigands, as my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Sir P. Cormack) said, we must at least be absolutely sure that the chain of command is not too long, and certainly not so tortuous that we have to have a dual key. The balance continues to be in favour of carrying on the mission for the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia--just. If France withdraws--and it looks as though France will withdraw--I believe that we shall have to do so, too. I believe that we should not withdraw unilaterally, but I think that France may. If we did not have France there as the second biggest force, I suspect that we would have to withdraw anyway. If we have to withdraw, the Government can count on my support. It will be an extremely difficult decision to make. It will be based on factors including a great deal of intelligence that is not available to Members of the House, and I respect that, but it will be a judgment that will stretch my right hon. Friends in the Cabinet, and I shall support them.

A week ago today, I was in Italy with the Commander in Chief Allied Forces Southern Europe and members of the Defence Select Committee. If we are talking about British policy on the former Yugoslavia, we cannot fail to consider the effect on Italy. I strongly believe that Italy has been underestimated as an ally and that we should turn more attention to our relationship with Italy. Considering that the entire United Nations operation in the former Yugoslavia depends on Italy and any withdrawal will depend completely on Italy's participation, it is extraordinary that Italy is not a member of the contact group. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will reconsider that position, considering how crucial it will be in coming weeks.

Italy needs all the support it can get, from the European Union and more especially from NATO. The biggest problem, perhaps, that it has at present is public opinion in Italy concerning military matters. That is undermining the credibility of the Italian forces in the eyes of the Ministry of Defence. It was convenient, under former regimes in Italy and under the influence of the Communist party in Italy, to have a general atmosphere of not caring much about defence in any event. That atmosphere fell in well with the relationship of those regimes with the former Soviet Union. However, it is a dangerous position to be in.

There is a huge budget problem in Italy, but I hope very much that Italy will place orders for the EH101. I toured the Agusta factory and it was extraordinary to me that, although the Italian taxpayer had paid for half the development costs of that magnificent aircraft, the Italian Government had not yet placed a single order. However, something wider in Italy is disturbing--the issue of conscription, a problem that we put behind us many years ago. When I asked the Italian Minister of Defence why the Ministry of Defence was so worried about conscription, the answer came back: "Because of the cohesion of the country". It is the old problem of a comparatively young nation, about 100 years old, in which the north continues to strain considerably to maintain cohesion with the south. The Italian Ministry of

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Defence finds it important to place conscripts from both ends of Italy together in a military situation. We cannot ignore the role of Italy in our relations with former Yugoslavia.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said on25 September 1992:

"Neither we nor the CSCE nor the UN yet have the aptitude or the powers to sort out problems within central or eastern European countries or the countries of the former Soviet Union, and we must remember that what is happening in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia is being repeated in two or three countries of the former Soviet Union to the east of Europe, where there are no television cameras and only occasional visitors."--[ Official Report ,25 September 1992; Vol. 212, c. 126.]

I am sure that he was right. I ask myself how far we have advanced since then. The hon. Member for Livingston alluded to that trend in our thinking in his very interesting speech. It is vital that we consider the former Yugoslavia as part of a wider picture in the Balkans and on the southern front of NATO.

There is a new threat and we need to have new responses to it. Italy is at the centre of an arc of crisis from northern Africa to Chechenya, characterised by political instability, ailing economies, internal disputes and by the instability of north Africa, with its artificial borders and tribal patterns. We should not forget that the Italian economy depends on the important energy resources of northern Africa.

There is also the whole question of Islamic fundamentalism, which we in this country have only begun to consider seriously as part of our foreign and defence policies. Islamic fundamentalism is not just about Islam, which will not inherently threaten us, but Islam tends to permit extremism and anti-western feeling and it can be a source of terrorism in those countries which embrace it. That can lead to enormous tensions, whether between Israel and the Arabs or between the states of Europe.

We cannot ignore the question of migration or illegal immigration. Albania, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria and the former Yugoslavia have seen examples of economic migration and refugees fleeing war. We should think about that issue much more. I was stimulated by a visit last week to the Istituto Affari Internazionali, the international affairs think-tank in Rome, where I heard some very interesting ideas about, for example, the possible establishment of employment and industry in north Africa which would encourage closing the economic gap between north Africa and Europe and discourage economic migration. After all, we are talking about water, food and jobs--resource allocation at its most basic. One of the tragedies of the former Yugoslavia is that such a potentially prosperous part of Europe has seen such sad and rapid decline.

If we are considering our foreign and defence policies in that part of the world, we must maintain, first and foremost, the importance of not decoupling from the United States of America. We should not expand NATO too fast. Above all, we must try to keep Greece and Turkey on side and prevent them from entering into any further disputes. We must also listen to public opinion in this country, and that will be particularly crucial when it comes to a possible withdrawal from or an escalation of our involvement in the former Yugoslavia.

I conclude by referring to an opinion poll which I conduct every spring in my constituency. I shall be totally honest about it: I polled more than 2,000 paid-up

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members of the Conservative association in my constituency and this year 532 of them responded to quite a long questionnaire. It contained a small section on defence and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence may be interested to know the results. The questionnaire stated:

"Military spending must always be a high priority".

Some 97 per cent. of the respondents agreed with that statement. The survey continued:

"We should maintain our nuclear deterrent".

Some 95 per cent. of those polled agreed with that statement. Of the respondents, 79 per cent. agreed that:

"On Salisbury Plain troops must respect the environment". However, when the survey said:

"UK should send more troops to Bosnia to help UN,"

only 9 per cent. of the respondents agreed.

8.43 pm

Mr. Malcolm Wicks (Croydon, North-West): I am still reflecting on the findings of that very interesting survey of a totally unrandom sample of the British public. Despite the fact that it was a survey of Conservative party members, the Labour party respects their views in the same way as we respect the views of all other minority groups in our society.

Mr. Macdonald: I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend so early in his speech, but he may not have seen the recent opinion poll of a wider and more random sample group. It showed that a clear majority of the British public is in favour of the work that the British Army is doing in Bosnia and would support further involvement should that prove necessary. That shows how out of touch Conservative Members are with the feelings of the British public.

Mr. Wicks: I thank my hon. Friend for that comment.

I rise to speak in the debate because, like other hon. Members who have noted it, I too am struck by the coincidence that yesterday our nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of VE day and today we are discussing the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. It is a coincidence of timing that should challenge us all and encourage thoughtful and sombre reflection about where we are in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia. It puts into context all the talk that we have heard recently about 50 years of peace in Europe. In Bosnia, just two hours flying time from London, we find experiences that mock our pretensions about the strengths of collective security in Europe. I was born a few years after the end of the second world war and, as I grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I learned more about the causes and the experiences of that war. I remember when I first saw, as many other hon. Members would have done, the flickering black and white television pictures from the concentration camps. We not only asked how this could have occurred, but we were struck by the conviction that we would never again see or allow genocide on any scale in Europe. We vowed that we would never again tolerate such naked aggression or territorial gain of that kind by military conquest, certainly not in Europe.

Obviously the scale in the former Yugoslavia is different, but the experience has been much the same. Therefore, we should ask very humbly why we have again tolerated such genocide and naked aggression on the edges of Europe. In that post-war period we created the

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United Nations and we believed that, through the United Nations and by other alliances, we would prevent that kind of genocide in the future. Many of us who believed ultimately in the goal of peace recognised that we needed to expend money and large percentages of our national wealth on the military to prevent the threat of such incidents occurring again.

In our more recent history, many of us to the political left of centre tried to analyse the Falklands war and the Argentine invasion and, more recently, the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqis. Many found that analysis and the question of whether we could support such a war very difficult indeed. Many of us were persuaded to support the military expedition into Kuwait because we believed our leaders' assurances that higher principles were at stake than mere materialism or oil. We believed that it was a war against naked aggression and that the independence of a sovereign state was worth fighting for. Therefore, we supported the war. Perhaps we were wrong to believe that high principles were at stake; perhaps we were gullible in thinking that ethical and moral considerations were at stake and that the conflict was not just about oil and western profits.

I think that many people feel that, if we adopt only old-fashioned definitions of national interest in the future, we will find ourselves in deep trouble. There may be a strong national interest in defending things for humanitarian reasons. Many of our citizens might support military projects if mere humanity and not just precious resources were at stake. Perhaps when our elders, betters and leaders told us that they wished to create a new world order, we believed them too readily. Perhaps we were foolish to believe that the rhetoric had some ethical meaning that would outlast the mere weeks of convenience when it seemed to wrap the conquest of Iraq in a cloak of virtue.

However, those of us who argued against friends and colleagues that the war against Iraq was worth supporting always realised that one day our beliefs would be tested, that there would come an occasion when western profits were not at stake, and neither were money, cash, oil or other precious resources, but merely people and their nation. That test has come in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia. I have listened carefully to hon. Members on both sides of the House who know more than I do about the former Yugoslavia, and certainly more than I know about military adventures, and I have realised the complexity of the situation. Of course one knows that nothing is ever black and white, and that in wars there are always atrocities and evils on all sides. However, one thing is clear: the newly sovereign state of Bosnia has been the victim of territorial aggression. Much more than that, its people have been the victims of ethnic cleansing and mass rape--not the rapes that occur on all sides in any war but, it appears, a policy of the mass rape of Bosnian women, used as a deliberate act of military conquest. I do not recall such a policy being enacted in any other war, and that makes it an act of especial evil.

We have also seen genocide against the Bosnian people--although not, as has already been said, on the scale practised by Nazi Germany. None the less, we are talking about evil, and that is why, with others, I want to remind the House about the challenge that this debate

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brings us, when yesterday we were celebrating, and not only celebrating but remembering and thinking through the implications half a century after VE day.

What has been the west's response? We have heard clear proclamations from many institutions, most importantly our United Nations, but also from the European Union, NATO and other western bodies. Those declarations have all pointed in the same direction. Two years ago, the Foreign Secretary said:

"Military conquest in Bosnia cannot achieve gains which are accepted. It is not enough to fly flags over ruined towns and villages. Worthwhile gains are not be secured by making a desert and calling it peace. There is no future for Bosnian Serbs down that path".--[ Official Report , 29 April 1993; Vol. 223, c. 1169.] I ask the Secretary of State for Defence a simple question: is it still the Government's policy that the Serbs will gain nothing by military conquest? That policy has been articulated so well by the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself, by the Prime Minister and by the Foreign Secretary. Is it or is it not still the Government's policy? We need to know the answer.

With others, I applaud all those who have worked for the forces of good in the former Yugoslavia--UNPROFOR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and many others in the voluntary sector. I applaud the many organisations and ordinary decent human beings who in that hell have worked for a better society for the people of Bosnia and for others in the former Yugoslavia. We applaud all the United Nations troops, but we shall be forgiven for applauding our own in particular, not least on this day when we remember acts of particular heroism by soldiers in those most difficult conditions. However, in the face of repeated and evil aggression the overall response of our Government and of the west as a whole has consisted essentially of huffing and puffing that has added little or nothing to the policy of trying to combat aggression by the Serbs. At great expense, NATO planes fly over the former Yugoslavia monitoring, patrolling and working out where the Serbian guns are, in order to report to New York.

Similarly, the United Nations monitoring officers often operate in the most hazardous of areas. I pay tribute to them, too, as my colleagues and I met two of them doing their most important work in Pale at the end of 1993. They count the shells out in great detail, and estimate from whence they are coming and where in Sarajevo or anywhere else they are landing. Again, reports are filed with their seniors, notably the United Nations in New York. However, that usually leads to nothing.

That brings me to the reluctance to use air strikes. I believe that the British Government in particular, have placed the brake on the use of air strikes. At different times when the United States Government clearly wished to take a firmer approach to the conflict in Bosnia and to stand up to the aggression by the Serbian regime of Dr. Karadzic, British Ministers said no, and urged caution. The history books will show that the west's overall response has been poor, but the role of the British Government will stand to be especially condemned. In recent years the Serbs have tested, prodded and then understood the feebleness of the west's response. Sadly, every time Ministers from the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have stood up in the

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House to comment on the situation, when the speeches have been analysed they have served as a green light for further Serbian aggression.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned the recent tragedy in a suburb of Sarajevo, in which innocent citizens were killed. Despite the pleading of the general who should have been in charge, senior United Nations officials said, "No, not even on this occasion will we use the sanction of air strikes." Even now the House and the Government could show some resolution. Especially when military commanders ask for them, we must allow the use of air strikes, not least for the protection of safe havens. Others have argued with great authority why we should do that, and I add my voice to theirs.

We have heard little on the subject from Ministers recently, but we need a vigorous and rigorous pursuit of the war criminals. One should not have to say that 50 years after 1945, when Britain was soon to see the Nuremberg trials. There are war criminals. We are talking about mass rapes, genocide and ethnic cleansing. Who are the criminals? They are the soldiers on the ground, but who gave them their orders? Are those people being pursued? At long last there are signs of the United Nations pursuing war criminals. Does the pursuit of war crimes have the full support--including financial support--of the British Government?

Will the Secretary of State for Defence say something about war criminals and their pursuit when he replies to the debate? Will he touch on the difficulties faced by some senior British UN officials in their daily contact with Dr. Karadzic, when they know--and we know--that they are dealing with a war criminal who one day may have to appear before the world's court?

That brings us back to our celebration of victory in Europe 50 years ago. There have been celebrations and acts of sad remembrance, but learning the full lessons of 50 years ago involves more than celebration and humming along to well-known old songs. We must relearn the lessons of 1945 in a more complex post-war period. Bosnia is a proud and democratic cosmopolitan society, particularly Sarajevo, which I visited for three days at the end of 1993. It is a proud and democratic city. The fact that it is still being shelled mocks our pretensions of celebrating VE day and challenges our post -war hopes.

In the face of genocide more than 50 years after the holocaust, our Foreign Office policy has never dared speak its name. British foreign policy has once again been one of appeasement. Once, 55 years ago, appeasement was thrown out by our nation and our House of Commons in favour of action, and hand wringing was eventually rejected to make room for resolution. All these years later, that may be the most valuable lesson to learn from our history--the lesson that appeasement never pays and that firm action must be supported.

9 pm

Mr. Mike Gapes (Ilford, South): In 1987, I visited the museum of the young Bosnians in Sarajevo. On the pavement just outside are, allegedly, the footprints showing from where the shots were fired to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand, which started world war one. I was taken round the museum with a tourist group by a young woman of 19 or 20 who was extolling the great attributes and virtues of the great Serbian patriots. I asked

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her, "Are you a communist?" and she said that she was. I said, "If you are a communist, I cannot understand why you are extolling an individual act of terrorism. I thought that Lenin was against terrorism of that kind." But she said, "No. They were great Serb nationalists and partisan heroes." I said, "But the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand led to a war in which tens of millions of people were killed, and that in turn led to another world war in which tens of millions of people died." She replied, "What is the death of millions of people compared with the freedom of a nation?" That was 1987, and it was the voice of a young, intelligent, English-speaking Serbian communist woman.

I suspect that, in similar conversations, such statements could have been made by Croats or members of other national groups in the former Yugoslavia. When I hear talk of appeasement and simple solutions, my mind goes back to that conversation. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia is far more complex, difficult and tragic and any simple solution from outside is unlikely to produce a result. It was noticeable that the VE day celebrations in Britain were attended by the President of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the President of the Republic of Croatia, the President of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the President of the Republic of Slovenia, yet there was no one representing one third of the population of the former Yugoslavia in Krajina, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro or Serbia. That is ironic since the anniversary of the liberation of the Jasenovac concentration camp took place only a few days ago.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) gave a detailed historical description of the mistakes that have been made, which I shall not repeat, but at the risk of being labelled an appeaser or pro- Serb, which seems to be a term of insult used to describe those of us who say that the situation is complex and that we should consider it in its historical context, I want to say a few more things about what has happened in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia generally.

First, we must recognise that Yugoslavia is a 20th-century state established at the end of world war 1 to bring together Roman Catholic Croats, Muslims in Bosnia and elsewhere in what is now called Kosovo and the Orthodox Serbs who are found in different parts of the former Yugoslavia.

When the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, they completely crushed the Serbs, but they set up an independent state of Croatia, including what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina, under the Ustashi leader, Ante Pavelic. The Ustashi had a clear policy on the 2 million Orthodox Serbs in their state-- convert a third, expel a third and kill a third. That was done systematically.

Between April and July 1941, the Ustashi converted, expelled and, above all, murdered hundreds of thousands of people, not just Serbs, but Jews and gipsies as well, cruelly, viciously and systematically. In the summer of 1941, the Ustashi set up a chain of 20 concentration camps which were later used to expedite Hitler's final solution. The largest of those camps, Jasenovac, had a regular occupancy of between 3,000 and 6,000 inmates from autumn 1941 until May 1945. Few people sent to that concentration camp lived longer than three months. According to camp rules, if they lived that long, they were executed anyway. In that period, it is

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estimated that some 70,000 people perished in the camp, which is in the area that has just been liberated from the Serb population of Krajina by the Tudjman regime.

Reference has already been made to the former second lieutenant, Dinko Sakic, the final commander of that camp. From April 1945 onwards, the Ustashi guards at Jasenovac toiled day and night to slaughter those still surviving--Serbs, Jews and gipsies. They did so under the control of Dinko Sakic. The killing stopped on 2 May 1945 only when Tito's partisans finally liberated the area.

Anybody who is thinking and talking about events of the past week in Croatia has to understand that context. When we hear talk of appeasement, we must understand that history and that it is a little simple to associate the partisan-led, communist-led, predominantly Serb partisan forces and their successors with the Ustashi fascists of that period in quite such a glib way.

I shall make two more points. The hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) made what I thought was a very intelligent speech describing the difficulties of the military situation in the former Yugoslavia. He made a number of pertinent suggestions. I draw attention to the report of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, "The Expanding Role of the United Nations and its Implications for United Kingdom Policy", published on 23 June 1993. Recommendations 13 and 14 state:

"We consider that calls for military deployment on the ground to enforce in Bosnia a disputed peace plan have been misconceived: troops equipped for peace-keeping or humanitarian protection work cannot be transformed into a UN fighting force simply by passing a new Security Council resolution."

It continued:

"We are not persuaded that it is practicable to try to impose a peace plan in Bosnia from outside. We fear that attempting so to impose a plan for the constitutional structure of part of former Yugoslavia could make things worse rather than better for the civilian population, as well as having serious consequences for the safety of UN personnel there, which includes a large British contingent".

Those words were right then and they remain right.

It is important that we recognise the limitations under which the UN mandate and the UN forces have been operating in recent years. It is regrettable that when the Security Council has met to try to find political fudges to deal with irreconcilable national differences between simplistic positions pushed in Washington and more realistic assessments put forward in Europe, it has made unworkable and unenforceable proposals that have led to great difficulties for the people on the ground who have to try to deal with the situation. We must learn from the experience of peacekeeping not only in former Yugoslavia but elsewhere. One cannot expect the United Nations forces on the ground, the blue helmets, to solve intractable, religious, ethnic and political conflicts in states or between states. Those problems are deep-seated, complex and require serious, long-term solutions. The quick-fix approach so favoured in Washington and, unfortunately, supported by some hon. Members, will make matters far worse.

The Foreign Secretary seemed to be talking about conditions under which withdrawal might be necessary. He said that if the arms embargo were lifted, we would need to withdraw. He then admitted, as have others, that, in fact, the arms embargo is not really working anyway.

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He said that if the fighting flared up--it has flared up and it is flaring up--or if there were no signs of an effective peace process, we would need to withdraw. Given the attitude of the Bosnian Government, who clearly are not interested in a peace settlement on available terms and have used the ceasefire to rearm, re- equip and redeploy their forces, the attitude of the Bosnian Serbs, who clearly are not interested in a peace settlement, and the attitude now of the Croatian Government and their supporters in Bosnia, it is realistic to say that there is no sign of an effective peace process. If we are serious about withdrawal, we must consider how long it would take. If it becomes necessary--and I think it will--we must think about when it will be carried out. This is May, and if withdrawal takes six months, we need to think about the onset of winter. The forces have been there through two winters in difficult conditions. It is a terrible thing to say, but perhaps we have been lucky that casualties have been so low. We should think of what withdrawal would be like in a third winter, when the conflict might be much greater. Perhaps we cannot get the forces out, but what is the point of their staying if they cannot do the job that they are there to do? I do not normally feel sorry for the Foreign Secretary but I have enormous sympathy for him because of the dilemma in which he finds himself, and I admire the way in which he put it. We are in an impossible situation, and we have to convince the British people of that because talk of appeasement, winning for one side and of the balance of force shifting is not the right approach. We must soon come to the view that we cannot go on any longer. We must recognise that there is a limit to how long we can simply sit ineffectively hoping for something to turn up.

9.16 pm

Dr. David Clark (South Shields): The debate has been well informed, and a great many hon. Members have taken part. It has been characterised by the deep sincerity of every hon. Member who spoke. They all expressed their views with deep conviction. The right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) admitted that he was pessimistic, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) also ended on a pessimistic note.

The views that were expressed in the debate have not followed the traditional Government-Opposition line. The views of some Conservative Members were identical to those of some of my hon. Friends, but the House is none the poorer for that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South gave us a telling, chilling reminder of what is happening in that piece of land that is called Croatia in the former Yugoslavia. My hon. Friend has had much experience over the years in international matters, and as he was also the last Back-Bench Member to speak in the debate, what he said makes a deeper impression because it is fresh in our minds. By contrast, my hon. Friend the Member for Western Isles (Mr. Macdonald) spoke with optimism about some of his experiences in Sarajevo, and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North- West (Mr. Wicks) also had a different view and a different interpretation. The House benefits from such views.

This is one of a series of debates. Over the past three years, I think that I have attended all the debates on Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia. I have heard people

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hone their arguments, and I have perhaps detected a greater tolerance between hon. Members with different views. I have seen the House wrestle to try to decide the most propitious role for Britain and the United Nations in trying to avert an all-out war in the Balkans. On some occasions hon. Members have described the policy as one of containment, and I do not think that that is bad.

I remember in the early days arguing from the Opposition side of the House that there should be early pre-positioning and deployment of troops in Macedonia. That is something that my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, South (Mr. O'Hara) and the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) know a great deal about. That was a wise argument. We were so pleased that the Government, and later the international community, accepted that approach, and we have at least contained the problem in Macedonia.

Vigilance is always necessary. We must always be careful and we can never be complacent, but, so far, all-out war in the Balkans, which was so widely predicted three years ago, has not occurred. Having said that, we are all aware that an unhappy state and society exists in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Croatia.

As several hon. Members have mentioned, it is poignant that we are discussing military matters on the day after all of us, I think, have been involved in our own VE day celebrations. The hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) made a great point of that. Coming from the base and constituency that he represents, that is not a surprise. I think all 13 hon. Members who have spoken have paid tribute to the professionalism of British troops. It is timely that today we read the official notices in the newspapers that 41 members of our armed forces have been honoured for their services and bravery in former Yugoslavia. Congratulations go to them all from every hon. Member.

Just to make a point, I should like to mention some of the people honoured. It would be singularly appropriate to mention Corporal Wayne Mills, who was awarded the first conspicuous gallantry cross. Members will know that that is the highest award after the Victoria cross. He is a brave individual.

I am prepared to pay great tribute to General Sir Michael Rose. He has served this country well. He served 12 months in his office, and not many of his predecessors were able to stick the post for that period. It is virtually an impossible job, but he stuck to it and I am sure that he was as robust with Salidic, Izetbegovic and Karadzic as he was with my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). General Rose told me about his robust and, I think, two-sided exchange with my hon. Friend. It was right that a debate took place, and it is healthy that politicians and senior military people have such a frank exchange of views.

Time and again, Lieutenant-Colonel David Santa-Olalla of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment showed his bravery and the strength of British officers by leading by example. His citation refers to his work in Gorazde. Having been to that enclave, I pay tribute to him. Those two officers received the distinguished service order. Military crosses were won by Corporal Andrew Rainey and Sergeant Gary Cryer. It is important to mention non-commissioned officers. The great strength of the British Army and all armed forces lies in their NCOs. They go out with small detachments and, especially in

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former Yugoslavia, they have immense responsibility. They must take the decisions to interpret the rules of engagement. They are provoked almost beyond their wisdom, yet they manage, because of their training and discipline, to resist the temptation.

Largely through their experiences in Northern Ireland, where similar types of command and control operations exist, the NCOs of our British forces are among the best in the world. Perhaps it is worth while to recall, as other hon. Members have reminded us, that that bravery is not without danger. We have lost 13 of our troops. If we think of it in a more general way, with our troops being part of a larger force, 162 young men have lost their lives, 162 families throughout the world have been bereaved, and 162 families obviously wonder whether the price was worth paying. Those are not easy judgments to reach.

Opposition Members have tried to support the Government's policy in Bosnia. At times we have been ahead of them, but we believe that, by and large, they have followed the correct line. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Wicks) suggested, we have been disappointed about the Government's commitment to war crime trials; we consider that very important, and I hope that the Secretary of State for Defence will assure us that the Government are entirely committed to the exercise.

We have concentrated on Bosnia in our debates, but the events of the past week have again highlighted the problems in Croatia as a potential flashpoint in the wider war that may emerge in the Balkans. That may indeed be a danger: we shall have to watch the position carefully. We are all wondering what action to take against the Serbs for the breach of the UN's safe area mandate; meanwhile, I hope that every diplomatic effort is being made to point out to President Tudjman that he flagrantly invaded a UN- protected area of sector west. I do not think that that serious issue has been raised during this debate, or generally.

It is appropriate that both the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence are involved in the debate, and highly appropriate for it to have been opened by the Foreign Secretary. That has served to emphasise what I regard as the cardinal point: ultimately, the problems in the Balkans can be resolved only through negotiation and diplomacy. I firmly believe that the country that we are discussing cannot be conquered by military means; we must have a diplomatic solution. That was at the core of the argument advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), who made some thoughtful and positive suggestions.

Having said that, let me add that Opposition Members take the view that, if threats are to be made, there will come a time when they must be backed up. It cannot be right for threats against the United Nations to be treated with impunity. We believe that, while air power alone solves little, there are occasions--as we have seen in the past--when its use gets the message across.

I want to probe the Foreign Secretary on that, because I felt that he was not as forthcoming as he might have been. It was reported in today's newspapers that General Rupert Smith had requested air power, but had been overruled. May I ask the Secretary of State for Defence whether that is true? If so, was he overruled by Mr. Akashi or by his superior officer, General Bernard

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Janvier? It is important for the House to know whether the decision was made for diplomatic, political reasons, or for very good military reasons.

During the debate, it was argued that this was not a peacekeeping mission. The hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) referred to a document entitled "Wider Peacekeeping", which has just been published by the British Army--a very good document, which the hon. Gentleman has clearly had time to examine. That manual differentiates between peacekeeping, wider peacekeeping and peace enforcement. It has been widely acclaimed, and I know that it is highly regarded in the United Nations. The publication gives interesting definitions for those three terms:

"In peacekeeping the performer carries only a balancing pole and there is a hushed and respectful silence in the crowd as the performer walks the tightrope."

In wider peacekeeping, the performer carries the same balancing pole, and walks the identical tightrope:

"He also has the general consent of the parties to the conflict. However, on this occasion it is apparent that not everyone approves of his performance and the circus audience is restive and noisy. Some individuals are even throwing missiles at the tightrope walker as he makes his journey."

That graphically makes the point that in Bosnia, we are playing a wider peacekeeping role. It is important that we understand that point, and it is clear that British troops already do so. Corporal Mills, whose award of the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross was announced today, said:

"Working for the United Nations in Bosnia is an extremely difficult job. You are not there to fight a war. Your aim is to ensure that the food and other supplies get through to the Bosnian population--the victims of the war.

You never know when one of the warring factions is going to take a dislike to the UN and start taking pot shots. You have to be prepared for it and respond to the situations as they occur." Corporal Mills puts in clear terms Britain's mandate in Bosnia. It is incumbent on us all to make it clear to our constituents that restricted mandate and the fact that we do not have a peace enforcement role. Our role is to get the humanitarian aid through, and we have been most successful in that. As long as British troops can continue to do that, we ought to support them.

The Secretary-General of the UN requested reinforcements. I was pleased in January to hear the Secretary of State for Defence announce that the Government intended to dispatch another three Chinook, six Lynx and six Gazelle helicopters. Why are we waiting? What have no Chinook or Gazelle helicopters been delivered and only four of the six Lynx helicopters been delivered? There may be good reasons, but the House has a right to know them.

Will the Secretary of State for Defence clarify the Government's position on the arms embargo? On 31 July 1994, the Secretary of State--after stoutly maintaining opposition to any lifting of the embargo because it would put our ground troops at unnecessary risk--announced that Britain no longer opposed the lifting of the embargo. On 21 November, the hon. Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames) was much more robust:

"We judge that the lifting of the arms embargo would lead to an intensified conflict with severe risks that UNPROFOR would be caught up in the fighting and lose its impartiality in the eyes of the warring factions. In such circumstances, UNPROFOR could no longer carry out the UN mandate and would have to withdraw."

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I understand that, and I also heard the Foreign Secretary speak only last week about the need to withdraw UNPROFOR if the arms embargo was to be lifted. We know the consequences of lifting the embargo, but what is Government policy on that specific point? I make one further point about the withdrawal of UN troops. I understand that it is very important to provide confidence in our ability to get the troops out if necessary. If we can get that confidence across, there is every reason to believe that the nations that have troops there will have the confidence to keep them there. It is a vital point.

I know that an international exercise has just finished, and that the Ministry of Defence and NATO are evaluating its results. I do not want press the Minister too hard on Operation Arcade Guard, but I want to press him on a couple of other points.

In the worst case scenario, if we and the rest of UNPROFOR have to withdraw our troops, we know, as has been said in the House today, that it may require up to 50,000 troops. The Americans are, I think, going to provide about half of those.

We are concerned about the different lengths of time that it has been suggested might be needed to withdraw. It has been suggested that withdrawal might take up to six months. Another suggestion is that it could be completed in six weeks. The shorter the period, the better the prospects for getting the troops out, if necessary. Can the Secretary of State for Defence assure us that everything is being done to facilitate the shortest period for extracting the troops? Other hon. Members have raised this critical point, but I take it that it is absolutely certain that NATO will have the command and control of the troop extraction. I think that the whole House would be happier if that was the case. Perhaps the Secretary of State for Defence could say a word about the attitude of French Government on that point, because we understand that they have slight difficulties-- theological difficulties, almost--with that command and control system.

The situation is Bosnia is very complicated. If it had been easy, we all know that the problem would have been solved. But the problem is there, and is not going to go away. The role of the UN has not always been understood, so the role of UNPROFOR and our troops has not always been understood.

We believe that our troops and UNPROFOR have been doing sterling work. We believe that they have kept alive tens of thousands of people, and that they are giving us the breathing space during which we can pursue diplomatic solutions. We equally accept that there may come a time when the risks to our troops are so great that we cannot justify them being there. If we can keep our troops there, and if they can continue doing a worthwhile job, the Government will have our support, as do the troops.

9.37 pm

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