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Mr. Vaz: The families struck me as shocked by what had happened to their loved ones and in search of sympathy, understanding and answers to their questions about what had happened. They were obviously bewildered by events. They deserve our sympathy. Some of the families are now in Yemen. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister confirm that the consular officials are doing everything that they can to help the families?
Since then, three further British citizens have been detained. Shazad Nabi, Ayad Hussein and Mohammed Mustafa Kamal have now been transferred to Aden. That has added further complexity to the case, especially as Mohammed Kamal is only 17 and is the son of Abu Hamza al-Masry, the London Muslim leader, who has made some extraordinary statements. It seems that what happens to them will affect the trial of the other five men. Perhaps the Minister will shed light on what the Foreign Office has been doing in those latest three cases.
It is highly unusual for a consular case such as this to be imported into British domestic community politics. According to a written answer supplied to me by my right hon. Friend the Minister on 28 January 1999, Official Report, column 392, there are currently 2,266 British nationals imprisoned overseas--including two of my constituents, who are in gaol in Venezuela. What is different about this case is the fact that the British Muslim community has taken the issue to heart, believing that the Foreign Office and the British Government are less committed to the case of those five men than to other consular cases because the men in question are of Asian origin.
I commend my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on the way in which he has handled this crisis, and the sensitivity that he has shown to the Yemeni authorities and the British Asian community. In my view, the Foreign Secretary deserves particular praise for the way in which he came to the House on the first day after the Christmas recess to make a statement on the crisis, and for his initiative in speaking to the Yemeni Prime Minister three times in the early stages of the crisis, to impress on him the importance of the British detainees being given full access to doctors and lawyers. I thank my noble friend Baroness Symons for having agreed to meet me four times to brief me on developments, and for meeting the families of the detained men and their lawyers.
On the allegation of the Foreign Office not acting quickly enough because the men were Asian, I believe that our Foreign Secretary would be the last person in this world to let that happen. He is highly regarded in the Arab world, and his speech last October in Blackpool showed enormous respect and sensitivity to Muslim nations and to the Muslim and Asian communities.
I shall now discuss what I consider to be the ways in which the crisis can be solved. The main goal must be to ensure that Anglo-Yemeni relations remain intact and that
the men currently detained in Aden get a fair trial. As I have said, when I visited Yemen last year I was struck by the good will on the part of the Yemenis toward Britain, and by the eagerness of Ministers, from the President down, to discuss openly and frankly the salient issues affecting the middle east. In 1986, trade with Yemen was worth £82.6 million, and Britain has been heavily involved in efforts to redevelop the port of Aden, and to develop the tourism industry. Britain and Yemen obviously have a lot to lose from any straining of relations.
I place on the record my appreciation of the role played by the excellent Yemeni ambassador to Britain, Dr. Hussein Al-Amri, who understands fully the importance of these relations and has done an enormous amount of work in very difficult circumstances. Any nation, including ours, would be severely tested when world media attention focuses on it on such complex issues as hostage taking, terrorism and fundamentalism. It is amazing how Yemen has coped.
The Yemeni Government have said that they have acted as they have in order to continue the fight against international terrorism. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will agree that joint co-operation between Britain and Yemen to combat terrorism is vital, and I hope that he will offer his support in the continued fight against it.
The only way to maintain strong bilateral relations is for contact to be maintained at the highest possible level. We need to bring outstanding matters to a close. Early contact between the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister Iryani was extremely important in ensuring that the Britons in Aden were charged, and that the trial got under way. Anglo-Yemeni relations will suffer if this high-level contact is not maintained. I was very pleased to read that a meeting took place between our Prime Minister and the President of Yemen last Monday in Amman at the funeral of King Hussein. I wonder whether my right hon. Friend the Minister can tell us more about those discussions.
However, I am puzzled by one point. Britain has strongly advised its citizens to leave Yemen and has evacuated British Council teachers from the country. Yet the German Foreign Minister and Green party leader, Joschka Fischer, has just been to Yemen. If a German Minister is safe in Yemen, why not a British Minister? Our ties with Yemen are much longer and more historic than those of any other country. As the Deputy Foreign Minister Abdullah al-Saidi said:
In addition, I propose two further means of speeding up efforts for a solution. I reiterate the suggestion that I made to the Foreign Secretary in the House on 11 January: it would be extremely helpful if he sent a special envoy to Sana'a and Aden to supplement diplomatic efforts that
are already being undertaken. I do not wish to undermine the work that has already been done by Ambassador Victor Henderson and Consul-General David Pearce--I know from the help that they gave to my delegation what an effective team they are. I simply feel that, because of this highly complicated situation, we need a high-profile expert with a solid diplomatic background and knowledge of the middle east, such as a former permanent secretary, to go to Yemen and continue the dialogue.
Finally, I return to a theme that I have mentioned on other occasions in the House: the need for a new unit in the Foreign Office with specific responsibility for British tourists and other visitors to foreign countries. If such a unit had existed, procedures for dealing with the taking of hostages and the detentions would have been in place and I believe that the crisis could have been handled more smoothly. Families in such situations must be kept informed constantly, as the families of James Miles and Paul Loseby, and of Edgar Fernandes--whose cases I have raised previously--have discovered.
There is also a need for better administrative streamlining. As I understand it, three of the four Foreign Office Ministers have been involved in the case: my noble Friend, who deals with consular matters; my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd), who deals with kidnappings; and my right hon. Friend who is in the Chamber tonight and who has geographical responsibility for this region.
I know how eager the Yemenis are to resolve this crisis without any lasting damage to Anglo-Yemeni relations. We should be equally keen to do so. This is not a relationship of former colonial master and former colony, but one of partnership. I hope to visit Yemen when the time is right--indeed, I was planning to go last week, but I postponed my visit when I had the chance of introducing this Adjournment debate.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Derek Fatchett):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) and thank him for the way in which he has raised this issue. Hon. Members will have been moved by his descriptions of his early years in Yemen, and we understand his strong affiliation to that country. I wholly agree that the relationship between the United Kingdom and Yemen must be one of partnership: a partnership of equals in which we have shared diplomatic, political, commercial and other links. My hon. Friend is right to say that both sides want that relationship to develop over the next few years. He is also right to say that despite our history, the content of that relationship at present is somewhat thin.
The trade between the United Kingdom and Yemen added up to only £81 million during the past calendar year, with a massive imbalance towards the
United Kingdom. We are not major trading partners, and there is surely the potential for much further development. Also, Yemen is not a beneficiary of a substantial international development programme. My hon. Friend will be delighted, however, to hear that the programme, which currently stands at £600,000 a year, is likely to be trebled to £1.8 million by 2000-01. On that basis, at least, our international development involvement in Yemen will become more significant.
My hon. Friend spoke about the events that have taken place in Yemen since 24 December, and the impact of those events on the relationship between the two countries. He was absolutely right to send his good wishes and those of every hon. Member to the families of Ruth Williamson, Margaret Whitehouse and Peter Rowe. I add the condolences and sympathy of the Government to those expressed by my hon. Friend.
My hon. Friend asked about the investigations that are taking place with the participation of representatives of the Metropolitan police force. Those investigations are continuing. We hope that the Metropolitan police will be able to produce a report in the not too distant future. They are happy with the co-operation that they have received from the Yemeni authorities and will continue to work with them.
I stress to my hon. Friend that the remit of the investigation by the Metropolitan police is limited to the events surrounding the hostage-taking and the sad deaths of Ruth Williamson, Margaret Whitehouse and Peter Roe. Their remit does not extend beyond those incidents.
My hon. Friend dealt with the cases of the five British citizens currently detained in Aden--Gulam Hussain, Sarmed Ahmed, Shahid Butt, Mohssin Ghailan and Malek Nasser. I shall explain to my hon. Friend the role that the Foreign Office plays in such cases. My hon. Friend knows the situation well, but it is always worth while repeating the responsibilities of the Foreign Office.
We do not have a responsibility for prosecuting or defending particular cases. We cannot act as barristers, solicitors or lawyers on behalf of any UK citizens charged overseas. As my hon. Friend mentioned in his opening remarks, a substantial number of British citizens are held on charges throughout the world.
We must do two things. First, we must ensure that we have access to British citizens, and that we can maintain contact and links between them, their families and their lawyers. Secondly, we must do what we can to ensure that there is due process--a fair procedure before trial, and a fair trial. Our objectives are thus limited but extremely significant: to carry out our consular responsibilities towards any UK citizen who is detained overseas, and to ensure that there is due process and a fair trial. We are wholly committed to discharging those responsibilities in the present case.
There has been some suggestion, which my hon. Friend hinted at but then dismissed, that the Foreign Office has been less active in this case than it may otherwise have been. There is implicit in that a suggestion the idea that because we are dealing with five young Muslim British citizens, their treatment and the rights accorded have not been the same as in other cases. Let me lay that totally to rest. We see our responsibility as extending to all British citizens, regardless of their background, colour or
religion. We will discharge that responsibility to all our citizens. I give a strong personal commitment to my hon. Friend: I assure him that, as long as I am a Foreign Office Minister, I will do everything to ensure that there is parity and equality of treatment.
My hon. Friend raised a number of points about the way in which we have discharged our consular functions in relation to the five. It may be useful if I set out some of the background information, which will help him to understand what has happened. As he rightly said, the five were arrested on 24 December. On 29 December, Yemeni officials, who were discussing that day's sad killing of four of the 16 tourists taken hostage the day before, mentioned that they had arrested some British passport holders earlier that day. No names or other details were made available to the British embassy or to the staff.
At that point, British embassy officials asked for further information and for permission to see whichever British nationals may have been arrested. I re-emphasise to my hon. Friend that we received the first piece of information from the Yemeni authorities, incomplete as it was, five days after the arrest of the individuals. On 29 and 30 December, the British embassy continued to ask the Yemenis for further information about the alleged arrest of British nationals and for access to them, if the report of those arrests were true.
On 31 December--a week after the arrests had taken place--Mr. Shahid Iqbal telephoned the Foreign Office to report that three British nationals, a dual national and a French national had been arrested in Yemen. He had surnames, but no other details. He undertook to obtain further details and left at the Foreign Office a Birmingham telephone number.
No further contact was received from Mr. Iqbal. On 4 January, the Foreign Office, through an official, telephoned him. At that stage, full names were obtained and forwarded to the British embassy in Yemen for verification. On 5 and 6 January, the British embassy made repeated inquiries about possible arrests in Yemen of British nationals, asking for confirmation. To labour the point a stage further, my hon. Friend will be interested to know that on 7 January--13 days after the arrests--the Yemeni authorities confirmed that they had indeed carried out the arrests. They provided the names of the individuals and, at that point, the embassy asked for immediate access to the five.
I stress to my hon. Friend that those 13 days were a crucial period in which the British embassy and the Foreign Office in London were both trying to find out what had happened. The full information, as he will now realise, was not forthcoming from the Yemeni authorities. It took us until 7 January to confirm that five British citizens had been arrested in Yemen.
It is important in that context to say to my hon. Friend that I am confident that Foreign Office officials--in Yemen and in London--acted properly, with efficiency and with due diligence and speed. However, they could not put pieces of an incomplete jigsaw together, because the vital piece of information was not forthcoming from the Yemeni authorities.
Thereafter there has been continual contact between our officials in Yemen and the Yemeni authorities, and between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Yemeni Prime Minister. My noble Friend Baroness
Symons, who represents the Government on consular matters, has met the Yemeni ambassador and the families and representatives of those who have been detained.
"Yemen and Yemenis consider themselves good friends of the British people".
Secondly, I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that the trial of the Britons in Yemen must be concluded in a fair and open manner according to the due process of international law. That means that the men who face trial must understand what is happening in the court process and what is happening in terms of their defence. We expect nothing less. The Yemeni ambassador has given me an assurance that the trial will be conducted according to due process. Has my right hon. Friend received those assurances as well?
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