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Mr. Gill: The hon. Gentleman is talking about the humanitarian tragedies around the world. Why does this
one deserve the intervention of NATO? Other tragedies are being played out in Africa, and elsewhere, on which western nations are apparently neutral.
Mr. Anderson: I shall answer that intervention head on. Of course there is morality in a humanitarian response. Of course we can be faulted for not intervening in other areas, such as Rwanda, where, between April and June 1994, 750,000 or 1 million people were massacred in a genocide. Perhaps we can be faulted for that, but, in the murky world of international relations, we must consider not only morality, but our interests. In this case, in our Europe, our interests are mightily involved because, as was said earlier, Hungary, which is now a member of NATO, borders Yugoslavia, and because we have the problem of more than a million refugees in our Europe already.
Mr. Anderson: No, I will not give way.
There is a real danger not only of the conflict spreading to the immediately neighbouring countries, one by one, but of Greece and Turkey, our allies, being brought in. Therefore our interests are mightily involved. I believe that the combination of our interests and morality justifies the intervention. That is the background.
The dangers, of course, are clear. It is, at one level, an intervention in a civil war. When one intervenes in a civil war, one intervenes on one side. We must be clear and warn the Kosovar Albanians that they should not take advantage of the damage to the military assets of the Serbs.
Of course the situation is murky. We must stress the limited nature of our aims. With all the high risks involved, I believe that this limited operation is, indeed, justified. However, we should beware of dressing up our aims too much in absolutist terms, as there would then be a danger of our being drawn along the road to using ground troops and to a much wider intervention.
Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater):
I apologise to the Foreign Secretary and to the House for the fact that I was not able to be present at the start of the right hon. Gentleman's speech. No discourtesy was intended.
I join right hon. and hon. Members in recognising the manifest gravity of the situation that we face. I well understand the strong feelings in all parts of the House. I have lived through earlier debates of this kind. Strong feelings have been evident on those occasions too, sometimes evoked by the same right hon. and hon. Members as on this occasion.
Listening to recent broadcasts and hearing the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) and the noble Lord Healey making common cause on the matter reminded one how, on other issues, unexpected alliances may form, as similar criticisms are expressed.
I paid tribute to the Prime Minister for his statement which, by its clarity, conveyed to the House how grave the situation is and how dangerous the consequences could be. He said that the consequences of the action that he had authorised on behalf of the Government and the country could be extremely serious for our country. He added that the consequences of not acting could be more serious still. That is indeed the case.
I was struck by the comments of other speakers in the debate about the spillover which could flow from those actions. I was interested to read in the newspaper this morning that Secretary-General Solana had offered a security assurance to Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Albania and Macedonia that, if they were attacked as a consequence of the position that they adopted on the matter, NATO would come to their assistance. I am not sure whether that report is accurate, but it is a significant and crystal clear indication of how wide the implications of this action might be and how serious its consequences could be.
It is never easy to act. Comments and speeches similar to those that have been made recently were made before the Gulf war and before the Falklands events, and I could certainly make as powerful a speech as many right hon. and hon. Members on all the dangers and difficulties of the action that the Government have taken. I recognise the difficulty that the Government are experiencing, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) and the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, are also exercised over the legal basis of this action.
One of the features of the actions that we were able to take during the liberation of Kuwait was that, for the first time, the UN Security Council was able to act with full authority. The Security Council actually worked, because those events coincided with a period of paralysis during the transition of the Soviet Union into Russia. We did not face the prospect of the paralysis of the UN, which we had faced for the previous 45 years; whenever difficult issues arose in client countries of one bloc or another, the UN was powerless to act.
I say with great sadness that we appear to moving back to a situation in which the UN, in the Security Council, is not able to speak with the clarity that many believe a humanitarian crisis demands. Such a situation did not exist during the Gulf war.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe said that the European Union summit meeting communique has been withdrawn and that certain countries have dissociated themselves from these actions. I do not want to make a political point, but it is worth noting that those of us who have been concerned about a common foreign and defence policy being initiated under the authority of the European Union can see very clearly from that illustration why it is important to keep authority for defence policy out of the European Union. I listened for the names of those countries carefully; certainly three of them are neutral and they would be faced with problems in this sort of situation.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle):
My right hon. Friend has made the extremely important point that
Mr. King:
I do not want to get into the territory of a discussion about the enlargement of NATO and the fears of Russia. However, as the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife said, although the permanent members of the UN Security Council--the great powers--have the power of veto and are able to block action, in no humanitarian catastrophe, no matter how great, should the world have to accept that it is paralysed. NATO is the only organisation with the power and effectiveness to act, to try to correct a totally intolerable situation, and the judgment of the vast majority of Members of the House is that we face such a situation now.
The interesting discussion about the lack of UN authority for the use of force extends to Operation Provide Comfort. I was involved in the arrangements for providing air cover and the prohibition of the flying of Iraqi aircraft over northern Iraq. Hon. Members will remember the pictures of the hundreds of thousands of Kurds on the mountain tops, freezing to death as they were pursued and persecuted by Saddam Hussein. During the follow-on actions at the end of the Gulf war, after Kuwait had been liberated, we imposed a no-fly zone for Iraqi aircraft and helicopter gunships. We did not have specific authority from the UN, but we acted under resolution 688, which
Mr. Alan Clark:
Operation Provide Comfort was, within its own definition, a successful affair, but surely it is not correct to infer from that that an extended authority to bomb the civilian population of another sovereign country--in order to alleviate the suffering of civilians in that same sovereign country--is in any way parallel, or can in any way be justified, on the basis of humanitarian aid.
Mr. King:
May I go on to say what I believe is the objective of this exercise, which may help my right hon. Friend? It is the degrading of military assets. He was a Minister with me in the Ministry of Defence at that time and he will recall that our planes, which were providing air cover over northern Iraq, were instructed to shoot down any Iraqi planes and to destroy any Iraqi weaponry that was used, either on the ground or in the air, to
"appeals to all Member States . . . to contribute to these humanitarian relief efforts",
and
"insists that Iraq allow immediate access by international humanitarian organisations to all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq".
That operation has continued, without specific authorisation under the UN. Its conduct has been justified on the basis that it is implementing the humanitarian objectives of that UN resolution.
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