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Mr. Dalyell: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clark: If I give way, is it taken out of my time? [Hon. Members: "Yes."] In that case, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I will proceed. I wish to make two points that I hope will be answered when the Minister winds up. First, will the Foreign Secretary confirm that our post in Belgrade told him what the consequences of a NATO bombing attack were likely to be and that that was also reported to the Prime Minister's office? [Hon. Members: "And the monitors."] My hon. Friends remind me to include the monitors and their reports in that question.
Secondly--this point should be answered by a Minister from the Ministry of Defence--there are significant gaps in the military information that should be disclosed. What were the separate recommendations of the Chief of the Defence Staff and against what remit were those made? What principles direct NATO targeting? Is it subject to a
ground or an airborne warning and communication system controller, as in the Gulf war, or is it on the much more perilous basis of targets of opportunity? Is it true, as reported in some of the newspapers that the RAF warned the US air force against attacking the refugee convoy and that in the past 24 hours a senior officer of the RAF Strike Command has resigned? Perhaps that could be confirmed this evening. Why is there so little information about the results, which must be known to the Yugoslavs, being disclosed to the public in the NATO countries? I put those points not from any position of prejudice concerning the atrocities that different elements in Yugoslavia perpetrate upon each other or from any lack of absolute confidence in our armed forces--although I could wish that they were being deployed in a more rewarding role--but because those are the sort of questions that a Back-Bench Member of Parliament is entitled, and should consider himself or herself obliged, to raise at a time like this.
Dr. Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes, South-West):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Am I right in thinking that the Select Committee on Modernisation suggested that latitude should be allowed for interventions and they should not be included in the 10 minutes allowed for speeches?
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
The initial intervention is subtracted from the 10-minute limit, but the response is not.
5.19 pm
Mr. Robert N. Wareing (Liverpool, West Derby): If, two months ago, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary had asked me to recommend a way to bolster support for Milosevic inside Yugoslavia, I think that I would have said, "Have you tried bombing Belgrade?" If, as a result, my right hon. Friend were to come to me and say, "Thanks very much, it worked. What would you recommend now?", my response would be that he might consider putting in ground troops.
I believe, however, that the use of ground troops in Yugoslavia would not be confined to Kosovo. The Serbs would continue to fight, and ground troops would have to be deployed in Serbia too. Despite what the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said, the use of ground troops could lead to the occupation of Belgrade and other cities.
Of course, the deployment of ground troops might lead to the end of Milosevic. No hon. Member wants a person who involves himself in the brutal ethnic cleansing of Albanians to remain in power any longer than necessary. But we must not kid ourselves that there is a democratic alternative, as we know it, in Yugoslavia. In fact, Milosevic himself does not even have a majority in the Serbian Parliament. He depends on Vuk Draskovic, one of the deputy Prime Ministers, who the previous Tory Government believed to be such a rival to Milosevic that they invited him to London, at British taxpayers' expense, to do some sort of deal.
Yugoslavia's other deputy Prime Minister is Vojislav Seselj, whom I mentioned in a speech in October 1991. No one knew then who he was, and Hansard sent me a note asking how to spell his name. I knew who he was: he was the leader of the Radical party and, to be frank, an out-and-out fascist.
None of us has any time for the ethnic cleansing that has taken place, but the bombing is creating a spirit among the Serb population akin to that which we knew in the blitz. Unlike so many of the Ministers making decisions in this matter who have never heard a bomb drop in anger, I know what the British people felt during the battle of Britain and the blitz bombings of London and, especially, Liverpool. We concentrated our support on the figure of our leader, Winston Churchill. I come from a solid Labour family. Every night, when Churchill spoke on the radio, my father would say, "Hush. We must now listen to what Mr. Churchill has to say."
As the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Clark) rightly said, we must ask whether the situation is better than it was before 24 March, when the air raids began. The answer is, patently, no. Of course the situation is not better: it is worse. When a policy is designed, and before it is implemented, the question should always be, "Will this course of action make things better or worse for people?" The air raids have made it worse, and the use of ground troops will make it worse still.
We hear a lot of stories about mass graves. All those guilty of murdering people and putting their bodies in mass graves must be brought to account. I have a specific question for the Government, the answer to which is always refused. If we are against ethnic cleansing, as I am, should we not be against all ethnic cleansing? We are, rightly, going to attack Milosevic over what is happening in Kosovo, but what about Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, where 280,000 Serbs have been driven brutally out of Krajina? Not a finger has been raised by the NATO powers about that.
Mr. Robathan:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Wareing:
I would love to, but I do not think that I would get injury time.
We must also be careful about the propaganda from our own side. I remember, at the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, that the New York firm of Hill and Dowson put out a story that Iraqi soldiers were throwing babies out of incubators. We now know that the story was absolutely incorrect: it never happened. My mother told me about a rumour in the first world war that the Germans put Belgian babies on their bayonets.
Let us be very careful and not indulge in propaganda that is obviously nonsense. To tell the people of Pristina that they bombed themselves--that it was not the RAF or the Americans--is like telling the people of Coventry that they were bombed not by the Luftwaffe but by the RAF.
For God's sake let us reconvene the conference and involve Russia, because Russia holds the key and must not be ignored. The parliamentary elections in December could be a disaster for the west if we push Russia to one side. Let us also bring in Croatia. Let Franjo Tudjman, as well as Milosevic, answer for his crimes.
I hope that the Government will begin to listen and will not be taken in by opinion polls. If a disastrous ground war is conducted the opinion polls will not be so easy on the Government as they are now.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not it a grave discourtesy to the House that, at not yet 5.30, there is no Cabinet Minister here to listen to our deliberations?
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Who decides to sit on the Front Benches on either side is not a matter for the Chair.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle):
The terrible atrocities in Kosovo can be explained, but in no way excused, by the bloodstained history of the region, stretching back over centuries. The answer that the Secretary of State for Defence has twice given me in the House, that something must be done and that we cannot do nothing, is not satisfactory. Foreign policy and the making of war must be judged by results and not by intentions, however admirable those might be.
It has been obvious from the start that the Government's plans have not been thought through. They have certainly not saved the Kosovo Albanians. In terms of achieving its strategic and political objectives, this Balkan air war is likely to go down in history as the most incompetent operation in which Britain has been involved since the Crimea, making the planners of Gallipoli and Suez look like professionals.
One recalls Disraeli's comment on a similar Balkan situation in 1876. He said:
The French, fortunately, are keeping in close touch with the Russians. It would be folly to disregard President Yeltsin's warning not to push Russia too far. He is a moderate in this context. One of the consequences of the present policy will be to reverse the move away from the cold war, with incalculable consequences that may in time far outweigh all other considerations for our own people.
The authors of this folly are increasingly frightened of informed criticism as their policy is seen blatantly to fail. Mr. John Simpson is denounced as a Serb dupe. Ministers who were flaunting CND badges when there was a real threat to Britain now dismiss General Sir Peter de la Billiere and General Sir Michael Rose as armchair journalists. One does not need an armchair to see where the Government's policy has gone so tragically wrong; a nursery stool will do.
When, as an 18-year-old national service man, I was ordered to officer training school, the first War Office pamphlet that we were given started with the following four paragraphs:
There has been confusion from the start about the objective. Originally, and for the first few days, the declared objective was to impose the Rambouillet accord on Serbia. There never was an agreement and the accord is now a dead letter. The local Serb population in Kosovo would react to any NATO occupying force, whether it
arrived in permissive or aggressive form, just as they treated the Nazi SS. Neither Milosevic nor Tito before him taught the Serbs how to fight a guerrilla war; it is bred in the bone.
"Mr. Gladstone and his friends will avenge the Bulgarian atrocities by the butchery of the world."
Without wiser statesmanship, that is where we may be headed.
"1. Identify an achievable objective.
That War Office pamphlet must now be out of print because it clearly was not shown to the Prime Minister or his advisers before he announced an air bombardment of Serbia while firmly ruling out any aggressive use of land forces to support it. A more fatuous statement of war policy could hardly be imagined, as I pointed out from my nursery stool as forcefully as I could when the Prime Minister first made it on 23 March, the day before the bombing began.
2. Plan how to reach it.
3. Do not move until you have decided how to deal with the likely problems that may arise.
4. Give no advance indication of your intentions."
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