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Mr. Frank Cook: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that, 10 weeks ago, his strongest criticism was that threats had been made back in September but not carried out?
Mr. Howard: No. I made the criticism for the whole year that preceded the decision to take action. I said repeatedly that there might be a case for not making threats and doing nothing, or for making threats and following them through, but there was no case for doing what the Foreign Secretary did for a year--making threat after threat and giving Milosevic final warning after final warning, but then doing absolutely nothing about it. That gave the wrong signals to Milosevic and his evil regime. If action had been taken much earlier, it might have saved many lives.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): I am listening carefully to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Does he agree that there are two real risks of de facto partition--either by a zonal deployment of the international force or by a partial withdrawal by Serbia?
Does he agree that either of those actions would be disastrous for the future of Kosovo, and will he reject them?
Mr. Howard: I entirely agree that that would not be an acceptable outcome, and the Prime Minister has said so unequivocally. He has made it clear that no partition of Kosovo would be acceptable.
Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North): The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that Milosevic was given too much time. He attacks the Government from one side while others, including some Conservative Members, attack them from the other, saying that no military action should have been taken in the first place. Whatever the Government did at whatever time--I believe that they acted for the most excellent reasons--they would be attacked for one reason or another.
Mr. Howard: Of course it is true that different views have been expressed by hon. Members of all parties, and I have repeatedly said that all those views need to be listened to with respect. I was openly giving my opinion in response to the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook).
There are some vital questions about the means of achieving NATO's objectives. That is the crux of the matter, because, with the best will in the world, it is no use repeating the objectives and accounts of the atrocities time after time if we are not making sufficient progress in achieving those objectives. It gives me no pleasure to say that. I dearly wish that the objectives had been achieved long ago, but it is no use pretending, in the eighth week of the action, that they have been achieved or that we are close to achieving them when, alas and alack--I hope that the impression is a false one--all the indications are that that is not the case.
I repeat to the Foreign Secretary a question that is entirely relevant to the conduct of the conflict: what is the current position, eight weeks after bombing started, on the oil embargo? Has such an embargo been implemented, and if not, when will it be? Why was it not until five weeks into the conflict--five weeks during which there was repeated bombing of oil depots in Yugoslavia--that NATO's political leaders asked for advice on whether such an embargo would be legal?
Is it the case, as the newspapers say, that any such embargo would consist of a visit and search regime and would depend on the consent of the countries in which the ships were registered, and that a NATO source was reported to have said that, if that did not work, we would have to think again? I hope that we can have clear answers to those questions today.
Somewhat similar questions arise concerning the announcement by the French Government on Friday night--amid a flurry of mutual self-congratulation between the French and British Governments--that 12 British Tornados were to be moved to Corsica, enabling them to reach Yugoslavia without refuelling in flight. I am delighted that it will be possible for the Tornados to operate more effectively but, if that is the purpose of the move, why on earth has it been decided on only now and why are the Tornados not to arrive in Corsica until 1 June, nearly two weeks from now?
There has been a steady change in the Government's position on ground troops, and it does them no credit to pretend, as the Foreign Secretary did yesterday, that there has not been any change. At the beginning, the Government's position was clear: bombing would do the job; there was no need for ground troops to fight their way in; and any ground troops that went in would be there to keep the peace after an agreement had been reached, and not to fight the Serbs.
Bit by bit, there was a change in that position. First, ground troops would go in if there was a permissive environment--a term that was never defined. Then the formula was changed to a semi-permissive environment, which was equally undefined. On Tuesday 20 April, the Foreign Secretary told the House that troops would go in on the ground only when they would no longer face organised resistance. The very next day, 21 April, the Prime Minister changed the language again and said that troops would not go in until the Serb forces had been sufficiently degraded, and he refused three times to explain or expand on that formula. Those phrases are not plucked at random out of the air. They clearly signify changes in the Government's position. There is nothing necessarily wrong with those changes--they may well be justified--but, if confidence is to be inspired in them, it is essential that they should be explained, not denied.
Mr. Benn:
I am listening carefully to the right hon. and learned Gentleman as it is right that the Opposition should put questions to the Government. Will he clarify his own position and that of the Opposition on ground troops? Is it their view that, if it is not possible to find a permissive environment for entry, and if the Americans refuse to supply ground troops, Britain--alone or with other NATO countries--should be prepared to enter Kosovo by force to realise our objective?
Mr. Howard:
The right hon. Gentleman asks me to consider a hypothesis that has not been advanced by the Government, who have not said that that is the basis of their military assessment. They have not--in private or in public--told us the nature of their military intelligence or that they believe that they can achieve their objective in the way postulated by the right hon. Gentleman. We have no access to intelligence or assessments. We have no basis on which to suppose that an action of the kind mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman would succeed, and it would be the height of folly to take any action that did not succeed.
Our position is perfectly justified, is the only position that a responsible Opposition can take and has been repeatedly raised with the Government. It is that the Government should tell us why they have changed their position and tell us the justification for that change. If we find the explanations convincing and compelling, the likelihood is that we will support the Government. We have supported their objectives and their decision to take action, but we are not in a position to support their various changes of position because they have never been properly or convincingly explained. I hope that the Secretary of State for Defence will make a convincing case when he winds up this debate.
Mr. Hogg:
My right hon. and learned Friend has sketched the Government's change in position over deployment of land forces, which seems more probable
Mr. Howard:
My right hon. and learned Friend may well be right, but I can give him no categorical answer because I have not seen the intelligence that would tell us the latest state of the Serb forces in Kosovo. I am in no position to judge how many men would be needed to go in. From what I have read and heard, my right hon. and learned Friend may well be right, but, alas, further than that I cannot go.
Mr. Bill Rammell (Harlow):
All of us have a responsibility to explain our views clearly and to explain any change in them. At the beginning of this conflict, the Leader of the Opposition made it absolutely clear that the Conservative party was opposed to the introduction of ground troops; yet, at Prime Minister's Question Time last Wednesday, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) implicitly supported the use of ground troops. Can the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) explain what has changed to alter the stance of the Conservative party?
Mr. Howard:
The hon. Gentleman frequently intervenes on these subjects. I suggest that he does some homework. If he does, he will find--I have the quotation here, if he is interested--that, when the action started, the Chief of the Defence Staff said in public, in a signed article in a newspaper, that the course on which the Government were embarked offered the best prospect of achieving the Government's objectives. If he says that, who on earth is the Leader of the Opposition to gainsay the Government in those circumstances?
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