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7.52 pm
Mr. Alasdair Morgan (Galloway and Upper Nithsdale): It is just over four weeks since we had the previous debate on Kosovo in the House. Since then, we have witnessed further death and persecution of ethnic Albanians as a result of the bloody actions of the Serb so-called police and the Yugoslav army; further deaths of Yugoslav civilians, both Serbs and Albanians, as a result of NATO's actions; and further deaths among the Serb police and Yugoslav troops. One could say that they have reaped the harvest that they have sown, except that we have heard from one hon. Member that many in the Yugoslav army are reluctant conscripts.
We have witnessed the deaths of third parties, especially in the bombing of the Chinese embassy, which has not exactly enhanced the prospects of a diplomatic solution. We have witnessed the deaths of NATO personnel due to accidents, so there has been much death and misery since the previous debate, but we can be certain of one thing: by any criteria, there has been little progress towards a resolution. We in the Chamber can only guess at the true magnitude of the suffering that is being endured by the displaced and terrified refugees. Evidence of the appalling atrocities magnifies and increases as each day passes.
I am sure that the House welcomes the actions and statements of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, former President of the Republic of Ireland, whose office sent human rights monitors to gather and document evidence of human rights violations and war crimes in Serbia, and who has directly challenged the Serb Foreign Minister with evidence of his Government's policy of ethnic cleansing. But if hon. Members are impressed by Mrs. Robinson's determined opposition to Serbia's policies of brutality and aggression, and if we support her beginning to bring the perpetrators of those deeds to justice, should we not be equally impressed by her comments on the scale and direction of NATO's on-going bombing campaign?
The real debate that is going on in the House, in the country and throughout the world has to rise above some of the sanitised soundbites that sometimes seem to serve as sufficient justification for the policy that we are pursuing in the Balkans. Our Government are in danger of being regarded as the so-called hawks in the affair, becoming more hawkish as the evidence mounts that the strategy has had serious flaws from the beginning.
I do not believe that the Government embarked on the bombing campaign lightly, but they have made a serious miscalculation of the consequences. I hope that they will go no further in trying to escalate the conflict but, instead, give some of the peace efforts that are slowly beginning a chance.
Too much of the Government's time is spent trying to drum up support for the current course of action, while it is others who tour the capitals trying to find a way to
negotiate a solution. There have been peace feelers from the Finns, which have already been alluded to, the Germans, Italians, Greeks and so on. Perhaps we should join them more convincingly.
In recent days, the debate has been joined by General Colin Powell, who has correctly questioned the long-term strategy behind, and the tactical approach to, the campaign. The growing consensus emerging from NATO briefings, Pentagon sources and alliance Governments is that a bombing campaign on its own cannot work, and there is almost a consensus in the House as to that fact. The Government would have done well to recognise that some weeks ago. Instead, they have become mired even further in a bombing-only campaign, which, in recent weeks, has drawn an increasingly heavy price--a price paid by civilians and others who are not directly involved in the conflict.
At successive stages over the past few weeks, NATO has said to itself, "What we are doing is not working." Its conclusion is not that the strategy is wrong, but that it is not being implemented vigorously or sufficiently enough, so the campaign has been ratcheted up again and again. However, it has still not achieved its objectives.
It is simply not sufficient for us to have the endless repetition of the mantra, "Milosevic is a terrible person. We must do something. We cannot sit back and do nothing." That is no substitute for the development of a credible policy that will work.
As an aside, we have heard some references in the Chamber to NATO's credibility. We should not determine our policy on the basis of whether it will damage NATO's credibility. The Foreign Secretary suggested that we should; it was one of the three points that he made in summing up. NATO's credibility, one way or the other, should be entirely subordinate to other factors. Whatever other reasons the Government have to put forward to justify their actions in Kosovo, surely NATO's credibility should not be near the top of the list.
I have spoken already of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson. The House may wish to hear some of her comments, particularly those on the bombing campaign. In the Irish Times yesterday, she was quoted as saying:
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington):
I was in the House of Commons, on 4 May 1982, when news came through from the south Atlantic that an Exocet missile, which had been launched by a Super Etandard aeroplane, had hit HMS Sheffield. I should like to quote what was said about the incident in a book, "Battle for the Falklands", because I think that the description bears great similarities to what is happening now. It states:
Almost 18 years ago, because we maintained our resolve, even after the incident with HMS Sheffield in the south Atlantic, we went on to win the war and to remove fascism from Argentina. That was the product of the campaign in the Falkland islands. We terminated fascism in Argentina, and, over the years since, have probably saved tens of thousands of lives. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) opposed that war, but he might well reflect on the fact that tens of thousands of lives have consequently been saved. The war brought down a dictatorship in south America, andmay even have influenced the existence of similar dictatorships.
In my 20 years in the House, I have found that the same people oppose every war, and that they oppose each of them on the same basis. They opposed the war in the south Atlantic, which removed fascism from parts of South America. They opposed the war in Kuwait, which was about removing fascists from Kuwait. As a consequence of removing fascists from Kuwait, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved in the middle east.
All along the line, we find that the same people use even the same environmental arguments to oppose war. I remember debates on the Falklands war, in the early 1980s, in which speeches were made about the war's environmental effects in the south Atlantic. I remember debates on the Kuwaiti war in which they were talking about the oil fields and the war's effect on bird life in the Gulf. The same arguments are being used all the time.
When the public come to measure the issues of this war, I think that they should have in mind the fact that some hon. Members are simply opposed to war in all conditions, even if that war is about removing fascism. That is why the opponents of this war are, once again, just plain wrong. We have an obligation--in this country more than any other--to stand up and remove fascism wherever it is.
My argument with the Government is essentially a very simple one. I have raised it in the parliamentary Labour party, and I intend to raise it again now. It is about targeting. I am concerned about a policy that is essentially about attacking only military bases. I am also aware of the provisions of the Geneva convention, which partly restricts our latitude in the selection of targets. However, we are taking a very narrow interpretation of the convention's provisions.
Article 52(2) of the convention states:
Ethnic cleansing is part of military action. Ethnic cleansing is carried out by military personnel. Ethnic cleansing is challenging the lives of individual people. It is therefore something that we should have in mind when considering military action and the provisions enshrined in the article of the Geneva convention to which I referred.
Which objects or facilities, might it be argued, are of use in the military campaign of ethnic cleansing? In my view, any facility that aids the process of ethnic cleansing is potentially a target.
Ethnic cleansing is aided by centres where data are held, leading to the identification of individuals or properties. Therefore, those centres must potentially be a target. In recent weeks, the Serbs have been able repeatedly simply to drive up to convoys and pull out certain people, whom they were able to identify because of the existence of recording systems. I say that that process in itself should be subject to military action, and that that action would be permissible under the Geneva convention.
"The dropping of cluster bombs knowing they will drift into civilian areas does not serve a human rights cause".
She was also reported as saying that she had seen children playing near unexploded cluster bombs. She said:
"There was no visible sign of a military target."
The report continued:
"Mrs. Robinson said that human rights defenders in Yugoslavia felt undermined by the bombing. 'They told me, we don't see the rule of law in the bombing campaign'".
This afternoon's reports on CNN have talked of Yugoslav Foreign Ministry briefings indicating some movement on the Serb side, and of the Finnish President and the Russian peace envoy both playing a key role in those events. We have every right to be very cynical about the posturing of President Milosevic, and to treat with extreme reservation any proposals emanating from Belgrade. We all know that he is a past master at deceit and procrastination. However, NATO's actions in past months have diminished rather than enhanced the prospects of our dealing with anyone else in charge of Yugoslavia at the end of the campaign.
"As news filtered through to the Commons, MPs poured into the chamber to hear Nott announce the loss, a stunned Mrs. Thatcher by his side. Only the far left seemed to take any grim pleasure from the news. The bragging and self-confidence of the campaign so far evaporated. Suddenly there was doubt on every side: so much so that Mrs. Thatcher uncharacteristically ordered Lewin to go on television to allay public fear. Newspapers whose enthusiasm for the war had known no bounds now discovered its price. The Daily Mail brought out a black border round its front page. In Downing Street, the Prime Minister surprised her staff by the emotion with which she received the news. She had always told them the one thing she dreaded was to hear of the loss of a ship. Now it had happened, and she was visibly upset. At such moments throughout the war, she would retreat to her upstairs room and handwrite letters of condolence to the parents of servicemen lost in action."
I read that because I think that something very similar to it happened the other day, when those missiles hit the Chinese embassy, and also when the incident occurred in which 80 or 100 people died because of a major accident. The problem with wars is that we know that those things will happen. What we have to do, however, is to maintain our resolve.
"Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objectives which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage".
In other words, we are talking about objects that, by their use, make an effective contribution to military action and whose neutralisation offers a definite military advantage.
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