| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. George Robertson: There are 19 others.
Mr. Maples: Today, I am afraid, France, Germany and Italy have put considerable distance between themselves and the strategy that the Prime Minister is pursuing, and the Greeks are demonstrating in Thessalonika against what is going on, so the number is not 19.
Another danger is involved in bombing from 15,000 ft. What worries me is that, if there are more accidents causing civilian casualties, or accidents like the bombing of the Chinese embassy, NATO will lose the moral high ground from which it started the campaign.
If we had set ourselves the more limited objective of negotiating a peace deal with Milosevic, bombing might well have achieved that. The original objective was to get him to sign up to the Rambouillet peace terms, and the bombing campaign had been designed to achieve precisely that; but events on the ground moved too fast. The objective rapidly changed to restoring the refugees to the whole of Kosovo, but we did not at the same time change the military strategy.
The confusion over war aims was heightened when the Prime Minister set as an objective--or seemed to set as an objective--putting Milosevic on trial for war crimes. Without clear political objectives, it has been impossible to develop a clear military strategy. I believe that the phased air campaign was a mistake, and that the build-up was too slow. We should have hit Milosevic really hard on day 1, as I think our own service chiefs have now acknowledged. We were totally unprepared for the flood of refugees that now threatens the stability of the region, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford.
Within NATO, there is a widespread feeling that politicians are tying the hands of the military. War is a nasty, violent business--people are killed and injured. We have legitimate national interests in the stability of the Balkans and in preventing a humanitarian disaster, but the Government do not appear to have thought through what was involved in fighting for those interests. If those interests were not sufficiently serious to warrant the risking of casualties, perhaps we should never have started; if they were sufficiently serious to warrant such military means, perhaps we should have been prepared to use those means from the start. Can the Secretary of State
confirm specifically that our service chiefs believe they have the men, the equipment and the freedom of action to pursue a strategy that they believe will succeed?
Mr. Worthington:
I am interested by the way in which the hon. Gentleman puts things. He has offered us two "perhapses": perhaps we should not have started, or perhaps we should go in harder. What is he advocating?
Mr. Maples:
I am responding to the Government's policy. As we keep saying, the Government are in possession of all sorts of military intelligence and advice not available to us. It is open to us to make suggestions, and for eight weeks we have given the Government the benefit of the doubt in relation to everything that is proposed. I am now asking what I believe are some hard questions, because I do not think that the strategy is working.
Mr. Peter Bradley:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
On ground troops, once again, confusion reigns, and the Government are sending out contradictory signals. First we would use ground troops only pursuant to a peace agreement; then we might use them in a permissive environment. Just before the Washington summit, the Prime Minister said that we would use ground troops when Serb forces had been sufficiently degraded. That was widely understood to mean attacking on the ground much earlier than had previously been envisaged. Journalists who were on the Prime Minister's plane to Washington were left in no doubt that that was what he had intended to say, and his speeches in Washington bore that out; however, he failed to secure the agreement of our allies, and the Washington communique on Kosovo did not even mention the subject.
In this weekend's press we saw the spinning again, although the Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary assure us that there is no difference between us and the Americans on this issue. I hope that they will not exploit any differences that there are; as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham said, that would really damage the relationship between us and the United States. Today, there is more briefing in the papers to the effect that Europe should take the lead.
Let me say in all seriousness to the Secretary of State that the Government must stop spreading confusion. It is damaging the American alliance; and I ask the Secretary of State to imagine the effect that this inconsistency has on our troops in theatre who may soon be asked to risk their lives. Does the Prime Minister still honestly believe that our objectives can be achieved by air power alone, or does he now believe that an early use of ground troops is necessary? We do not know what he thinks, as a result of the confusion.
We need to be clear about what is meant by using ground troops. That can mean anything from driving down the road into Kosovo pursuant to a peace agreement, to a full-scale air-land battle with entrenched Serb forces. "Permissive environment" can mean anything in between. Any commander would have to assume that he would meet resistance. Whatever the situation, we would have
to enter Kosovo as a fighting force. Short of entering as a peacekeeping force, we would have to plan for war fighting.
The obstacles to an invasion are significant. They have been recognised by NATO and by the Government, which is why there is the doubt and delay, although, apparently, those obstacles are not recognised by the many who have glibly advocated a land battle from the start.
I am advised that the only truly practical route into Kosovo for armour is through Macedonia, although I imagine that there would be other attacks acrossother borders. Going through Macedonia involves the use of Greek and Macedonian territory--both countries have said that they will not allow that.
There will be huge interoperability problems, which could be resolved only by limiting the attacking force to the United States, the United Kingdom and France. I do not know what consideration the Government have given to that question but, if we are to enter in war-fighting mode, the allies with whom we do so will necessarily be restricted: their number will be far fewer than the number with whom we are happy to mount a peacekeeping operation.
At Rambouillet, it was agreed and envisaged there would be a peacekeeping force of 28,000. It is gradually being assembled but, several months later, only about half that number are in place in Macedonia. General Jackson has been saying in a veiled way that the number should be built up rather faster, but invasion or entering in a permissive environment--at whatever end of the scale--where the commander assumes that he will meet resistance will require a far higher number than the 28,000 thought necessary for peacekeeping. Those troops will have to go through a roulement. I do not know how soon that will have to take place, but I believe that it will be difficult to maintain those numbers in theatre for long.
If military operations are to be successful before the winter, any decision to invade will require troops to be put in place very soon. That, in turn, means that a decision to deploy will have to be taken in the next few days; General Jackson has said as much himself.
Time and indecision are cancelling out that option. If the Prime Minister believes that the early use of ground troops is necessary, he should tell us. If NATO cannot agree to that, we have only two alternatives: we either downgrade our objectives and seek a negotiated peace--something that the Prime Minister has said would be a failure, or we continue attrition bombing in the hope that it will work, with the danger that we lose the moral advantage very quickly. If the Prime Minister does believe that early use of ground troops is the way to proceed and we do not do so, he is, by definition, committing us to a second-best strategy in which he does not really believe.
Inevitably, the question will then arise why we started military operations without clear agreement on the use of ground troops, particularly if the military advice was that the battle could not be won by air power alone, as it clearly was in the United States. Presumably, the British Government knew that that was the advice that the United States Government had received.
Before leaving the subject of ground troops, I shall say a word about an idea that is being put about today, probably by the spinners again, that Europe should take the lead in the campaign. It is ironic that that initiative should be launched on the very day that France, Germany
and Italy have publicly made it clear that they will not support the use of ground troops except under a peace agreement. It must be clear to all who have been following the conflict that NATO is having great difficulty doing it at all, let alone doing it without the United States. It gives the lie to the idea that Europe is capable of mounting such operations on its own.
I hope that, if and when ground troops are used, the Government will be clear how we will handle the collateral problems that may then arise in Macedonia, Montenegro and Sanjak, in all of which Serbia is equally capable of stirring up trouble. It is unlikely that any such ground force would have to deal only with the Serbs in Kosovo.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood mentioned the Kosovo Liberation Army. We seem to behave as though the KLA did not exist--we cannot make up our minds how to treat it. We are, I think quite rightly, cautious about arming KLA members, but they are the only people who are fighting the Serbs on the ground in Kosovo. They will be part of any settlement, whether we like it or not. They will probably form the largest part of the future Kosovo administration. They certainly formed a large part of the Kosovo delegation at Rambouillet. We shall require their co-operation and good will. I do not pretend to offer the Government advice on how that should be achieved, but I hope that we have a policy and are implementing it, and that we are not simply pretending that they do not exist. There is a danger that, ultimately, we shall get in there, but discover that they, as well as the Serbs, are an enemy. It is vital that that does not happen.
The problems of a ground war are very difficult. When NATO forces do enter Kosovo, it may be the end of act I, but it will be only the beginning of act II.
Kosovo cannot be seen in isolation. However, we seem to have no overall or long-term plan for a settlement for the Balkans. We have to be working towards an overall peace settlement. I am not pretending that achieving such an agreement will be easy--one has eluded the western powers for 10 years--but, if we are to get involved militarily in what the Government describe as a permissive environment, which I take to mean some degree of fighting, we have to have that long-term objective; otherwise, we are in danger of becoming badly unstuck and getting our armed forces enmeshed in Kosovo for a very long time, but without being able to achieve a long-term objective.
Macedonia and Montenegro seem to be less stable than they were before 24 March. A flood of refugees and our action have, in the short term at least, made the problem worse.
I am seriously worried about the stability of Macedonia, and do not believe that the Government are taking the matter seriously enough. I have written to the Secretary of State about it, and he has replied. However, I really do believe that the volume of refugees in Macedonia is in danger of destabilising the very delicate ethnic balance in that country, and that we should be doing more to alleviate it.
I hope that we have in place plans to deal with the Milosevic-inspired coup in Montenegro, which is certainly something that might happen very soon.
Albania and Macedonia have behaved magnificently in this crisis--the Secretary of State saw it for himself in Albania--but the financial and organisational aid to both of them has been too slow, and, in some cases, it still is.
We believe that it is vital that NATO succeeds in Kosovo. The Government's objectives, which we share, are principled and correct. The Government have put at stake the credibility of our armed forces and of the NATO alliance. That credibility must be redeemed. The Prime Minister says that it would be a failure not to achieve our objectives, but it would also be a failure not to achieve them before the Balkan winter sets in. If the refugees cannot return home before the winter, many of them never will, and the stability of Macedonia and Albania will be further, and perhaps terminally, threatened.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |