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Mr. Hogg: At the time of the Rambouillet accords, it was contemplated that there would be sizeable Serb minority in Kosovo and, in those circumstances, devolved status within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia made sense. If the Serb minority flees Kosovo and goes to Serbia, as appears to be happening, the intellectual justification for the autonomous status of Kosovo will disappear entirely.
Mr. Maples: I take my right hon. and learned Friend's argument, but the United Nations Security Council resolution refers to the Helsinki Final Act and there are difficulties in opening up the question of border settlements. However, from a practical point of view, I do not see how autonomy will be enough, either to provide long-term security or for the KLA, which, however it is demilitarised, will not demilitarise entirely.
The stability pact is a great document and a great plan, but it will need money to back it up. I do not think that the numbers appear in it--if they do, I missed them--but considerable economic aid will be needed to help to redevelop the region and bring it into the European mainstream. There are also many unsettled matters in the Balkans outside Kosovo and they cannot be left in the air. If they are, Milosevic will stir them up. He is very good at stirring up trouble and I do not suppose that we have seen the last of his tricks.
The first phase of NATO's operation has been successful--more successful, and perhaps quicker, than any of us dared hope. The Serb military is leaving and NATO is taking over. Refugees are returning and the atrocities are being investigated by the war crimes tribunal. All that is excellent news, but in many ways the difficult phase is just beginning.
There are the immediate problems of the Russians and the KLA, and I hope that they will be soon resolved, but there will be plenty more. Milosevic has not yet run out
of tricks and while he remains in power, we should always plan for the worst. Our long-term objective must be to bring peace and stability not only to Kosovo but to the whole of former Yugoslavia. That was never going to be easy, and it is no easier now, but we will support the Government wholeheartedly in pursuing that objective.
Mr. Bruce George (Walsall, South):
I welcome the new Opposition team. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) had a reasonably good war. In his speeches, he made the same criticisms as his colleagues who speak on foreign affairs without appearing to want NATO not to acquit itself well. I wish him the best of good fortune in his new post.
I welcome this further debate on Kosovo. The Government have sought to explain--and succeeded in explaining--what they were doing, not only to the House of Commons but to its various Committees, and they were prepared regularly to expose themselves to criticism from Labour and Opposition Members. I am delighted that the Foreign Secretary is going out to Kosovo next week. Perhaps he will take up the seats in the aircraft that members of the Defence Committee were going to take, and perhaps he can persuade his colleagues that, once the Executive have gone to see what has happened, the Defence Committee visit organised by the Ministry of Defence can soon be reactivated. I look forward to him coming back with good news.
The House and the country must be relieved that the worst aspect of the crisis is over, following the success of NATO's operations and the progressive and fairly speedy withdrawal of Serb forces, which is well under way. If I may amend slightly what was said by the Duke of Wellington, however, there is only one thing worse than a battle lost, and that is a battle won.
The Foreign Secretary described some of the problems that NATO, the OSCE, the UN and Governments would have to face following our success. For instance, those organisations must consider how--if it is possible--to integrate Russia in the post-war environment. Last week, both the Defence Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee received a delegation from the Duma's international relations committee. Rumours that I had instructed the police to stand guard at the entrance to the House in case the Russians made a sudden and dramatic push to occupy the Chamber proved to be only partly well-founded.
In the short term, those who return to their own territory will not find that entirely welcome. They will be returning to a ravaged country, and will encounter the danger of stepping on land mines as well as massive problems of reconstruction. The Foreign Secretary spoke of his commitment to bringing to trial those indicted of war crimes, and of the problems of the government of Kosovo. He also spoke of the difficulty of deciding what to do about the KLA, about security in the Balkan region and
about the role of international political and economic institutions such as the OSCE, the UN and the World Bank.
I trust that we shall witness the demise of Milosevic. The Serbs have not yet forgiven the Ottoman empire for what happened in the 14th century, but I hope that they will wipe the events of the last few months from their minds earlier than in the middle of the next millennium.
I cannot adequately express the pleasure and joy that I experience when I see pictures of Kosovans returning home--pictures that show their euphoria, and the sheer spontaneous pleasure of their greeting of their liberators--and note, in the same newspapers, the professional way in which NATO forces that were waiting in Macedonia moved so swiftly into Kosovo, where they are now providing security. There were one or two hiccups, of course.
Like others, I hope that the Serbs will decide to remain in that country. We do not want another war over ethnic cleansing, if ethnic cleansing happens again in a rather different way.
I think that we should congratulate all who have helped NATO to succeed in its campaign. I do not deny the right of hon. Members on either side of the House to oppose its action: I respect those with pacifist leanings--those who, in their dreams, sing "We'll keep the Serb flag flying here." I do not, however, respect those who argue that the conflict in the Balkans was nothing to do with us. I do not respect those who espouse the view that hundreds of thousands of people can be destroyed for the sake of maintaining the sanctity of what they believe international law should be. I do not respect those who quietly, surreptitiously and snidely--although apparently supporting what NATO and the Government were doing--hoped that both NATO and the Government would fall on their faces.
Many people advanced the argument--based largely on what the so-called experts were saying--that air power would never succeed. I hope that they will do the same as John Keegan, who admitted that, despite his great expertise, he had got it entirely wrong. I will not join, for instance, the manic Norwegian television broadcaster who, after his country defeated England, rattled off a series of names including Lord Nelson, Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill; but I could certainly do so. My list would include a number of Members of Parliament, as well as journalists, academics and alleged experts. I hope that the people to whom I have referred will at least have the decency to admit that they were wrong in expressing with such certainty the view that NATO would fail.
One of my colleagues on the Defence Committee--[Hon. Members: "Where are they?"] Some are here, and I admire them for being here. Others have wisely got out of the way. The colleague to whom I refer, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt), has gone to Russia. If he were here, I would have mentioned this to him. In one speech, he managed to make so many mistakes that I thought he must have missed the lecture at staff college. He said, prematurely, "Our strategy has failed". He also called for the resignation of the Chief of the Defence Staff in the middle of the war, which I do not regard as very sensible. The only crime of the Chief of the Defence Staff was that of supporting the Government, which I consider a rather bizarre reason for demanding his resignation. The hon. Gentleman added:
The alliance held together--it actually held together, although there were those who hoped against hope that it would implode; and, as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, it will emerge strengthened by its experience, and by the criticism from both external and internal opponents.
There were those in the alliance whose enthusiasm was less than total. I am thinking, for instance, of an interesting article that I read only this week in a publication of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, and of the less than extreme enthusiasm of the Czech Republic, although the President can be exempted from that criticism. The Greek Government did what had to be done, although I cannot express the same admiration for the media there or for public opinion.
I was delighted when the Foreign Secretary said that the efforts of Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Montenegro during the war deserved to be properly rewarded. I hope that they will not be rewarded by some long-term commitment to consider their application to join NATO. When it came to the crunch, they delivered. I understand that the Bulgarians are offering to send troops to work alongside British experts in mine clearance, and I feel that we should express our thanks and admiration.
May I pick up a point raised by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon? Over the years, Parliaments and royal commissions have had ample opportunities to examine wars won and occasionally, if not wars lost, then battles lost. My favourite example is a wonderful inquiry that was undertaken in the early days of the failure of the British, the French and the Turks to capture Sebastopol. The Jameson raid, the Boer war and Gallipoli all produced great opportunities for royal commissions and Parliaments to identify what went right and, more important, what went wrong.
I think it entirely right to identify this rather smart move by the Russians in evading our intelligence services. I certainly advise the hon. Gentleman to look at the events that led to the invasion of the Falkland Islands, when the Argentines were able to move far more than the Russians. They were able to attack the islands, and, I believe, to purchase 500 maps of them from The Stationery Office. I had a copy, but the last Government denied that they existed. The map is stamped by the military governor of Argentina and by the civil commissioner, Rex Hunt. The Argentines managed to move out of this country a vast quantity of their financial resources, and to get on to a war footing without alerting intelligence, and without the Cabinet committee realising what was happening.
"Two months later, as the ground option evaporates, we urgently need an exit . . . It is clear that our allies want a way out . . . We have fundamentally misread the nature of the conflict . . . Having broken international law in attacking Yugoslavia, let us now stand up for the principle of self-determination."--[Official Report, 18 May 1999; Vol. 331, c. 944-46.]
I can only say that I am delighted for the Opposition that the purge that has taken place has not yet given the hon. Gentleman a position on the Front Bench, although that may come later.
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