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Mr. Bradshaw: Perhaps I can help my hon. Friend. The OECD itself and the United Nations estimate that 350,000 ethnic Albanians had been ethnically cleansed before a single NATO bomb fell.
Mr. Wareing: Yes, but all of those people did not go to Macedonia or Albania, as many of them settled in the forests and mountains of Kosovo--[Interruption.] Although my hon. Friend laughs at that, the fact is that, after 24 March, the situation became very much worse.
We are also being told that Milosevic has now accepted what he was being offered before 24 March. However, as many hon. Members have said, the Rambouillet accords essentially dictated NATO control of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Why, then, are NATO troops now able to enter Kosovo only from Macedonia or Albania? Annexe B is not in the 3 June agreement. Only the Russians have been allowed to go through Serbia to reach Kosovo. When I heard that the Russians were in Kosovo I thought that it was marvellous, because at least that will help to protect the Serb population. There would be less fear in Kosovo with the presence of Russian troops.
We have all heard about the difficulties that the German forces have had in Prizren. Perhaps Ministers can tell me the current situation there. The headlines in the Evening Standard two nights ago said that the German forces had been sidelined in Prizren and the KLA were in charge there. How can we tell the Serb population that we can protect them if they see that in one of the largest towns in Kosovo the NATO writ does not run?
I was also pleased that Russian troops had gone to Pristina, if only because the Russians had received no reward for the work that they put into the diplomatic efforts before the 3 June agreement. Without Russia, the Rambouillet accords would not have been changed and NATO would not have made the concessions that it undoubtedly made by no longer saying that it wants to occupy the whole of Yugoslavia. I am surprised that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary did not feel it necessary to express appreciation for the work of Mr. Chernomyrdin on behalf of us all in bringing about the 3 June agreement.
The hon. Member for Tatton stole the words from my mouth when he said that the position of the allied forces in Kosovo may well mirror what happened in Northern Ireland. The British troops were originally sent to Northern Ireland to protect the Catholic population against the B Specials, who were eventually disbanded, but they ended up fighting the IRA. I would not be at all surprised if, in the not-too-distant future, British soldiers and others in the NATO force found themselves fighting the KLA.
Another difference between Rambouillet and the 3 June agreement is that there is no provision in the new agreement for a referendum in three years. Do we think for a moment that the KLA--a terrorist organisation with a vision of a greater Albania--will give way on independence after the fighting that it has been involved in? Of course it will not. If we believe that we can easily disarm the KLA and that all the arms will be taken over by NATO, we are living in a fool's paradise.
If we want to promote the Balkan region and we are concerned about the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the Hungarians and the Macedonians, we have to look at the situation in Serbia. The depleted uranium bombs that we dropped--a war crime in itself--are polluting the Danube and the earth. That does not stop at the frontier of Serbia; it will affect its trading partners and neighbours in the region.
If we do not give assistance to Serbia, who will benefit? I warned the House, eight years ago in 1991, of the danger of Seselj. The Foreign Secretary mentioned a democratic Serbia. That will take time. However, I have visited the former Yugoslavia more than 40 times, including about a dozen times during the conflicts of the past eight years, and I can confirm that it is far easier to talk to people on the streets or in the tavernas and cafes of Belgrade or any of the other cities in that part of the world than it was in Ceaucescu's Romania. I remember that people in Romania would talk to me only in whispers in doorways. I suggest that Belgrade is also much freer than Zagreb.
My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) has done a wonderful job in opposing the insanity that has been inflicted on Europe in past months. She referred to many of the problems and I believe that, unless we give assistance to the Serbs in Yugoslavia, if they get rid of Milosevic they will get someone worse instead--they will get Seselj. They will not get a democrat overnight. If the west shows that it is interested in the ordinary people and their partners in the area, there is a greater chance of getting them to consider their political system and reaching a more desirable end to their political problem.
It is sad that our country has played its part in helping NATO to usurp the United Nations. We know that the US is undoubtedly the great power behind NATO, which will not do anything without the support of the Americans. If anyone is blind to ethnic origins, it is Americans, at least as far as the Kurds in Turkey are concerned. Turkey is one of the so-called 19 democracies. Is Turkey really a democracy? Of course it is not, and that is why we are placing a barrier in the way of its entrance into the European Union.
Are the Americans really interested in democracy and human rights, when they supply arms to Indonesia even after all the horror in East Timor? Can we say that the Americans are interested in democracy, when the history of American policy reveals the crushing of a democratic
regime in Guatemala in 1954? In 1973, the US gave aid to crush the democratic regime in Chile. Many other instances of its imperialism could be cited.
Mr. Winnick:
I mentioned in my speech what I felt about US involvement in Vietnam and my total condemnation of its actions in Chile in 1973 and Guatemala in 1954. However, the fact that the US was wrong on several occasions does not mean that it cannot be right on others. Were we not pleased to have its support in the first and second world wars, in particular? Despite the blemishes on the US record at home and in Latin America, one must take every situation on its merits.
Mr. Wareing:
I was very pleased when the Americans were brought into the war in December 1941 after the bombing of Pearl harbour. I was also delighted--because we were alone--that on 22 June 1941 we got the support of the Soviet Union, despite the regime there.
We have come to the end of the cold war, or at least we thought so. Many of us, and perhaps even my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick)--I am careful to get the name of his constituency right, because he was understandably agitated when someone got it wrong before--used to say that we hoped that one day the cold war would end and east and west would come together, with an end to the Warsaw pact and NATO.
The Warsaw pact has gone and I still hope for the end of NATO because I believe that the security of Europe, and indeed the world, requires harmony with Russia, which is still a great country. True, it has been disastrously ruined by accepting Thatcherite economics, but it has huge potential. It is still a nuclear power and a member of the United Nations Security Council, so it cannot be ignored. We should try not only to end the disastrous situation caused in part by NATO's actions but to find a new European security system that embraces Russia. In that way, we can ensure that there will be no more Kosovos, because we will be together.
I congratulate the new shadow Foreign Secretary on his appointment, but I was astonished when he spent about a third of his speech attacking Russia. I can understand him attacking Milosevic or Tudjman. I wish that Ministers had attacked Tudjman as much as they attacked Milosevic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax said, Tudjman is equally a war criminal. I have met them both and I know what they are like. It is a toss-up between them. Tudjman is a forbidding character from start to finish, but that does not mean that Milosevic is a great chap.
Mr. Bowen Wells (Hertford and Stortford):
The House knows that I opposed the bombing of Kosovo and Belgrade. I did so because I did not think that it would achieve the objective that we set for ourselves: to avoid an horrific humanitarian disaster that was being planned
Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Wells:
Not just at the moment, please, particularly since we have very little time--and I know the hon. Lady wants to speak.
None the less, it would be churlish not to say that the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for Defence and the Secretary of State for International Development have been steadfast in pushing through their policy. They have troops going into Kosovo, the bombing has stopped and we are beginning to get the refugees back to their homes. I admire and applaud that achievement but, like many hon. Members, I do not believe that the action was necessary in the first place.
I think that a consensus has begun to develop in this debate. The hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) has been courageous in persisting with the points that she has made. Much of what she had to say was acknowledged by the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, who agreed that the undermining of the international rule of law enshrined in article 2(4) of the United Nations charter is unforgivable and will lead to unforeseen turbulence in the rest of the world.
That agreement was shared by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir J. Stanley). So a consensus is emerging that serious damage has been done to organisations with a long history that we have supported through thick and thin. It is not good enough to say, as the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) did, that we shall simply ignore and override such organisations when we do not get what we want.
The result of the action is that Russia has been left on the outside. Russia was the key to achieving any kind of agreement with Serbia. There was an idea that the bombing would get rid of Milosevic, but we have not succeeded in that. We still have to negotiate with him, and we have only reinforced his support in Belgrade and Serbia. If we had not bombed but had encouraged those who were against his policies in Serbia, we might have got rid of him, with the result that we would now be negotiating with a more pliable person with whom we could do business. That is not a possibility with Milosevic.
So I make no apology for not supporting the war. The diplomacy employed by the international community in relation to the break-up of Yugoslavia has been a disaster. The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) said that a deal was done with the former Chancellor Kohl to secure the British opt-outs in the Maastricht treaty talks by letting Germany recognise Croatia and Slovenia. If true, that was one of the most disastrous and dishonourable international agreements ever made. That is why we must call an international conference on how we deal with unacceptable genocidal activities in countries. We must
find a peaceful way to allow countries to disaggregate without fighting, ethnic cleansing or the other horrors that we have seen.
If we have the vision, we must try and restore a sustainable international law respected and obeyed by all countries, however inconvenient it may be. Such a rule of law might be implemented by the United Nations Assembly, or NATO might revert to a defensive role. That is what we must try to rebuild.
However, I believe that Russia's actions, taken to re-establish its position in the world order, are justified. I do not support--and neither do the Government or the Opposition--the idea of a separate Russian zone, as it would be heavily influenced by Serb interests. Yet we ignore Russia at our peril. We would be stupid to do so: we must enfold, embrace and help that country--and get help from it--in these difficult situations. We made a serious mistake by ignoring the Russian veto at the United Nations and Russian counsel at Rambouillet.
How should we deal with the refugees? The Secretary of State for International Development has been good enough to place in the Library details of what she has done, some of which I have read. Those details will form part of a research paper that the Library is producing. Much aid will be given to international organisations inEurope, to UNICEF and to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The Secretary of State has accepted that the UNHCR is an imperfect instrument, and I welcome the fact that her Department has given not money but services and supplies when the UNHCR has required them on the ground.
I retain serious misgivings about the UNHCR's leadership and determination to manage the situation. When refugees flood home in an uncontrolled way, we continually hear cries that there is no power to stop them. However, the UNHCR should have powers to intervene, explain, dissuade and cajole the refugees into returning in an orderly fashion that would allow them to begin to rebuild their lives and their homes. The refugees will return to homes without water or electricity. Sometimes, there will be no road; certainly, there will be no fuel. Their fields will not have been cultivated and they will have no money or means by which to see themselves through the 12 months before the next harvest or with which to rebuild their homes.
The European Community Humanitarian Office has suggested to the UNHCR a framework within which we can all work. Much more must be done, however. The Secretary of State should explain how the operation will be handled. How will we provide shelter or enable people to build homes? One research paper says that roughly 50 per cent. of the houses in Kosovo have been damaged or destroyed. The UNHCR will provide basic shelter materials for approximately 35,000 housing units. Basic shelter kits will include plastic sheeting, roofing and windows, some timber, a toolkit and possibly some window and door frames.
I am not certain that that will be enough. We cannot be dealing with only 35,000 houses, the number must be a great deal higher. It also seems to me that one would not be able to rebuild a housing unit with that basic equipment. We require a much more imaginative approach. Pre-fabricated buildings may be the quickest means by which to re-establish refugees in decent housing that will see them through the winter. The situation is
urgent as the Balkan winter in Kosovo is severe. Homes must be rebuilt between now and October, or refugees will be in the open and young children and older people will die.
We need an imaginative approach, prosecuted with the vigour and determination that the Secretary of State exhibits in her approach to many problems of international development. We must provide food, shelter and clothes. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) referred to links with British communities, and one feature of recent events has been the huge response of the British public. We should encourage that, and we should provide an organisation within the Department to make links between our schools, localand national non-governmental organisations and organisations in Kosovo. That would get people communicating with each other and working together to re-establish villages and towns as quickly as possible.
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