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6.10 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): My own speech is necessarily truncated, but I believe that the debate has been better for the fact that Back Benchers have not been limited to 10-minute speeches.
I had the good fortune to be called to speak last week, on 10 June, when, at column 843 of the Official Report, I asked several questions to which I am still awaiting answers. On 30 June, I shall ask question No. 3 to the Prime Minister. I shall ask simply who is tasked with disarming the Kosovo Liberation Army.
On that subject, I refer to an article by Chris Stephen, reporting from Pristina, for The Scotsman this morning. He writes:
Finally--I promise to be brief--my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) referred to my remarks about drugs. I shall simply quote from the New Statesman of 9 April, which I was quoting when I made those remarks. It said that
Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park):
I have listenedfor a long time to much self-congratulation--not triumphalism--and much analysis of politics and military tactics. It is a trifle early to engage in such analysis of what happened and why.
I supported the action throughout, and I never doubted that we were doing the right thing. Instead of looking back, at the fag-end of the debate, I shall deal briefly with the present problems. As the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) said hours ago--she is no longer in her place--there is an awful mess that needs cleaning up.
Until the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) spoke, I thought that no one would mention what is to be done about the refugees and the people who are returning to live in Kosovo. The debate has been very one-sided. The hon. Gentleman made several points, particularly about the UNHCR and the organisation of non-governmental organisations to prevent them from becoming confused, as happened in Rwanda. I shall not repeat those points.
I have a shopping list for the Secretary of State. First, the children in Kosovo, whether they are Serb or Kosovar children, are dreadfully shocked and traumatised. They have experienced things that no child should ever expect to experience. They have seen fathers killed, and mothers raped and beaten before their eyes. I saw an item on the BBC News website about a paramilitary policeman who had killed 54 people in one day. That sort of thing is being witnessed by children.
The children have lost their families. They need medical, social and, above all, psychiatric help because they are the future of their country. Without the right help now, those events could be repeated in their generation. It is terribly urgent for them to get the necessary help, and I hope that the Secretary of State will put their needs foremost.
The Secretary of State mentioned yesterday that hospitals were practically non-existent in Kosovo. When I visited Tirana in Albania, which has not been bombed, I described the facilities as pre-Florence Nightingale. That country had not had the effects of war to deal with. It was trying to cope with the refugees and its own people, and it had nothing. Medical facilities must be at the top of the list of the aid to be sent out for returning refugees.
I shall mention yet again--probably for the third time in the House--the needs of the host families in Albania and Macedonia. If they were given more financial and food aid, they might be able to keep many refugees in their families and homes for a long time yet, so encouraging the refugees to stay where it is safe and not to try to return to Kosovo too early.
The documentation of refugees has been dealt with, so I shall not go over it again.
Land mines will cause an enormous amount of injury and death in the coming weeks. The matter has not been discussed much in the House. This could be an opportunity to relaunch the Ottawa treaty process. Is there nothing that we can do to revitalise the campaign against land mines? We need a global land mines task force under the UN. Could not Kosovo and Bosnia be the place to restart the campaign? Will the Serb nation help us do that?
However optimistic we are, a guerrilla war is sure to be fought in Kosovo for some time. Has anyone addressed the question of where the supply of small arms and armaments will come from? The arms brokers in this country must be rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate yet another market for their goods. Has any member of the Government considered the problem? What proposals have been advanced to prevent the activities of arms brokers in Britain and elsewhere?
Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon):
On Saturday morning I got up early and watched Sky News to see the entry of British troops into Kosovo. I continued to watch television throughout Saturday morning. Even when my family, with whom I usually long to spend time, rose much later than I had, and even when the cricket came on on the other side, I continued to watch British troops going into Kosovo.
Mr. Menzies Campbell:
Something serious.
Mr. Streeter:
Yes, for me to miss watching cricket is a serious matter. My wife could not understand why I was watching for so many hours. Sky News was terrific, but of course it repeated the same thing over and over again. I asked myself why I was so gripped by what I was watching. I think it was for two reasons. First, I felt immense pride in the skill and ability of our troops to do this kind of work--the peacekeeping and spearhead rapid reaction soldiering in which they have been trained for so many years. When last year I went with the former shadow Foreign Secretary to meet our troops who were engaged in peacekeeping in Bosnia, again I was impressed by their professionalism, sensitivity, training and ability to keep the peace as well as fight a war. The pride that I have in our troops welled up within me on Saturday.
Secondly, I had just returned from a five-day visit to Albania visiting refugees in Tirana, and Kukes on the northern border. I went there to see the condition in which the refugees were living. After a poor start, the aid agencies did a terrific job in caring for people there. Most were medically well, with enough food and water, and attempts were being made by UNICEF and others to care for the children and to provide some kind of schooling. That was interesting.
I also heard the stories of people just like us, and of the trauma that they have experienced. I was able to speak with them about friends, neighbours and relatives who had been killed. I talked with some young people about what they have gone through. I met one girl called Susanna, whom I will never forget. Speaking in good English, she told me how one day the Serbs arrived in her village, knocked down her family's front door and gave them 10 minutes to get out. They got out, but some of their friends and neighbours did not make it.
As I watched Sky News on Saturday I knew the joy that would be welling up in the hearts of the refugees in Albania. This was the day for which they had been waiting. This was the day that meant that they would soon be going home--the very thing for which they had hoped and prayed all those weeks and months. It was a moving experience.
Taking part in today's debate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) said, has been a privilege. We have heard many different points of view, but all of us are now committed to ensuring that we win and lead the peace.
I join those who have been paying tribute to the Government and to NATO on the outcome of all that has taken place. The Prime Minister has talked in the past of
a moral crusade. The conservative in me wants to leap up and be more pragmatic than that--and to say that that kind of language does not fit the situation. But when it comes down to it, we are talking about a battle of imperfect good against outrageous evil. I am proud to have been part of a country that has played its part in bringing Milosevic to heel in Kosovo. We were right to do that and we will be right to see it all the way through.
This has been a debate of the highest quality. It was opened by the Foreign Secretary and by my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples), who made some extremely valuable points in his maiden outing, asking questions which I know the Secretary of State for International Development will be keen to answer. Incidentally, I intend to give the right hon. Lady plenty of time to respond to the debate.
We were pleased to hear from the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence, who said that his Committee would look into the conflict and see what lessons could be learned from it, and that will be a valuable exercise.
It was interesting to hear from the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell), who brings experience to these debates. He spoke movingly of the true horror of the war and had many interesting thoughts about how we must now win the peace and restore the property and legal rights of the Kosovar Albanians.
The hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) told us that she had to leave the debate early. I do not agree with her point of view, but I respect her right to bring it to the debate. It would not be much of a debate if everyone agreed.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir J. Stanley) voiced his concerns about the ground given to Milosevic by NATO and the possible closing of the door on independence. It was good to hear the Foreign Secretary's intervention on that point. My right hon. Friend also made an important point about the new arrangements not giving NATO the right of free access across the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the impact that that has on our ability to arrest indicted war criminals. We all want those men, and perhaps women, to be brought to justice, but without the power of arrest and the power to gain access to them, any rights are toothless. My right hon. Friend was right to ask those searching questions and to ask also whether more could have been done to avert war.
As usual, the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) made a contribution that showed his experience. He spoke of the difficulties of alliance diplomacy and brought his experience to bear on some of the key issues, including the legal basis of the action that is taking place--that clearly has to be discussed on a wider stage--and the importance of our relationship with Russia.
"The rebel Kosovo Liberation Army said yesterday that it would not disarm as required by the United Nations until Russian troops pulled back from the province.
At the United Nations, Russia's ambassador said that the Security Council needed to deal with the refusal of the KLA to give up its weapons. I ask the Government to respond to that point.
The KLA spokesman, Pleurat Sejdiu, said in London that the rebel army, with an estimated 20,000 soldiers, might even go to war with Russian troops if they established a separate zone in Kosovo, which he said would amount to a partitioning of the Yugoslav province.
'Nobody will start to disarm until the Russians go. If they make their own zone it may be war' he said."
"a recent intelligence report issued by the German Federal Criminal Agency came to the conclusion that 'ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in western Europe'".
I used that quotation in my remarks. My question might have been better framed if it had asked specifically about the KLA. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North that I was quoting accurately from an article which I shall give him.
6.13 pm
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