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Mr. Bowen Wells (Hertford and Stortford): Does the hon. Lady conclude that the continuation of sanctions against Serbia has more to do with the ousting of Milosevic than with any other single objective? Why else should we be continuing to impose sanctions?
Mrs. Mahon: I do not think that Milosevic will be ousted soon. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to suggest that that is the main objective of sanctions. If that is not the main objective, we would simply be taking revenge against 10 million people.
Mr. Dalyell: My hon. Friend has been to Kosovo, and I have not; nevertheless, I have been told by responsible people--senior people in the British Army--that the situation in Kosovo is such that only the Irish Guards conduct night patrols; that, without night patrols,
one cannot provide any protection of Serb minorities; and that only elite units of British regiments are doing anything to fulfil the undertaking that Serb minorities will be protected--for, without night patrols, we can do nothing. Although I understand perfectly well Mr. Bernard Kouchner's remark that we cannot put a soldier or policeman behind every Serb in Kosovo, nevertheless, the general situation is such that the impression has been given that KFOR is either unable or unwilling--or a bit of both--to provide protection to such Serbs as remain.
Mrs. Mahon: I am able to confirm what my hon. Friend says about the Irish Guards being the only group to conduct night patrols, because, on my visit, I made a point of speaking to some of those soldiers. I think that it is a good idea to talk to the ordinary soldiers, and not only to those who give the briefings--with which I shall deal shortly.
The sanctions are a crime against humanity and should be lifted immediately. As the war continued, the civilian infrastructure was smashed deliberately by NATO bombs, to terrorise the civilian population. More than 1,500 Serb civilians were killed, and 4,000 were injured. There was damage to 27 hospitals and clinics, and I have a photograph and a dossier on each of them. Although it was called collateral damage, the fact is that schools, factories, bridges, roads and Government buildings were destroyed. The damage amounted to £40 billion.
Kragujevac--which is home of the destroyed car factory described by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow--was hit by 22 cruise missiles, injuring 120 people and utterly destroying the living not only of the factory's 36,000 workers, but of those who worked in the 47 factories supplying it with components. The devastation has affected the livelihood of more than 120,000 people living in the area.
Kragujevac's local health centre was one of the medical centres damaged. The town relies on the factory's power plant for winter heating. We were told that the whole city has stopped, that people are living on Government hand-outs, and that refugees are still pouring in. As my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow said, all its hospitals have been affected by power shortages: dialysis machines are not working; powered wheelchairs have stopped; incubators do not work; operations have been cancelled; and children and elderly people who have been traumatised by the bombing are suffering badly.
I visited Kosovo on 25 September as part of the North Atlantic Assembly. My conclusion from that visit--which was not denied by anybody we spoke to--was that Kosovo was being ethnically cleansed of all minorities. We hear different figures. UNHCR said that 50,000 Serbs and other ethnic minorities had left Kosovo, KFOR said nearly 100,000 and somebody else said 120,000. I think that the generally accepted figure is around 100,000. The scale of the ethnic cleansing, with daily murders, arson attacks and other accompanying forms of intimidation, led us to conclude that KFOR is not protecting the minorities. It did not pretend to us that it was.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North talked about the journalist who was killed. I condemn that out of hand. I should like him to condemn an unprovoked attack in the centre of Pristina on a United Nations peace worker, who was taken away by the mob and shot in the head because when somebody asked him the time he
answered in Serbo-Croat. He was killed simply for speaking that language. The hatred is not all on one side and both sides have many things to answer for.
Mr. Peter Bottomley:
The hon. Lady will understand that those of us who are here do not want to affect the debate or criticise what she or her hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) have said. However, I should like to point out that over the past eight years Mr. Milosevic and Serbia have carried out a succession of military interventions in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, with the threat of going beyond that. The context of the debate is that Mr. Milosevic ordered his forces into Kosovo and eventually ordered them out again.
Mrs. Mahon:
The hon. Gentleman is right. There was a war going on in Kosovo. The first research note in the House of Commons Library from before we went to war with Yugoslavia is even-handed about the Serbs and Albanians being killed. I recommend that paper to him, because it makes good reading. The Serb army was fighting the KLA in Kosovo. No member of the KLA has been indicted for war crimes. Indeed, Agim Ceku, the KLA commander who is being investigated for his role in the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia, has recently been appointed to lead the so-called Kosovo protection force, which is just another name for the KLA. The appointment by the UN of a man who could well be indicted for war crimes is hardly calculated to reassure Kosovo's minorities that they will be safe.
Mr. Dalyell:
I should like to return to my hon. Friend's previous point about the UN official. His name was Valentin Krumov. The circumstances were outlined on 13 October by Laura Rozen on page 12 of The Independent. She says that he was brutally killed
Mrs. Mahon:
I thank my hon. Friend for that. I refer the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North to the second assessment of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe of the situation of ethnic minorities in Kosovo. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary told us on 18 June to read the report about the atrocities committed by the Serbs against the Albanians. There is little difference between the two--they both involve people killing each other in the most horrible way. It does the debate no good if we fail to recognise that there were no good guys in the middle of the horrors of the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Our delegation in Kosovo met the some of the Albanian and Serb leaders, although unfortunately two key figures--a bishop and a priest--did not turn up. They have pulled out of the transitional council because of what is happening to the Serbs and other minorities, so I met only one of the Serb leaders. However, we met Hashim Thaci, the self-styled Prime Minister of Kosovo--a man whom my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary rang up regularly to get information about what was happening in Kosovo. From the evidence in the Library of 52 reports
of killings and massacres received during the war, 42 were received from the KLA or the Kosovo press, which are hardly independent sources. As we know, some of those reports have since been proved to be lies.
We put questions to Mr. Thaci. We doubted that he was doing anything to stop the daily violence against the minorities, yet KFOR seemed to treat him as the Prime Minister in waiting. Opinion polls, including one in the Washington Post recently, say that Mr. Rugova, the moderate leader, has the majority of support, becausethe ordinary Albanians are sick of the violence that is being perpetrated on their behalf by the KLA.
We met Bernard Kouchner and other UN personnel, as well as senior representatives from the Serb and Albanian communities. We were also briefed by the German general Klaus Reinhart, who has just replaced Mike Jackson. We visited Mitrovica, where there is almost daily confrontation between Albanians and Serbs. There is still a fairly large Serb population in the north of Mitrovica. The saddest sights were the small groups of Serbs and other minorities who were surrounded by tanks. They were prisoners, sometimes in monasteries. They were not allowed to go out for fear of their lives, so they could not lead a normal life. If they ever went out, they were subjected to abduction or killing. The situation is very sad.
Mr. Dalyell:
I wrote to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 15 August about Fergal Keane's description of the plight of the Kosovo Serbs. My right hon. Friend replied on 11 October:
"as he went for a walk outside the Grand Hotel, on Pristina's main thoroughfare, and reportedly replied in Serbian when asked what the time was by a group of Albanians."
If officials or the Minister have some reference to make to that case, it would be helpful to have it at the end of the debate. If not, perhaps he could write to us.
"When I visited Kosovo at the end of July I made a point of seeing the leaders of the Kosovo Serb community and reassuring them that the international community was opposed to ethnic intimidation and violence from whatever origin. I certainly did not 'tiptoe' around the issue as Mr. Keane suggests. In all my contacts with Kosovo Albanian and Kosovo Serb leaders I have left no doubt that nothing excuses ethnic cleansing and that there is no question of our tolerating such abuses."
That is a clear statement from the Prime Minister.
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