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5.8 pm
Mr. John Maples (Stratford-on-Avon): I was going to offer the Foreign Secretary more than 30 seconds of consensus at the beginning of my speech. He can certainly have it on praise for the diplomatic service, although I suspect that it will think it a pity that it has taken him two and a half years to praise it. It would have appreciated his praise at the time of the Sierra Leone affair, when he was blaming his officials for the shortcomings of his own policy. His officials, many of whom I meet in my present role, do a wonderful job for Britain abroad.
The right hon. Gentleman could have had a greater degree of consensus had he not spent the first 10 minutes of his speech praising himself for his few successes and the last 20 minutes of it criticising by caricature our policy
in various areas. I find it extraordinary that a British Foreign Secretary has not taken the opportunity to talk more widely about British foreign policy, given that we have not had a foreign affairs debate, apart from on Kosovo, for well over six months. Surely we are entitled to a more in-depth report on his custody of his office.
There are a great many areas of agreement between us, which is as it should be on foreign policy. However, there are areas of fundamental disagreement, one of which is the European Union and another the European security and defence identity. I shall touch on both. Next week, we have a full day's debate on the European Union, so it is somewhat surprising that the right hon. Gentleman chose to use up so much of his time today discussing a subject that we shall debate at length next week. I am perfectly happy to speak about Europe, even though we shall debate it for a whole day next week. The Foreign Secretary chose to debate it today, but he has not mentioned China, the far east or Africa. There was a passing reference to the middle east, but he spent most of his speech criticising a misrepresentation of our policy.
There are areas of agreement. I go back to the consensus with which I would have started, had the Foreign Secretary not made his particularly small-minded speech. We all share the optimism about the progress in the middle east, East Timor and Cyprus. There is greater reason for optimism about those areas than there has been for a long time. There are dangers still in North Korea, Libya and Iraq, and in relation to rogue states and rogue actors such as bin Laden, and we would agree on how we should attempt to contain those.
There is the question of managing the difficult relationships that we have with Russia, an empire in decline--and China, an empire almost certainly in the ascendant. We welcome the end of the fighting in Kashmir, although, as the Foreign Secretary learned to his cost some time ago, the negotiation of peace is a matter for the countries involved, not for us.
We support the Government's moves to have the military regime in Pakistan suspended from the Commonwealth. However, I am sure that the Foreign Secretary would agree that the previous democratically elected Governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif were not exactly a byword for liberal democracy and were among the most corrupt Governments, both economically and politically, that we have witnessed. I hope that the Commonwealth will play a role in trying to help Pakistan back to a more genuine democracy than it enjoyed under those Governments. Wrong as the military regime may be, it is not a typical military takeover and we should try to encourage Pakistan back to democracy.
The tragedy of Africa continues, with wars in the Congo and between Ethiopia and Eritrea. We regard those as tasks for the United Nations, and we join the Government in giving the UN Britain's wholehearted support.
In Iraq, there is an urgent need to re-establish UNSCOM. Containing the threat to peace is probably the best that we can hope for in that region.
Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park):
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a significant step towards solving
Mr. Maples:
A mention might have been expected in the Foreign Secretary's speech today.
We agree with the Government on the Balkans, and we are behind the policy. Despite the Foreign Secretary's small-minded remark about troops in Macedonia, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the former shadow Foreign Secretary, and I supported the Government on that policy during the campaign. They were entitled to our support, and they received it. However, there are problems in the way policy and events are unfolding in the Balkans.
In our debate in June, the Foreign Secretary said that the Government were
The Foreign Secretary went on to say that there could be no future stability
In his speech, the Foreign Secretary promised that we would make sure that refugees had shelter for the winter, but that is not happening. I am not sure of the reason for that, and whether it is the fault of the UNHCR, which estimates that only 50,000 of the 120,000 damaged homes in Kosovo will be fit for habitation this winter. I know that there are serious troubles on the Macedonia border with the way in which customs posts are being used and lorries held up, but I hope that those matters can be resolved.
KFOR has been an undoubted success in Kosovo, but I am not sure that UNMIK, the United Nations civilian mission, has. Recent reports show that there is serious disquiet about morale among mission members being at an all-time low and huge sums of money being wasted. They show that ethnic Albanians and Serbs, infuriated by the incompetence of the administration, have largely taken the governing of the province into their own hands.
I hope that we are doing something to improve UNMIK's performance and to try to resolve the difficulties, because it seems that the situation is rapidly moving towards ethnic cantonment--exactly what the Foreign Secretary said must be avoided--and that the chance of reintegrating Kosovo into Serbia or Yugoslavia is almost impossible.
As I said in our debate in June, a danger continues to hang over Montenegro, with 15,000 Yugoslav troops in Macedonia. General Wesley Clark is quoted in a recent edition of U.S. News and World Report as requesting and receiving Pentagon approval to draw up plans for possible
NATO military action in Montenegro. I have asked the Foreign Secretary about that before; the Government's policy on the matter is not clear. Are we committed to Montenegro's integrity? There is a danger of NATO being sucked into a conflict.
The normalisation of Serbia is crucial to the stability and economy of the region. We agree with the Government that progress cannot be made until Milosevic goes. However, is some progress possible on the Danube, which is blocked? That blockage is seriously damaging the economies of other countries--more than that of Serbia, which uses it less than other countries. Serbia has a legal obligation to clear the Danube, but it insists that NATO should do that and pay for it. Has the Foreign Secretary any ideas about the way in which that problem might be resolved?
There is some evidence that the Dayton agreement is failing in Bosnia. Refugee returns across internal borders have been almost non-existent. The UNHCR states that only 340,000 refugees have returned to Bosnia-Herzegovina since Dayton--93 per cent. to the federation and 0.7 per cent. to Republika Srpska. No non-Serbs are being allowed to return to Republika Srpska. The United Nations at least acquiesces in that, but if it is allowed to go on, Dayton will not work. There is a danger that Tudjman's successor will try to incorporate the Croat part of Bosnia-Herzegovina into Croatia. If that happens, Republika Srpska will also almost certainly try to break away. What are we doing to try to ensure that ethnic cantonments are not created, and to achieve our original objective? The United Nations and NATO need to get a grip on matters and stop the drift; otherwise, a solution will be imposed on the ground, and the ethnic cleansers will have won in Bosnia and Kosovo.
"determined to make every attempt to create a pluralist, multi-ethnic Kosovo",
and would not allow
"the ethnic cleansing of the Serb population in Kosovo, nor of any other ethnic minority."
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that about 170,000 of the 200,000 Kosovo Serbs have now left Kosovo.
"if we try to sweep every ethnic group into its own pure cantonment".--[Official Report, 17 June 1999; Vol. 333, c. 585-6.]
However, that now appears to be happening in northern Kosovo, where there is effectively a Serb sub-region and some evidence that Milosevic is helping to organise it.
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