| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
6.11 pm
Mr. Ernie Ross (Dundee, West): I support my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary's comments on the Gracious Speech. He spoke about our role as a member of the international community. As chairman of the board of governors of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, I thank the whole House for the support that we have received. The organisation, which began its life under a previous Government, has played an expert role in projecting Britain's foreign policy on a level that demonstrates to the outside world how at our best we can work together to support foreign policy and help restore democracy and civil government in parts of the world where there is conflict.
This year, we received a major increase in funding of 33 per cent., for which I thank my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. We have used that most beneficially in support of Britain's role as a member of the international community. I pay tribute to the way in which the political parties have worked together, particularly on the extra-budgetary technical projects in which the foundation has been engaged over the past few years. That has demonstrated to parts of the world where there is conflict and internal strife that working together can build a better society.
In Bosnia, all three British political parties are working to strengthen the parties that follow the multi-ethnic and democratic agenda. In the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, we have taken concrete steps to strengthen the fabric of civil society and help independent media survive in difficult circumstances. We will be helping democratic political parties and civic groups to build effective structures. As soon as the refugees started returning to Kosovo, we were in there with a scoping mission. We seek to overcome the divisions created by the extreme national and ethnic polarisation in that society as a result of the conflict, and I think that we are having some success.
The foundation's strong cross-party nature enables it to gain access to a wider audience, and to reinforce the messages of openness and tolerance, both through our methods of operation and through the content of the programme that we seek to deliver; it has begun to produce results at grass-roots level in Bosnia, Kosovo and the former Yugoslavia.
In central Asia, an area characterised by authoritarian government, great social hardship and concomitant low levels of political activity and awareness, we have targeted grass-roots women's organisations to help them provide education in electoral and general civil rights. A group of women in Tajikistan who are actively involved in the voter education programme in the run-up to the
elections which they hope will take place before March 2000 have been in the United Kingdom learning from our experience.
We have been involved in Nigeria, a very important country for the whole of Africa. Despite all the difficulties, we continue to support a range of organisations in Nigeria, from women's rights groups to civil education and human rights campaigners. In Kenya and Zimbabwe, we have assisted with major constitutional reform processes and helped the Zimbabwe constitutional commission with academic advice as it seeks to rewrite its constitution. In Rwanda, while the rest of the world may have been looking elsewhere, we have been funding the work of lawyers and paralegals, helping ordinary citizens who suffered human rights abuses in 1994 and are seeking redress.
Perhaps the area that demonstrates best how both arms of our policy work together is Nepal. Geeta comes from Chitika, a village in the Katmandu valley. She is in her fifties and, like 80 per cent. of Nepalese women, has never had any schooling. However, she attended adult literacy classes and learned to read. She has also received training, through a WFD-funded project, to help her become a grass-roots representative of her people in the democratisation process. The village supplies most of the Gurkhas who are serving with such distinction in Kosovo and East Timor, working to support democratisation and peaceful self-determination. In that way, all our policies come together: we are helping the village people of Chitika and they are helping us to deliver some of our other policies.
I should like to thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in scoping missions and supported the WFD, which demonstrates the best of this House in action.
I should briefly like to mention two other subjects--first, the middle east peace process. I think everyone in the House was overjoyed at the election of a new Labour Government in Israel. We are all pleased at the move towards final status talks, but there has been some confusion over some of the comments of the new Israeli Prime Minister and his negotiators. We must remind him that if there is to be peace, it must be based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. The resolutions cannot simply be pushed aside while the two sides move to the final framework agreement. Whether or not the word "the" is in resolution 242, resolution 194 recognises the rights of the Palestinian refugees. Without the resolution of that conflict, there can be no peace in the area.
It is not for us to tell the two sides how to negotiate. However, neither Yasser Arafat nor Ehud Barak can take away the right of those refugees under international law. They have the right of return or the right of compensation, or both, depending on how this matter is resolved. There have been other dialogues, and whether they have been in Oslo or Sharm El-Sheikh, it does not remove our responsibility to those refugees under international law.
In the early 1980s, when the prospect of the Palestinians and Israelis sitting down together was very remote, I remember sitting in a cafe in Covent Garden, listening to a ginger-haired, blue-eyed young person from north London telling his friends how great it had been working in Israel over the summer, and how he intended to go back and settle down. Among our company was a Palestinian student, who is now the Palestinian
representative to Ireland. He was listening to someone who was born in north London and has the right to settle in Israel, yet he could not go back and visit his mother.
If we are to resolve this problem once and for all, the Palestinian refugees must have their rights addressed; without that, there can be no peace there.
Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife):
The debate embraces both foreign affairs and defence. Unusually, we have not had a defence White Paper this year, or the normal two-day debate on defence matters. I do not criticise the Government for that. It was right that the incoming Secretary of State should take the opportunity to revise the White Paper left by his predecessor. I have no doubt that we shall hold the debate--almost traditional in the House of Commons calendar--in due course. As a result of its absence, however, we have had no obvious pointers to the Government's defence proposals, except for those on the European security and defence identity.
I share many of the apprehensions expressed by the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King). There is no doubt about the overstretch facing all three armed services, but particularly the Army. There is an urgent need to resolve procurement problems thrown up by the strategic defence review. For example, there is the problem of heavy lift and the abortive competition to obtain the short-term capability of C17s or their equivalents. There is a need for confident confirmation by the Government of their intention to obtain the carrier replacements that are central to the expeditionary strategy enshrined in the conclusions of the strategic defence review.
I do not go too far by saying that resource problems in the armed services need urgent attention. In particular, the 3 per cent. so-called efficiency saving has been described to the Select Committee on Defence by Sir Charles Guthrie, Chief of the Defence Staff, as "challenging". Anyone who knows Whitehall-speak will realise that Sir Charles means something rather more than that. There is plenty of evidence from senior budget holders of the consequences to which they have been subjected by their endeavours to achieve the 3 per cent. efficiency saving.
When the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Roger Wheeler, can give an on-the-record interview to a national newspaper that points up the problem of overstretch, and when the Secretary of State, in almost his first major television interview, can acknowledge that same problem,
we are living in strange days for defence. Perhaps freedom of information is beginning to have an effect, even if the legislation is not yet on the statute book. Those statements emphasised the extent of the pressure that our armed forces, particularly the Army, are experiencing.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |