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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 81-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
FOREIGN POLICY ASPECTS OF THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM
Tuesday 2 December 2003 RT HON JACK STRAW MP, MR JOHN SAWERS CMG and EDWARD OAKDEN CMG Evidence heard in Public Questions 93 - 149
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday 2 December 2003 Members present Donald Anderson, in the Chair Mr David Chidgey Mr Fabian Hamilton Mr Eric Illsley Mr John Maples Mr Bill Olner Richard Ottaway Sir John Stanley ________________ Memorandum submitted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: RT HON JACK STRAW, a Member of the House, Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office; MR JOHN SAWERS CMG, Director-General, Political; and MR EDWARD OAKDEN CMG, Director, International Security, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, examined. Chairman: Foreign Secretary, we would like to focus in our questions to you on the war on terrorism and al Qaeda. Since our last meeting we have had a terrorist outrage on our Consulate General in Istanbul and on that I have written to give the condolences of the Committee to our Ambassador in Turkey. Sir John? Q93 Sir John Stanley: Can I say at the outset that I, and I am sure the rest of the Committee, appreciated greatly the fact that you were able to make a very quick flight to Turkey and Istanbul. I am sure that that was hugely valued by the British community in Turkey and obviously most particularly by Embassy staff and those who have suffered bereavement. Could I start by asking you again the question which I put to you on the floor of the House last week which is whether, following the synagogue bombings the previous Saturday, requests were made by the British Embassy in Ankara and/or the Consulate General in Istanbul for additional security measures for the Consulate General in Istanbul? Mr Straw: The answer to that is, in the light of each security problem that was faced in Istanbul, security was reviewed and measures taken to enhance it in what was thought to be an appropriate manner, and that was certainly the case in the light of the bombings of the synagogues five days before. A lot of work had been put into the safety and security of our staff and it is a great sadness that that, in the event, was not sufficient to protect quite a number of them against this terrible outrage. Q94 Sir John Stanley: Can you, therefore, against what you have just answered the Committee give us any explanation as to why members of staff and the Consular General himself were working in unprotected temporary office accommodation at the front of the building just a matter of days after the synagogue outrages took place, and clearly pointed to the fact that there was an active al Qaeda terrorist cell in operation in Istanbul? Mr Straw: The answer to that is, first of all, Pera House - and I think you may have been to Istanbul - which is the main part of the compound suffered a fire three years ago and was basically being rebuilt so only a few staff could be housed in Pera House so there was an issue of where they should be housed instead. A judgment was made, which I think was the right one, that they would be better housed in the compound, albeit on the perimeter, than outside the compound and accommodation had to be found for them. Now, as I saw myself, the buildings were less well protected than, by definition, was the building in the middle but what one has to do in all these situations is make the best judgments one can prospectively. As we found in Northern Ireland, and you will recall, you can take the best precautions that you think are available and with the greatest possible application of a duty of care and still find that the terrorists have discovered a way through that, and it does not mean there is any fault necessarily on your side or by your staff: it means you are dealing with people even more evil and devious than you thought and, although the review of the security measures continues, that is a conclusion we will come to. Q95 Sir John Stanley: Could you comment on this which has appeared: namely, that a view taken in a very selfless way within the Consular General was that Turkish pressure to erect serious road blocks in the vicinity of the Consular General should not immediately be accepted in the interests of safeguarding Turkish businesses in the adjacent area? Mr Straw: I have not seen that, and am not aware of that suggestion at all. Could I just say more generally, however, that I am very grateful, Sir John, for what you said about my visit. I thought it right to visit straight away and, as I have explained in a more detailed letter which I have sent to you, Mr Chairman, I took with me I think about 18 members of the Foreign Office staff as part of this rapid deployment team, and an equivalent number of people from New Scotland Yard and other agencies, and I think it does indicate some robustness of the new contingency plans that, within two hours of the news coming through we had arranged for a large enough aeroplane to take us all there and we were there by the early evening that day. I also am grateful to all of you for the tribute you made in respect of Roger Short, the Consular General and all his staff, because he was a very fine diplomat and public servant and expert on Turkey. Q96 Sir John Stanley: Could you clarify this very important operational policy point? Is it the position of the Foreign Office that the responsibility for taking security measures beyond the boundaries of a Consulate General or an Embassy lies with the host country and, where the host country wants to impose certain protective measures, they should be absolutely free to do so, or do we take a view that that is a decision in which we should be involved as well? Mr Straw: Well, the formal legal responsibility is plainly that of the host country. It is under the Vienna Convention and there is no dubiety about that, just as we are responsible in London for the security of all the diplomatic posts in London, as it were, beyond their front doors. There is no question about that at all. It is best done in co-operation with the post concerned, and far from having any complaints I have a great deal of gratitude to the Turkish authorities for the co-operation we have received over the years, and not least since the bombing. Q97 Sir John Stanley: In your letter to the Chairman to which you referred, your letter of November 26, you referred to the involvement of FCO security experts in reviewing premises which are particularly vulnerable. Could I ask you this, against the background of a similar situation which we faced in the early 80s when we had suicide truck bombers directing themselves against buildings occupied by military personnel, and I am referring particularly to the situation in Beirut, where on that occasion we found it necessary under the direction of the then Prime Minister to involve very senior and expert people inside the Ministry of Defence to give proper advice as to what it took to resist a determined suicide truck bomber: against that background, Foreign Secretary, are you considering utilising Ministry of Defence appropriate personnel in the review you are undertaking? Mr Straw: Just allow me to say this, that we use expertise from all the agencies apart from the Foreign Office, which obviously includes the Security Service and may include military personnel as appropriate. We try to avoid giving any details about who these people are in public but we pick up expertise from anywhere that is appropriate, and obviously those two departments have a great deal of expertise. Sir John Stanley: Thank you. I think there are probably additional questions we want to put to you in writing but I am grateful for the answers you have given. Chairman: Two of the members of the Committee were at the Consulate meeting the late Mr Short shortly before the outrage, so I would like to call on Mr Hamilton and Mr Chidgey to make any further comments. Q98 Mr Hamilton: Let me just add to what Sir John has said in thanks for the very swift reaction you and the Foreign Office took. When we read about outrages like this in the press or on television we are always shocked, but it is even more shocking when just days earlier one was with one of the people who was murdered as a result, and I think myself and David Chidgey have written separately to Mrs Short. One of the things we discovered when we were there on 6 November looking at visas and entry clearance, Istanbul having been one of our busiest posts in the world, I think, was that a small explosive device had been used against the front door of the visa section which is a public entrance on the main street. Press reports, however, have made it out to be - and I assuming they are talking about the same attack - a precursor to this, and I am wondering whether you can perhaps put the record straight. Our understanding was that this was no more than a huge firework that blew the door off and was as a result of somebody who was a bit irritated at not getting a visa. Is that underplaying it or not? Mr Oakden: Such evidence as we have points to the April attack, the one you have just referred to, as having been perpetrated by a local extremist group but without further connections, and specifically not a connection to al Qaeda and specifically different from the IBDA-C local group that, with AQ, seems to have claimed responsibility for, and we think with some justification, the attack two weeks ago. Q99 Mr Hamilton: So it was perfectly reasonable to regard that as a one-off incident and not a precursor of what subsequently happened in November? Mr Oakden: I think so, yes. Q100 Mr Chidgey: If I may just quickly add to the sympathies expressed by everybody else, it is really a tremendous tragedy when you know the individuals and have worked with them over a period of time, as we did in the days we were there. It was a great shock to us all that people we knew and respected had lost their lives. This may have been answered in your letter to the Chairman which I unfortunately have not seen but one of the frustrations has been that apart from Roger, Alicia, and Nina who lost their lives, the details of any other injuries have been rather difficult to come by. We met nearly all the ECOs, if not all, and it would set my mind at rest if I was able to know whether or not anybody else had suffered injuries in that explosion. Mr Straw: The list of those who died is made public. As sadly is often the case, in general those who were not killed escaped on the whole with light injuries, although it was still very unpleasant for staff. I met some staff on the Thursday night and all the staff we could assemble on the Friday morning, and it was very rough. Some of them had just come into work on the Friday morning with their heads bandaged but they were relatively light injuries, but I can ensure you are given a list. Q101 Mr Chidgey: It would be much appreciated. Mr Straw: I will not give the list in public now because it may be that some of these names have not been made public. Mr Chidgey: Thank you. Chairman: I would now like to turn to terrorism within Iraq. Sir John? Q102 Sir John Stanley: Foreign Secretary, in the letter of November 26 which you sent to the Chairman -- Mr Straw: Is this the one about the Istanbul bombings? Q103 Sir John Stanley: Yes -- you do say that those bombings of the British Consulate and the HSBC offices on 26 November were a deliberate and co-ordinated attack against British interests and part of the continuum of terrorist violence carried out by al Qaeda and its associates, and I would like to ask you whether it is your view that another part of that continuum of terrorist violence being carried out by al Qaeda and its associates is in part what we are seeing in Iraq at the present time? Mr Straw: The best assessment I can give is that it is a smaller part. When I was in Iraq last Tuesday and Wednesday, as I have described, all the advice and information I have received was that the main burden of terrorism was emanating from former regime elements and that, in addition to those, there were others from outside which included Islamic extremists, al Qaeda elements and so on, but the major terrorism came from inside. Q104 Sir John Stanley: However you do acknowledge that there is a very definite al Qaeda element in Iraq and, indeed, that is confirmed in the paper which the Committee has just received in the last few hours. Perhaps I could just say that I appreciate the pressures on your officials and on yourself but I know it would be helpful to the Committee if papers that are very relevant to evidence sessions could appear rather earlier in front of the Committee than certainly the night before, if at all possible. In the paper which we received this morning we ask in question 6: "The Committee also wishes to know what evidence exists to indicate that links exist between al Qaeda and the terrorist groups operating inside Iraq, and whether there is evidence that these groups have backing from foreign governments", and you replied: Al Qaeda associated terrorists, for example the group Ansar al Islam, are active in Iraq and are planning attacks." Foreign Secretary, you would agree that that is a very different position on al Qaeda presence post war - and I am not suggesting it is inaccurate but it is a very different position - from the one you gave to the Committee pre war? Mr Straw: Well, yes, it is. Could I just say, Sir John, that we try and turn these requests round as quickly as possible; we do receive quite a number of requests of this kind. I thank you for your indulgence but it also is the case that the officials who have to answer your inquiries are also the same officials having to deal with some of the highest pressure jobs. We have officials dealing day by day with Iraq and providing support for our people in Iraq but they also are there to provide answers so often the pressure on them is compounded, which is why sometimes you may feel that the response is tardy. But I have to say that by comparison with other Select Committees and other departments I think the Foreign Office does a pretty impressive job, and your letter was dated 19 November which is not long ago and a lot of detailed information was asked for. Mr Sawers: Sir John, you mentioned Ansar al Islam. That is a group which has its origins in the Kurdish areas of Iraq itself: most of its members we believe are Iraqi Kurds: they were present in Iraqi Kurdistan in advance of the conflict: they were one of the groups that were targeted during the course of the conflict but many of them survived, they melted across the Iranian border and then came back into Iraq itself, and they seem to have established a network - I would not say a base - in the areas where the former regime loyalists are most active, the triangle of towns, mainly Sunni Arab people to the north and west of Baghdad. So there is a presence there: it is linked to the presence that was in Iraq before the conflict: it is now more active because its work is operating in an area where the former regime loyalists are themselves organising and launching attacks against the coalition. It is impossible to say, usually, in any given instance which group was responsible for which attack; there is no doubt that there is some loose co-operation between them but equally the dominant role has been taken by the groups that were part of the former Iraqi regime which have melted back into that area and are using it as a base for their operations. Q105 Sir John Stanley: Thank you. However, I do want to point out a very different position being taken, Foreign Secretary, by you now following the war. I am not suggesting it is in any way inaccurate but it is a very different position. You will remember before the war you received a number of questions in various sessions with the Committee as to what was the degree of linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, what was the degree of al Qaeda presence in Iraq, and for example in your appearance before this Committee on 4 March, just before the war started, you were once again entirely consistent on this up to when the war started and very cautious, certainly distinctly more cautious than your American opposite numbers, as to pointing out linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. You said, for example, on that 4 March session: "There has been some evidence of Iraq creating a more benign environment in which al Qaeda operatives may be able to operate". I raise this because you will be aware that a very significant new piece of information emerged on this key issue in the course of the inquiry carried out by the Intelligence and Security Committee, and they for the first time brought into the public domain the warnings that the Joint Intelligence Committee specifically gave in this area, and in paragraph 126 of the ISC's report the ISC said this: "The Joint Intelligence Committee assessed that al Qaeda and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest threat to western interests and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq." Can I ask you this, against that background: it now does seem to be pretty clear that the warning given by the Joint Intelligence Committee does seem to be a perfectly valid warning. I am not going to get into the issue of the whole question of the debate or merits or not of the war - we have talked about that and no doubt will return to it - but on this narrow point it seems on the evidence we have thus far that the Joint Intelligence Committee warning that war was likely to heighten the degree of al Qaeda threat including Iraq, does seem to be valid. Do you agree? Mr Straw: Thank you for accepting that I was being consistent - which I was - and I was doing my best to reflect my own state of knowledge on this. There are two issues here: one is about whether it is easier or less easy for al Qaeda elements to operate within Iraq and the answer is that, post Saddam, the environment may have been easier for them and that is because, as it were, within Iraq he was doing their job for them and no one should regard that as of particular significance. What I do not subscribe to is the view that somehow, outside Iraq, one is at greater risk from al Qaeda elements because of the war against Iraq. I simply do not accept that and I do not think there is any evidence of that and I think you have heard me say, Sir John, on one or two occasions, you have not made the claim in quite those terms but when I listen to such claims I sometimes think that in the mind of the person claiming it there is some subconscious view that September 11 took place in 2003 not in 2001, whereas if you go back before military action was embarked upon in Iraq there is five or six years at least of very serious al Qaeda activity, including the attacks on the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, culminating in September 11 and then a series of further attacks. So my overall judgment is that the world is a safer place as a result of our military action in Iraq and it goes without saying, if you have one organisation as ruthless as Saddam's at inflicting terror on the residents and population, there is unlikely to be space for two, and that was the situation up to the removal of Saddam. But I am also clear that almost certainly, and history will show this, there have been over time fewer people who have lost their lives subsequent to our main military action as would have been victims of Saddam in the previous period, and one only has to look at the level of just the numbers of people declared dead or missing to have some idea of that calculation. Q106 Sir John Stanley: Finally, in relation to al Qaeda and similar terrorist organisations inside Iraq, given the size of the country and the openness of the borders, the evident availability of very large quantities of rocket propelled grenades, surface-to-air missiles and the hostility of significant elements of the population, what degree of confidence do you have as to whether we can provide an effective security response to successfully counter terrorism inside Iraq? Mr Straw: I think we will achieve that. I think we are doing so pretty satisfactorily in the south which we control, and that the Americans are doing so in quite a number of the areas which they control. We continue to face a very serious security situation in Baghdad and to the north west of Baghdad, something that I talked to General Sanchez and Ambassador Bremer about, as well as our own United Kingdom military commanders in Baghdad as well as in Basra last week. It is taking time, it is frustrating, it is taking more time than we anticipated, but everybody is very clear that getting the security right is an imperative precondition to the restoration of basic services, although most of them are restored and then not the restoration but the establishment of a representative system of government and a much freer society. Q107 Mr Illsley: It has been suggested that some of the attacks inside Iraq have a foreign element, particularly because some of these attacks have contained or been carried out by suicide bombers. Is there any indication of the foreign countries which these perpetrators are from, and is it a question that, because there is so much of a US and a United Kingdom presence inside Iraq at the moment, this is attracting foreign terrorist elements into Iraq at the present time? Mr Straw: I will ask Mr Oakden and Mr Sawers to comment on the provenance of the outside terrorists; I have already tried to set the context in which they appear to be working. If you asked me about from which neighbouring country they are coming, all the borders are relatively porous but the best evidence we have suggests that the real area of difficulty and concern is the border from Syria, and I make it clear that we look to Syria to do much more in respect of controlling terrorists. We are grateful to them for what they have done in handing over suspects to the Turkish government in respect of the Istanbul bombings, but we are very clear that Syria has to take far tougher and less ambiguous action in respect of all terrorists and terrorist organisations operating within its borders. Mr Sawers: Just on where these people come from, there are volunteers from a number of Arab countries - Syria is one, Yemen is another, Saudi Arabia is a third - who have come to Iraq. Now, whether they are part of an organised systematic terrorist infiltration or whether they are misguided volunteers, I suspect the truth is there is a range of attitudes and most of them fall somewhere in between the two, but there are nationals from those countries. One of the truck bombs that was driven at Iraqi police stations about a month ago failed to go off and the driver was wounded and later interrogated, and it turned out he was a Syrian who had been in the country for less than 48 hours. I think what we are seeing is that these misguided volunteers are being used by the former regime loyalists inside Iraq as potential suicide bombers. We saw during the conflict itself there was a flow of people coming across the borders - again, mainly from Syria - and Saddam pushed them straight into the front line and most of them were killed. They are ruthlessly used by the former regime and I think that process is continuing today. Q108 Mr Illsley: Is there a strategy in the coalition to increase security or improve security, particularly in the short term given the pressure, perhaps, for a speedier transfer of power over to an Iraqi Governing Council? Is there a need to improve security or is the situation likely to peter out as we get on top of the problem? Mr Straw: Mr Illsley, are you talking about security of our buildings and staff or the security environment overall? Q109 Mr Illsley: The security environment overall. Mr Straw: It is at the top of everybody's agenda. Therefore, a lot of work is being put in to build up the Iraqi security forces, including the police civil defence force and paramilitary operation, static guarding and the beginnings of an Iraqi Army. When I was in Basra I had detailed discussions about, for example, the provision of trainers from the British police force to go into that area and work in a police training school, which we have helped to establish, alongside the facility which we are helping to establish in Jordan. So, yes is the answer. Chairman: I would like to turn to the reconstruction of Iraq. Q110 Mr Maples: Foreign Secretary, the timetable that has been published for setting up a transitional authority and constitution and elections seems fairly ambitious but, nevertheless, one can see what the pressures are and why you want to do it. I do not know if you would agree with me but something that concerns me is that what we want to establish in Iraq is not just democracy but freedom and democracy, but unless the institutions which guarantee freedom are in place before democratic elections come in, by which I mean an independent judiciary, the rule of law, relative lack of corruption, religious tolerance and freedom of speech - these sorts of things - one is in danger of getting what one might call an illiberal democracy, and we can all think of examples around the world where there are elections but the government that results from that does not guarantee people's freedom and, as a result, they are not very nice places to live and they are certainly not prosperous because people do not want to invest or do business there. I wonder if you could tell us, firstly, whether you agree with the need to make sure that those sort of institutions which are, in a sense, guaranteeing people's freedom are in place and whether you think it is right that they need to be in place before elections occur and what we are doing to try to make sure those do get put in place. Mr Straw: Your points, Mr Maples, really reflect the very intense discussion that was going on before the military action took place, but particularly from the moment the main military action was over, about what should be the sequence of events. It was because Ambassador Bremer took a similar view to you that he proposed the so-called seven steps which would in a logical sequence build up the political institutions and their functioning before you got to the point of free, direct elections. That has to be balanced against other considerations, and one is people's natural impatience to take control of their own affairs and practical realities on the ground. This was a continuing dialogue that was going on. In Afghanistan, as you will be aware, a different approach was taken which was to move very swiftly to some practical handover of sovereignty to an interim government and then, having got that as a kind of halfway house, to work from there. Query which is likely to be the better route, but my own judgment is that this latest set of decisions promulgated on 15 November provide a more practical route to a swift transfer of power to the Iraqi people and then to the establishment, over time, of Iraqi democratic institutions. It is not going to be perfect; we are dealing with a society which has not enjoyed democracy, it has suffered repression for 30 years, and its institutions before that, although they were better, were not especially known to be democratic. So building up an experience of democracy of the kind that we spent four centuries developing in this country is going to take time. We also see, say, former countries around the world which were decolonised 30 or 40 years ago and in some areas the principles of liberal democracy to which we hold dear take root rather quickly and others are slow, but in time, as we have seen in Africa, the power of this idea of freedom of democracy is so strong that over time it does, in the end, become the norm. That is my take of it. Do you want to add anything, John, as you were there during a rather critical period? Mr Sawers: This is a dilemma that we were wrestling with back in the summer when I was the British Government representative in Baghdad, and the goal then was always to try to create the circumstances where the occupation could come to an end during the course of 2004 (and as close to the middle rather than the end of 2004 as possible), and the plan to develop a constitution, have it ratified and have elections on the basis of that new constitution in the second half or the third quarter anyway of 2004 was the goal. That became difficult, pushed backwards by a combination of the fatwa by Ayatollah Sistani calling for the representatives at the constitutional convention to be directly elected in an environment which, as you point out, could well have led to an outcome which we in the coalition were concerned could be illiberal and play into the hands of the extremists - either the Baathist extremists or the Islamist extremists - and secondly of course the effect of the terrorist action clearly made it more difficult to move ahead in a consensual way when leading figures in Iraq, such as Muhammed Baqir al-Hakim and the UN Special Representative were killed by Iraqi terrorist action. What the new arrangements achieve, if you like, is a way of meeting everybody's concerns. It brings to an end the occupation in the middle of 2004, it provides for a constitutional convention that will be elected in the early months of 2005, thus meeting the concerns of Ayatollah Sistani, who is a respected - and rightly so - figure in Iraqi society; it provides for the constitution to be completed by the end of 2005 and for the direct elections to choose a new government based on that constitution to take place then in two years' time. So it is an attempt to meet both the concerns of the coalition and the concerns of leading figures in Iraq without allowing the whole process to slip to the right. Q111 Mr Maples: I understand the timetable and I understand the pressure to accelerate the timetable, but what I am concerned about is that it seems to me we are in danger of having elections in Iraq before the sort of institutions that, as you say, in this country took us 400 years. Actually, we had freedom here a long time before we had democracy: we had the rule of law and independent judges and a very considerable degree of personal freedom - with things like habeas corpus - and an independent judiciary for certainly most of the 19th Century, long before half the population, at least, had a vote. Let us take the rule of law and independent judiciary as the most important of these things. If we are going to have to accelerate the timetable for fully democratic elections, what are we doing to accelerate the timetable for making sure these institutions actually underpin freedom, without which democracy is in danger of resulting in the kind of regime that none of us want to see? Mr Straw: Reassuring - maybe at least to this Committee if not to the Iraqis - is that much of the basis of their law was provided by British Government straight after the First World War and the early 1920s. I happened to meet a group of technocrats from various Iraqi ministries this morning who reminded me of that - that a very substantial basis of the law in all sorts of areas came from Britain and quite a lot of their basic criminal law was simply imported from British India. So there is a framework there. Again, I will ask John to come in, but we are doing a lot of work. The Central Criminal Court has already been established. As is often the case where you have got a regime of terror, like Saddam, he managed to control the apparatus of terror but he could never control their minds, which is why the whole thing dissolved much more quickly than, really, we anticipated. The ideas of law, which we instinctively understand, and the principles which are applied of there being a separation of powers, are ideas which are also quite familiar to most Iraqis, particularly the legal profession. Those ideas took us, Mr Maples, quite a long time to develop. So I am reasonably optimistic on that front. My personal area of concern is about the security situation. Q112 Mr Maples: I understand that. Mr Sawers: If it would be helpful, Mr Maples, I am sure you are right that upholding the rule of law is the absolute foundation for freedom and any democratic processes in Iraq. There are Iraqi judges who tried as best they could to practise honourably during the course of the Saddam regime; two of them happened to be on the Governing Council because they were held in such high esteem by their communities for standing up to the repression of the regime, and suffered for it. They are trying to identify trained judges who will be able to act in a way which we would recognise as being free and fair. We are deeply involved in the training of the new Iraqi police force. The old Iraqi police force did not exactly have a human rights mentality, and the human rights training will be an important part of the training which we will be giving in the new training centre in Jordan and in the training centre which we ourselves are helping to establish in Basra - and there are others, of course, elsewhere in the country. Thirdly, the appalling human rights abuses that the Iraqis have suffered over the last 20 or 30 years, the Iraqi people have to come to terms with that, and we are helping through a range of NGOs and practical government assistance to identify those human rights abuses, the scale of the mass graves (Ann Clwyd is doing some excellent work on this front) and helping provide the structures so that the Iraqi people themselves can bring to justice those who are responsible for perpetrating those appalling abuses. Addressing those concerns through a system of justice is one way of establishing the rules and norms that will prevail in the future of Iraqi society. Q113 Mr Maples: I am glad to hear that but I would hate us to lose sight, with the security problems on the one hand and the accelerated timetable towards democratic elections - I simply reiterate my point that if we do not make sure that as part of that process these institutions, which effectively guarantee people's freedom whether or not they have got democracy, are in place we are in danger of getting some of the kind of very illiberal democracies that we see around the world, and that is not what we went to war for. Mr Straw: I accept your point, Mr Maples. I do say, on the other side, that what we have had to be doing all the time is not make the best of the enemy for good (?), and that is a big challenge. Q114 Chairman: Essentially, the brave declarations shortly after the war that Iraq would be a beacon of democracy in the region have been downgraded because of the excessive views. Mr Straw: I think my declarations were always fairly careful. Q115 Chairman: I am sorry; to be fair, this was from US sources. Mr Straw: Thank you very much. I did not think I recognised those words. I do want it to become that in time but these things take time. In terms of where is public opinion in Iraq, almost everybody - apart from former regime elements - says that they are grateful for the fact that the old regime has gone. They then go on, understandably, to express concerns about the security situation today and impatience with rebuilding. It was interesting, when I met this group of technocrats this morning, that one of them said that what we had to understand (we in the UK) was that the only information that was available to Iraqis generally about "the West" came from films, as he described them. Q116 Chairman: Or the diaspora. Mr Straw: Or the diaspora, but mainly from films (this was his point, not mine) and that (and here I paraphrase but only a little) these gave a very idealised view of life in the United States and the United Kingdom. Therefore, the impression that had been given was that we were extremely efficient, all-powerful and could deliver things rapidly and on time. Now, I should say, as a side-point, they were late for their visit because they had been delayed on a train. So I then explained to them - in a spirit of complete impartiality - the dangers of premature and ill-thought-through privatisation, as with the railways. I also explained to them that other countries have their problems with efficiency as well. What this guy who was talking to me on this point was saying was that all of this had added to expectations, that the moment their country was liberated from the grip of Saddam by the US and the UK, then - again, to paraphrase - with one bound they would be free. Of course, it is a lot more complicated than that. Q117 Chairman: The timetable for the transfer of sovereignty, June of next year, was set out by Mr Sawers. Since that timetable was set out we have had opposition to the various steps in that and the reversal of the steps in terms of democratic elections by Ayatollah Sistani and, I think, supported by at least some senior members of the Governing Council, including Mr Talabani. So what are the prospects of the original timetable being maintained if it be the case that substantial elements of the Iraqi people find that they are not acceptable? Mr Sawers: I am not sure the details have been fully and accurately reflected in the media coverage of this. There have been concerns expressed by some members of the Governing Council about the process between now and the end of June. In particular, this relates to the way in which the members of the Transitional Legislative Assembly will be chosen. There is a concern, first of all, that they should not in any way be appointed by the coalition, which is a view that we share, and secondly that the membership of that body should reflect the make-up of Iraqi society, which is also a view that we share. There is a preference, not surprisingly, among members of the Governing Council and other leading figures, because they are democrats, that they want this to be as democratic a process as possible, but equally there are others - as Mr Maples has pointed out - who are concerned that in an immature environment, open and vulnerable to extremist pressures, this could produce the wrong outcome. There are some parts of the country where there have been processes which are, with rough edges, broadly democratic. For example, in one of the provinces in the south people elected their governor by pitching up with their United Nations ration card as a means of identification and voting for a candidate to be governor. That is a process that could perhaps be reflected in other governorates around Iraq in choosing the members of the Transitional Legislative Assembly. It will not be possible everywhere, it will be more difficult in areas where the security is extremely difficult and where extremist groups are very active. So I do not think there will be a single, consistent method necessarily across the country, and there will be a need for representative groups to select members from each province, each governorate, to go to represent the people at the Assembly. What Mr Talabani has concluded, I think (I do not wish to report his views, but as I understand them) is that he believes that there are ways of meeting Ayatollah Sistani's concerns within the framework which he, as Chairman of the Governing Council for the last month, reported to the Security Council. So there is some debate at the margins as to how these members will be selected/elected (interestingly, the verb is very similar in Arabic, so it is not always easy to translate) but everyone is agreed that the occupation should come to an end in the middle of next year and that there should be a Transitional Legislative Assembly representing the Iraqi people in that period. Q118 Chairman: So, effectively, you are saying to the Foreign Secretary that the Ayatollah and Mr Talabani do not have a fundamental objection to the timetable set out but only to the manner in which it will appear? Mr Sawers: That is fair, Mr Chairman, yes. Mr Straw: Mr Talabani, far from having a fundamental objection to the timetable, is a very active supporter of the timetable, as I saw when I met him last Wednesday. Q119 Chairman: Again, most important over the next six months, following this bloody November and thereafter, will be the question of security. The Iraqis will not be in a position to provide that degree of security themselves, under this compressed timetable, by June, but they will, presumably, have to rely on the coalition - or perhaps some expanded coalition - to provide that security. How will you arrange the relationship between the new sovereign body which will come into effect in June and the coalition, many of whose components will find it difficult for their military to accept orders from an internal body? Mr Straw: Mr Chairman, how technically we would arrange it is through a status of forces agreement, and a lot of thought has been given to that. There would almost certainly need to be a further United Nations resolution which would provide the authority for the forces to endorse the new interim government of Iraq, recognise the transfer of sovereignty that has taken place and make other arrangements. Q120 Chairman: So far as you are aware, the US has no problems of principle in US forces accepting a sovereign government in Iraq giving orders to US military? Mr Straw: It is slightly more complicated than that, and that will be the purpose of the status of forces agreement. Just as in Afghanistan, which is an independent sovereign state, the Afghan authorities have accepted the role of both ISEF, which is a relatively benign one, but also of Operation Enduring Freedom in the south and east of Afghanistan, which is a far from benign role where the operational orders are issued by American commanders. I do not believe this is an insoluble problem by any means; I think that any Iraqi government - interim or otherwise - will recognise that getting on top of security is in their profound interests and that it will require the US to be there in large numbers (also us to be there in pretty substantial numbers) and for there to be a unified command of this, and know that if they are US forces then, simply, their Commander-in-Chief has to be the President and if they are UK forces their Commander-in-Chief has to be Her Majesty acting through the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary - that is just reality. We can, and have done before, square these apparent circles. Chairman: I would like now to turn to the other major issue in the region, Palestine and Israel. Q121 Richard Ottaway: Thank you very much, Chairman. Foreign Secretary, would you agree that if we could resolve the Israel/Palestine conflict it would go quite a long way to taking the heat out of international terrorism generally? Mr Straw: Yes. Just to elaborate, there is no excuse/justification for the sort of terrorism the consequences of which I saw in Istanbul on 20/21 November and with which we have been living for sometime - none whatever. However, do I understand that there are environments in which terrorism breeds or terrorism withers? Yes. Do we know, not only from our own history, that if you get a political process going then that can reduce not the number of hard-core terrorists (because I think that is something which is separate from these factors) but the number of possible supporters for such terrorism? Yes, of course. Also, it is symbolic, unfortunately - and I resist the idea of any clash of civilisations - of a wider conflict. Q122 Richard Ottaway: I may have missed something. As far as Istanbul is concerned, has this whole Israel/Palestine conflict been pleaded in support by those who carried out this bombing? Mr Straw: I was not suggesting it had been; I was making the point that there is no justification for terrorism of any kind, but I was really providing further and better particulars to answer your point in the affirmative. Q123 Richard Ottaway: In that case, can I move on to the point I made to you during the Queen's Speech Debate, which is the need for third-party intervention to try and put some beef into resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict? We need third-party intervention, we need a robust intervention - to coin a phrase - and for that intervener to have powers. There is not much sign of that happening at the moment, unless you can tell us that this is where you think it is going. Mr Straw: I agree with your analysis that the more you can get robust intervention by intermediaries who are accessible to both sides, the better. In fact, the whole point of the quartet was to provide that degree of mediation and inter-mediation by an external group - in this case the US, the UN, the EU and the Russian Federation. That led to the drafting of the Road Map and its delivery and then to its endorsement at the end of June. Sadly, what no one was able to do was to prevent rejectionist terrorist organisations embarking on a strategy deliberately and literally to blow up the road and to blow up the Road Map with it. We have been struggling ever since those bombs went off. The bomb that went off in Jerusalem on 19 August unleashed a series of events which has made life extremely difficult. We continue to work for more operational ways in which third parties can play a part. As I think you will be aware, Mr Ottaway, some of the security and intelligence agencies - US and UK - have been involved to a limited degree, and we also provided jail monitors for the jail in Jericho (I might say, a British-built jail) which took the people who were holed up inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and that helped to defuse it. Further down the track, would it be possible for UN or other agencies to be involved? We certainly do not rule that out, but the issue always is, is this acceptable to both sides? Q124 Richard Ottaway: It is not working at the moment. Are you going to sit and acquiesce on the status quo? Mr Straw: I do not acquiesce on the status quo for a moment, and we are thinking all the time about ways in which the status quo can be changed. However, if you are trying to move from the status quo to where you want to be you have to take account of the political pressures which are felt by each party. That is the problem. Having put a lot of pressure on both parties to accept the Road Map and it looking reasonably optimistic for a period - and it has to be said of Israel that they did not respond to some lower level, albeit lethal, provocation which took place up until 19 August - once you had that huge suicide bomb go off on the 19 August the politics changed, and we have been, as I say, wrestling with the aftermath ever since. Q125 Richard Ottaway: However, you agree in principle that third-party intervention will be desirable? Mr Straw: Yes. The proof of that is that third-party intervention in the form of the quartet worked with both the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to help draft and then deliver the Road Map. Q126 Richard Ottaway: It is felt by many that that intervention lacks power at the moment. To take one illustration, there are no dispute resolution procedures. Mr Straw: I want to see the most robust implementation of the plan, but I just say to you - I do not think we are disagreeing - that if you want a resolution of the Israel/Palestine dispute, and there is nothing I want more in terms of all the conflicts throughout the world, then you have to see more done in respect of the rejectionist terrorist groups, and that is just a fact. It is a point I make in the House of Commons often enough and it is a point that is well-understood by people inside the Palestinian Authority (who are in many ways as much a victim of these groups as are the Israelis). You have to do that, and if you are able to do that then I think we can get the thing back on track. However, I accept, also, as we had in Northern Ireland, that there were moments, as we know from our history in the previous 30 years, when there was nothing we could do politically because the terrorist situation was so bad and you simply had to get on top of it; there comes a moment when, although the terrorist situation is still not satisfactory, it is tolerable enough to get a political process going. That is what we have to achieve. Q127 Richard Ottaway: I am not sure I completely see where you going, but, to move on, do you think that the United States elections are tying the President's hands? If so, should the EU be doing more? Mr Straw: One of the consequences of democracy is you have elections and you have electoral cycles; this is not just a fact for the US. However, what makes the US distinct is that it is the world's only super-power and its elections are a world event in a way that even elections in this country are not. Certainly they are not in Europe because they happen all the time. The EU wants to play a more active part and Javier Solana the EU High Representative has been very active there. However, there have been times when the EU has almost been persona non grata in the eyes of the government of Israel - I think quite wrongly by the government of Israel - and also, as I was explaining to Silvan Shalon when we saw him a couple of weeks ago, I think in Brussels (the Israeli Foreign Minister), I do not think the government of Israel has helped itself by these conditions which it has imposed on contact with Arafat, because it has made life extremely difficult, as I say, for the new EU representative to do business with either side. I think we have found a way through that but the problem about the EU's active involvement is not a lack of will by the EU it is what the Israelis would say, from their point of view, is a lack of confidence by the government of Israel in the EU. Q128 Mr Hamilton: Is the Road Map dead? Mr Straw: No. Indeed, it was recently endorsed by the Security Council in Resolution 1515 in very robust terms - a resolution for which we voted. So it is far from dead. Q129 Mr Hamilton: Can I ask you what our Government's view is of the Geneva Accord - I know a totally unofficial agreement between activists in both ---- Mr Straw: I welcome the Geneva Accords. We sent two government representatives yesterday for the signing - Lord Levy and Dick Archer, the head of the relevant department -and I have high regard both for Yossi Beilin and for Yasser Abed Rabbo; I think they are two distinguished figures and very courageous figures who are trying to get their own informal peace process going, rather shrewdly having recognised that there was a vacuum to be filled and they could fill it by proposals for peace rather than for conflict. So we are doing everything we can to assist and I know that Secretary Powell in the United States also has spoken on a number of occasions in very supportive terms of this process. What we hope it may lead to is some change in the political perspective in Israel and in the occupied territories. Q130 Mr Hamilton: As we know - let me follow on from what you have just said - Israel is the only true democracy in the region and, therefore, should be a beacon to all the other countries in the region. Therefore, there is very little we can do as far as Mr Sharon is concerned; we have to let the Israeli public deal with that when the time comes. However, would you agree that two of the problems, two of the obstacles, to securing more progress on the Road Map and, perhaps, even incorporating the Geneva Accords, remain Mr Sharon the Prime Minister of Israel and his hard-line view and, of course, Yasser Arafat? Mr Straw: I do not give a running commentary on the heads of state or government with which we deal any more than I give a running commentary on every comment that is made on the other side of the Atlantic. It is for the people of Israel to decide who their government is and we have to accept that that is their decision and we work with them, and it is also for the people of the occupied territories to decide who their representatives are, and so far they have decided it is Mr Arafat. Both are realities and we have to work with them. Q131 Mr Hamilton: Can I just ask you a question about the fence or the wall? When we were in Israel we questioned various key figures - Mr Shalon you mentioned earlier, the Israeli Foreign Minister and one of the senior members of the Israeli defence forces, a brigadier general - and everybody we asked about the wall told us "It is not a wall, it is a fence." Then we were taken to Qalqilya and we saw a wall - and it is a wall, it is 25 foot high. Would you agree that the construction of that barrier, which is done for good reason because of the fear of further suicide bombing, is in itself a further stimulus to Palestinian anger? Mr Straw: Let us deal with the semantic point first. Prisons when I was running them - and I think they still do - variously have walls or fences round them, basically depending on whether they are bricks or wire. They serve exactly the same purpose: to keep people in and keep people out. The higher they are and tougher they are the better they are. So I do not think we should worry about whether it is a wall or a fence; the purpose of this obstacle is ---- Q132 Mr Hamilton: Can I just interrupt you there, because if you are standing by it it is different. I agree it has the same purpose but you can see through a wire fence whereas a wall is far more of a statement that you are hemmed in. Mr Straw: All I was going to say was that when I flew to Iraq this time a week ago, we flew over Israel and the occupied territories - and in a military 'plane flying quite low. I was looking at the line of the wall and if you do that, it is shocking on the ground and it is also shocking from the air when you see a whole Arab town completely encircled by the wall or fence. Our position is, as I say to the House of Commons often enough, that any sovereign state is entitled to have a wall or fence delineating and protecting their international border from the territory the other side of that border. That is not an issue; the issue is a separate one which is about when such a wall or a fence takes other people's territory or other people's rights as well - and that is the objection to this wall or fence. Of course I understand, and everybody understands, why the wall or fence has been built; it has been based on the experience of the Israelis in respect of Gaza. They say "We have had no suicide bombers from Gaza, QED therefore we should have a wall round relevant parts of the occupied territories and suicide bombers from there." It is also the subject of quite an interesting history inside Israel, again as you will know, because it was the left which proposed a wall and Mr Sharon who, for quite a long time, opposed having a wall. It is also just a fact that today although the Israelis are famously argumentative about most things, they are relatively united about this wall. There we are. We are very concerned about it, and Mr Chaplin (who has now left) has just returned from spending a week in Israel and the occupied territories and has been to see both sides of the same part of the wall and talked to people about their perceptions on either side; he talked to Palestinians about their concerns that this was day-by-day restricting their ability to grow their horticultural produce and sell it, leading to further aggravation of their life. Yes, there is a gate but it is only open for very limited periods of the day, leading to them being unable to irrigate their tomatoes and so on. Strategically, they are very worried that it could lead to an end of the two state solution. Again, Mr Hamilton, you know that the Israelis say "We had it all in the Lebanon and we had it all between us and Jordan and us and Egypt and when necessary we got rid of it". So I understand the Israelis' point of view, but I happen to think that the wall on this route in this way is unhelpful to a strategic settlement. Q133 Mr Hamilton: It is where it is rather than the fact of the wall, as you say. Mr Straw: Yes, where it is, sure. Q134 Mr Hamilton: Because it seems the Labour Party, when we saw Mr Peres, is in favour of the wall, the fence, it is just the fact it is not on the Green Line. Mr Straw: If it were on the Green Line, it would be extremely difficult to argue - well, I would not argue with it, why should you. Q135 Mr Maples: Foreign Secretary, it seems to me that the intrinsic rights and wrongs, the amount of damage being done, the number of people being killed in this dispute, is, in the context of the other things happening in the world, very high on the list. The reason it is high on the list is because it bedevils the West's relationship with the Arab and Islamic worlds. Whether that is right or wrong, it does that, and we all know that and you have said as much in your answer to Mr Ottaway. Therefore, it seems to me, we have to be far more urgent about this than we are being and be far more proactive, and you come back to saying, "Well, the parties have to agree." I want to put two propositions to you. One is, if you really think the Road Map has no life left in it - and if you honestly in your heart think it has, why do you think it has, because I would be amazed, it is on life support at best - the only way, I put to you, it is going to work is if the United States is willing to put into the region a very, very senior official who is known to speak for the President, and hopefully for the rest of the quartet too, who will sit in there and make things happen. Because neither side has taken even the first step. The first step to be taken was for the Israelis to dismantle settlement activity since 9 March last year and for the Palestinian Authority to put some curbs on terrorist activity. Neither has taken the first step down that road at all. I put it to you, they are not going to unless somebody else, an American of Cabinet rank, is in there making them do it. Mr Straw: Mr Maples, if you are saying that the more intensively the international community and particularly the US engages the more likely there is to be a positive result, yes, I accept that in principle. Q136 Mr Maples: I am putting a different proposition to you, which is that if we do not do that, it is dead. Mr Straw: I do not think it is dead. I accept the gravamen of your position but I also add the caveat which I have entered about the effect of rejectionist terrorism and what happened on 19 August, and even if you had somebody of Cabinet rank from the US Government with a direct line to the President, if the rejectionist terrorists were not controlled and they inflicted further outrages on the Israeli population, the political effect, especially because Israel is a democracy, on the Israeli politique would be such as to render any idea of progress nugatory for quite a period. Q137 Mr Maples: I want to put another point to you but when we were in Israel I am not sure that was the impression we got at all. I think a great many people think Sharon's strategy of dealing with the situation is not working and the "get tough, no negotiations", which is essentially what it has been, is not working and we have seen what has happened in Geneva this last week. I want to put to you an alternative, something I have put to you several times before, and I keep hoping I am going to find you have moved on it. We all know what the solution to this problem is going to be, it is going to be a two-state solution, we know all the terms of it, they were virtually agreed at Taba, and I put it to you again as I have done in the past, if we really are serious about solving this and we cannot get real life into the Road Map and real progress - because after all we are meant to be in stage two by now and stage three by the middle of next year and we have not even got the first yard down the track - I suggest it is time for the international community to put a solution to this problem in a mandatory United Nations Security Council Resolution and seek to impose it. Then at least these ridiculous alibis which both sides have of never talking to the other side about something because something else has happened would be out of the way. They would know that is the deal, we are very willing to help them enforce it, we are not going to put an army in there to make them do it but will put money, advice, security forces, peace-keepers, but that is the deal, and we would cut through all this nonsense. Mr Straw: It is an attractive idea. I do not rule it out, let me say, Mr Maples, just to provide you with comfort, but it does require there to be a UN Security Council Resolution with no vetoes. I do not think we are quite in a position to achieve that just yet. Q138 Mr Maples: It would be nice to know it was perhaps something we were working towards. Mr Straw: Yes, I agree. It is something I think about a lot, not least prompted - genuinely prompted - by your interventions and those of the Committee. Sir John Stanley: I think you will have detected, Foreign Secretary, in the discussions you have had with several members of the Committee that we are all very conscious that you in your world are operating in a completely different environment on this issue of the Road Map from what is actually happening on the ground. When you bravely say to my colleague, Fabian Hamilton, the Road Map is alive and well, et cetera, et cetera, yes, I have no doubt in the Security Council there is endless scope for debate and resolutions and diplomatic manoeuvring, et cetera, et cetera, but for those of us who have actually had the benefit of seeing what is on the ground, talking to people who are living with it, when you ask yourself, "Is there any remote possibility of the present Israeli Government taking down those sections of the wall which are inside the Occupied Territories", the answer seems to be an emphatic no, because those areas are being expanded. When you ask the question, "Is the Israeli Government going to remove all the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, the outposts which are still being accumulated", the answer seems to be an absolute emphatic no. Are they going to take down the continuing programme of military and civil road-building which is slicing through the Occupied Territories, coupled with all the barriers and restrictions which are going on, and you ask yourself, "Is there any conceivable way this is going to end up with a viable ...", and that is the word you or the Prime Minister used, ".... Palestinian State", the answer is, "It is inconceivable that a viable Palestinian State can emerge." That is why we round the Committee are putting it to you. On the ground it looks absolutely dead in the water. Q139 Chairman: Absolutely. Mr Straw: I did not say it was alive and well, but I did say it was not dead and I did say its terms have recently been endorsed. The situation is frustrating, Sir John, but all I invite you to do is not to take your frustration out on me or the British Government, because we are on the same side and wish to see a solution. To vent your frustration, you should start first, and I am sorry to repeat this but you have to face up to this as a reality, on those rejectionist terrorist groups in Hamas and Islamic Jihad who set about destroying the Road Map. And they did. A lot has followed from that. If we had had a terrorist-free environment from the end of June, when things were coming together, one could say that the Road Map was alive and well and was being implemented. That is the reality. In Northern Ireland, at good times, leaving aside the last month, of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, if we had had a lot of Omaghs the process would have run into the ground. That is just political reality. Q140 Mr Illsley: Just a quick reaction. In your response to John Maples you said, "If you are asking me whether greater US engagement would be beneficial", you said you agreed, but we have had commentators before this Committee who have said that the American policy is one of actual disengagement and because of the US elections and other issues it will be a policy of disengagement. Mr Straw: There are as many opinions as there are commentators, indeed often commentators offer two or three opinions depending who they are writing for and what day it is, so you take your pick. I do not think the American Government is disengaged in the Middle East peace process, I think they are simply frustrated in the way that we are. It has to be said of President Bush that it was he who was the President of the US which got Resolution 1373 with the endorsement of the Security Council for the first time ever of a two-state solution. Before that came along it was, in some circles, impolite to utter the word "Palestine", as I recall when I went to Iran for the first time. He has done that, he helped get the Road Map going and so on. I will repeat myself if I say again that terrorism was the problem getting in the way of the Road Map. Q141 Mr Hamilton: Briefly on the same subject, Foreign Secretary, I recall a year or more ago asking you a question in the House about Mr Arafat and whether he spoke one thing in English to us and the western world and something completely different in Arabic, and you pooh-poohed that at the time I remember. I wanted to ask you whether you had any views on what we are often told about Palestinian school books, text books, not mentioning Israel or showing Israel on any of the maps at all and the fact this still goes on. Mr Straw: We have done quite a lot of work - and I am trying to remember the details - and so has the European Union on trying to produce text books which are factually accurate and take account of the geographical and political realities around them. I have quite often had drawn to my attention concerns by the Jewish communities around the world and by others about what is going on, and where I have those concerns drawn to my attention I take them up. Sometimes they turn out to be well-founded and sometimes they do not but I am quite happy to follow them up. The EU has been pretty assiduous in ensuring its money is not spent on that kind of text book. Q142 Chairman: You are therefore convinced that there has not, certainly since the start of the Road Map, been further publication of text books within Palestine lauding those who have committed suicide? Mr Straw: I have no information on that either way, Mr Anderson. If you have, let me have it. Q143 Chairman: We will. Mr Straw: Thank you. Q144 Chairman: Summing up on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, you have at least welcomed what Mr Maples has said about imposing a solution, you have said there would be likely to be the possibility of a veto in the Security Council, you have said in relation to another colleague that the US having a Baker-like figure to boost this might be welcomed, but the reality is that even if not dead the Road Map is in paralysis. There have been some signs of frustration by the US administration, for example, in respect of the loan guarantees, but the fact is that the suicide bombers have over the months still got through; the settlement activity is still proceeding within the Occupied Territories; the Minister of Housing in this still relatively narrow coalition is still giving subventions for further housing; the fence, and it is overwhelmingly a fence rather than a wall but it does not matter, is built, is creating fact there and, as Sir John has said, it is criss-crossing and making unviable the Palestinian Authority, and without a much greater commitment by the US there is not going to be any breaking of this paralysis. Can you reasonably expect any such change of gear by the US before the next presidential election? Mr Straw: In the right circumstances, yes, easily. Q145 Chairman: What are those circumstances? Mr Straw: To repeat myself, Mr Anderson, the sort of circumstances I have talked about, and it remains a matter of very great concern. Of course I understand what you are saying about the Road Map. As a political document, however, it remains a document which the international community is committed to and, as I have said and this did not receive very much publicity, Resolution 1515, which is a Russian draft, endorsed the terms of the Road Map in explicit detail and the US did not veto that Resolution. It is there. It is frustrating for everybody, I understand that. What we are searching for all the time is steps we could take which would make a difference to a peaceful resolution of this terrible conflict. Q146 Chairman: Before I call finally on Mr Ottaway and Guantanamo Bay I would like to ask about Syria. You have said you expected more from Syria in terms of policing the border. What is it that you think we can offer Syria in terms of carrots or sticks to help encourage them to be co-operative in the fight against terrorism? Mr Straw: What we have to say to Syria, as we say to any other country, is that they are under very clear obligations in respect of United Nations Security Council mandatory obligations in respect of the fight against terrorism, which we want to make sure they are meeting. It goes without saying that countries which are compliant with their international obligations find the environment in which they have to work internationally is a better one. I think, bluntly, Syria has to understand that the onus is on them to meet its very clear obligations more effectively to deal with terrorism. Q147 Chairman: During our visit as a Committee to Syria we were taken on the statutory visit to Quneitra and the point was well made by them to us, why was the Syrian chapter in respect of the Middle East peace process not looked at as a separate item, why could there not be a serious effort on the part of the international community to seek to deal with that, as they were indeed very close to reaching a deal. Do you think there is any possible mileage in that situation? Mr Straw: It depends on the agreement of all parties. You will be familiar with the view of Israel about that. Syrian is known to be - it says it is not supporting Hamas but Hamas's political office is in Damascus. As described to me by a very senior Arab journalist, there is an elaborate but rather transparent pantomime through which people who want to talk to Hamas leaders have to go. They phone up a number in Damascus, they get an answering machine, they are told the Hamas political organisation has cleared off, and then 20 minutes later if they are the right person they are phoned back and told where to go in Damascus to talk to the political leadership. This is all well known to the security authorities in Damascus moreover. The truth is that the Syrian Government has to apologise for what the rejectionist terrorist groups are doing. Particularly Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah are recognised across the world as terrorist organisations, they have wrecked havoc not only in Israel but also in the Occupied Territories, they set about quite deliberately undermining Abu Mazen's Government and they will do the same with Abu Ala's Government if they got the chance. They have sought to undermine those elements of the Palestinian security which are decent, law abiding and want to do a job on behalf of the Palestinian people. So there is quite an agenda for Syria. Also they need better to control their borders into their neighbour, Iraq, and we look to them to do so. Q148 Richard Ottaway: On Guantanamo Bay, Foreign Secretary, you are well aware of the arguments, perhaps you could bring us up to date on any progress you made with the President when he was over? Mr Straw: The position is as the Prime Minister, I understand, described it earlier today. I confess I did not watch the whole of his press conference - I had other things to do - but I was told by one of my officials who had that happy task that he had described the situation, which is that we are reaching, or near, a conclusion on this. If we are not able to achieve a satisfactory outcome in terms of the conditions which we would find acceptable, then we will ask for the UK detainees to be returned to the United Kingdom. That is where we are. I want it to be resolved as soon as possible. It is not satisfactory. Q149 Chairman: Foreign Secretary, you have struggled valiantly with your Neapolitan cold. We thank your colleagues, we thank you, and get well soon. Mr Straw: Thank you very much. |