Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DR KIM
HOWELLS MP, DR
PETER GOODERHAM
AND MR
BEN FENDER
13 SEPTEMBER 2006
Q20 Mr Purchase: I think it is quite
extraordinary that it is now presented in the way in which you
have done this morning. I know you are not the author of that
presentation. If we talk about propaganda, this is a prime piece
of propaganda, for it beggars belief that we could not have called
simultaneously for a ceasefire on humanitarian grounds whilst
recognising it was necessary to get a longer term solution which
we all, of course, want to work towards. I do ask now that we
drop this charade and recognise what everybody knows, that the
Americans believed, conventional wisdom, that the Israelis had
the firepower, the organisation and the military know-how to absolutely
take Hezbollah out of the game once and for all. That is what
was commonly believed, that was the wisdom, that was the opportunity
the Israelis were seeking, and that is the opportunity that we
by being complicit with the Americans gave them. The fact of the
matter is that Hezbollah were disorganised, without real firepower
(no matter what we say about how many rockets they were firing)
compared to what was available to the other side. You were right
in your analysis, they do not have to win, but the fact is we
have ended up with a massive tragedy that could have been, if
not avoided, certainly ameliorated. To know that it was based
upon the capture of two Israeli soldiers who the Israelis demanded
were released, and on the failure to secure that launched this
ferocious attack which you rightly said in a humanitarian way
was quite disproportionate to the seriousness of that affair.
Dr Howells: Well, thank you very
much for your kind comments, Mr Purchase. I appreciate those.
Can I say, first of all, that this was not a charade; I was not
part of any charade, nor would I have been part of any charade.
We were certainly not complicit, as you put it, with the United
States. This conflict had a life of its own right from the very
beginning. It was very interesting that Nasrallah the Hezbollah
leader said: "If I had known what the extent of the Israeli
retaliation was going to be like I would not have ordered the
kidnap of the two soldiers in the first place." A pathetic
statement. Nevertheless, it gives some indication of the kind
of people we are dealing with. I am not saying, and I would never
say to Sir John—he has been around too long and he has seen
too many of these conflicts—that a dual approach might not
have worked. I am not saying that and I am not dismissing that
at all. Maybe it would have worked. What I am saying is we had
to take decisions at the time based on what we knew and what intelligence
we had. That is why we took those decisions, and they were taken
in absolute good faith, not complicitly, as you put it, with the
Americans or anyone else. I just want to say that. Can I say that
you have hinted at something in your question which is a very
big issue and one which is, as you know, troubling the Israelis
enormously at the moment—certainly Prime Minister Olmert
enormously at the moment—which is whether or not the tactics
were the right tactics. I felt at the time that they were the
wrong tactics. It is easy for me to say; I am not a citizen of
Haifa, as I have tried to point out, who was being bombarded,
but it seemed to me that to try to either reduce the effectiveness
of an enemy like Hezbollah or fundamentally damage it that probably
you would need to do the kinds of things that happen in these
kinds of wars all over the world; you probably need ground troops,
in the end. The Israelis, I think, realised this was an incredibly
sensitive subject, and I think they made a wrong decision. They
assumed that an airborne assault would probably draw down upon
them less international criticism than if they tried to reoccupy
that territory. Obviously that is my assessment of what was going
on. I thought it was the wrong tactics, not because of some notion
of disproportionality, which I find a very difficult concept,
as I have tried to explain—
Q21 Mr Purchase: These all were,
actually.
Dr Howells:— but because
I think it was not effective in reducing the ability of Hezbollah
to go on fighting and to survive. In the end, of course, as you
pointed out, Hezbollah emerged stronger for it, politically. Whether
that remains the case is another matter. What I am hearing at
the moment from Lebanon is that there are many people in Lebanon
who are saying, as they said to me while that conflict was going
on: "What Hezbollah has done is absolutely appalling because
they have drawn down the wrath of Israel upon us and they are
destroying our nation." That is what they said to us. I think
Hezbollah, with their allies the Iranians and the Syrians, are
going to have a very, very big job to try to regain in any permanent
sense this kind of reputation that they held for some weeks during
that war of being the kind of resistance movement against Israel.
Q22 Mr Hamilton: Minister, a few
days ago the Deputy Ambassador of Israel in the United Kingdom,
Zvi Ravner, made a statement on British media that the death of
a single, innocent non-combatant was an affront to Jewish morality.
Yet they were fighting an enemy in Hezbollah, as we have already
discussed, whose stated aim is the destruction of the State of
Israel—nothing more, nothing less—and they are backed
whether morally or, we believe, by practical means, by Iran and
certainly by Syria. What are we, as a British Government—what
is the Foreign Office doing to try and help those who would remove
Hezbollah from the equation? Clearly, as we have said, they are
accountable to nobody except themselves, and even by losing they
win.
Dr Howells: The short answer is,
Mr Hamilton, we are talking to everyone we can, including the
Iranians and including the Syrians, to try to persuade them that
if 1701 is going to work then they must not continue with the
tactics that they used previously, and they must not arm Hezbollah
and they should think very hard about giving it the moral and
political support even if that is all they have been doing. Whether
they will stop is another matter altogether. When President Ahmadinejad
says that he wants Israel wiped off the face of the map one wonders
if they could ever succumb to the diplomatic temptation to renounce
their support for Hezbollah when it is the one really effective
military force that they have got in that region outside of Iran
itself. I am not convinced that they have arrived at that stage
yet. We know for a fact that they trade their support for Hezbollah
and Hamas in response to the way in which we plague them with
our demands that they give up their nuclear weapons programme.
They are very skilled diplomats, the Iranians; they always have
been; they have got a great reputation for it. They will use any
tactic that they can to try to disrupt our efforts and the efforts
of the E3+3 and of the UN and Dr El-Baradei to try to get them
to come back into the process on the question of their nuclear
enrichment programme. So I do not hold out a great deal of hope
that we will be able to persuade them in the short term, but I
very much hope that the divisions that we have seen in the region,
in terms of what our attitude should be to Iran especially, start
to heal because I think it is a great threat to everyone. There
is a very curious thing, you know: if you talk to governments
in the Gulf or anyone in that region they all express great concern
about the behaviour of Iran, and they are worried about the Shia
crescent, as they inevitably refer to it, but it is very, very
difficult to get people to break ranks, if you like, and make
those criticisms publicly.
Q23 Mr Hamilton: Do you not think
that there is more we can do through the United Nations? After
all, there is no other country in the world whose very existence
is threatened and whom other members of the United Nations have
said they want to destroy completely. That is why Israel is so
sensitive. I do not condone for one minute the use of any sort
of violence and force, and I am sure all my colleagues in the
room agree that one life lost is one life too many and that we
want to see an end to that violence immediately. I know you did
your absolute best to bring that about, and I know the Prime Minister
as well, from the quotes I have read, was working behind the scenes
to do that, but can we not make it clearer in the United Nations
that the eradication of a state is totally unacceptable and that
we must use whatever sanction we can to stop the sponsorship of
those organisations by other members of the UN who would see states
like Israel eradicated? It is the only state in the world under
that sort of threat.
Dr Howells: Yes, I think we have
to do much more. I think that Kofi Annan's approach over the past
month or so has focused on this very much so. He has counselled
against a kind of military approach to the whole question of Iran
and Syria's involvement with Hezbollah and with Hamas as well,
of course. He has counselled for patience and diplomacy. I think
he is right; there has to be another way through this and there
has to be a political process. I think the debate in Israel at
the moment understands that. How many times does Israel feel that
it has got to go into southern Lebanon or it is right to go into
southern Lebanon? How long does it feel that it can maintain this
very strange relationship it has with the Palestinians and with
the people in Gaza? There has to be a proper political process,
and I think it is a great condemnation on all of us, really, for
a long time now that the political process has rather run into
the sand. I can understand why and I could rationalise it, but
the point is we have got to reinvigorate it. I was very, very
glad to see Tony Blair going there, and I was very glad to see
it mentioned in his August 1 speech in LA. It was an important
moment, I thought, because if we do not sort out this Palestinian/Israeli
issue then we will have more wars and there will be many more
innocent people killed.
Chairman: We are going to come on to
the Palestinian issue in a little while. Before then some of my
colleagues want to ask a few more questions about Lebanon.
Q24 Andrew Mackinlay: If we go back
to those final days of July, you were in Lebanon and your utterances
on television are, I think, just in time because public opinion
was feeling, as someone neatly said (and I associate myself with
the comments made earlier), that there did appear, not just to
me but to other people, not joined up government; there did seem
to be this difference between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
(and, for that matter, the Foreign Secretary) and I deliberately
say Number 10 Downing Street rather than the Prime Minister. I
want to put to you that there were mixed messages coming. I also
want to ask you: what was the decision making process? In the
domestic situation we have COBRA. Was there a standing body and
who was on it? Was Mr Gooderham on it, morning, noon and night?
Was his opposite number in Number 10 Downing Street on it? There
were mixed messages coming and there did not seem to be joined-up
government. I recognise it was a dynamic situation but I think
we need to know who is the lead department and the lead minister
in that kind of crisis at that time.
Dr Howells: If I could, Mr Mackinlay
I will answer and then I am sure Mr Gooderham will want to answer.
Can I say this: remember, I went out to Lebanon initially to have
a look to make sure that we had everything in place for the evacuation.
The evacuation had been under way for a couple of days; we were
extremely worried that if everybody who had British citizenship
wanted to leave Lebanon we would be very, very severely stretched
to get them all to Cyprus or to a safe place. By the time I got
there events had moved on; the evacuation was going very smoothly
and the demand was declining very rapidly. In fact, by that time,
we were taking a lot more non-British nationals than we had expected
to take out as we had space on our ships. The remit I had when
I went out there was to try to get the maximum amount of intelligence
back, to talk to our staff who were operating under very difficult
circumstances in Beirut and then to move on to try to find out
what exactly the Israelis were thinking about this. Then, as it
happens, we added a bit on which was to go to Ramallah and see
what the impact of all this had been on the Palestinian Authority.
It happened very quickly. I know that we had had some emergency
meetings of COBRA prior to me going out there and that had been
because, of course, we had to ensure that British people were
not going to be hurt and that they were going to be offered a
means of escape. As far as, if you like, the structure of command
and control at the time, while ultimately of course that is the
Prime Minister—
Q25 Andrew Mackinlay: Is it? I say:
"Is it" because one cannot always assume that, because
we do have a Foreign Minister. Therefore, if it is the Prime Minister,
to what extent does his representative (because there is a foreign
policy unit in Number 10) drive the policy or is it Margaret Beckett
and you that drive the policy? If you say: "Well, it is both",
how does it work? That is what I want to know.
Dr Howells: It is joined up government,
Mr Mackinlay.
Q26 Andrew Mackinlay: Tell us about
that. This is your opportunity.
Dr Howells: We will discuss this.
I attended this morning what is called an Afghan Ministerial meeting
at the unearthly hour of eight o'clock. In that Afghan Ministerial
meeting there will be the Chief of the Defence Staff and other
military representatives. There will be, via television, our embassy
representatives and DFID representatives in Afghanistan.
Q27 Andrew Mackinlay: And Number
10?
Dr Howells: And Number 10 is there,
of course. There will be representatives from the intelligence
services, and so on. We work together, and in all of these crises
that is the way it operates. We share intelligence. Nobody holds
anything back from each other. You will know, Mr Mackinlay, because
you are familiar with it, we have an organisation called JTAC,
which is the Joint Terrorist Assessment Centre, which is now the
envy of the world. It is much better than anything the Americans
have got, it is better than anything the French or anyone else
has got, and JTAC's work is made no easier by the fact that there
is a stream of visitors from all of these intelligence services
who want to see how it might be possible for that information
to be shared and for decisions to be made on the basis of that.
I know what you are hinting at: notoriously, departments, intelligence
agencies and military organisations know that a bit of intelligence
and a bit of knowledge is power. All too often when we deal with
our allies sometimes we know that they are not sharing that information
and they ought to be sharing that information. If they did they
would make much better decisions.
Q28 Andrew Mackinlay: There did appear
to be a difference between Margaret Beckett and Number 10 Downing
Street. Is that wrong?
Dr Howells: I think it is wrong.
I did not detect any differences there. Perhaps Mr Gooderham could
say something about the way it works.
Dr Gooderham: I would have to
say it was very well joined up and within days of the crisis breaking
out we established what we call our emergency unit in the Foreign
Office, which is a dedicated area within the building which gives
us the ability to be able to operate on a 24/7 basis, which is
what we did right the way through the conflict and, indeed, in
the days after it as well in the clearing up process in the aftermath
of the UN resolution. There were also regular meetings convened
by the Cabinet Office, bringing together all the relevant senior
officials like myself from different departments, to assess what
was going on on the ground and also to determine what our policy
recommendation should be to ministers. We in the Foreign Office
also held regular or ad hoc meetings necessarily involving representatives
from other government departments, including of course Number
10, so, certainly from where I sit, at no stage did it seem to
me that we were not well joined up and at no stage did it seem
to me that there were any differences or difficulties between
ourselves or Number 10 or any other government department. It
was an extraordinarily harmonious and well-co-ordinated effort,
if I say so myself.
Q29 Andrew Mackinlay: The other question
I wanted to ask was that a few moments ago at 10.35, you were
answering a question about your meeting with the new Iranian Ambassador
yesterday and I just want to go back to that. What precisely is
your understanding of the support given by the Iranian Government
to Hezbollah because he said to you, I think, "Oh, we just
give moral support". Is that your view and, if not, what
do you know and believe to be the position and did you press him
on this? Did you say, "Well, what's this all about then,
chum?"?
Dr Howells: I pressed him very
hard on this and on several other subjects, including the fact
that, as this Committee knows, we are very worried about some
of the bomb-making technology and passive infrared devices that
are used against our troops in Basra. We know that fingerprints
of Hezbollah bomb-makers are all over this and we cannot imagine
that there are many other ways that that could have reached southern
Iraq other than through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, so we
are very worried about the role that Iran plays in this. We do
not believe for one moment that the missiles, the guns and the
finances which are available to Hezbollah have not come from Iran
via Syria. Syria also has a very dark role to play in this and
I pressed him very hard on it. I think he is a pretty tough diplomat,
the new Iranian Ambassador, and he was absolutely intransigent
on this. He said that, as far as he was concerned, he would resist
any implication that Iran had anything to do with arming or with
financing Hezbollah. I do not believe it and I do not believe
that anyone else in the area believes it.
Q30 Richard Younger-Ross: I had the
opportunity to visit Israel and Haifa two and a half weeks ago
and I have seen the bomb damage in Haifa. I also know that between
one site and another you actually have a five-minute drive down
Acacia Lane and very pleasant avenues, not to deny the fear that
a city under attack would be under. Having seen that and having
seen the sort of damage there is, I can understand the terror,
but I still do not understand why we could not say at the time
that there was a disproportionate response. I particularly do
not understand why we cannot say that it is disproportionate for
the Israelis to deny the UN aid convoys to take much-needed relief
into southern Lebanon. Can you comment on that and why the Government
did not say more to ensure that UN aid was able to get through?
Dr Howells: We said a great deal
about the need for aid to get in and for reconstruction to begin
as quickly as possible and we were very worried about the fact
that our co-ordination with the Israelis in order to get our own
people out, for example, had to be very, very precise. The helicopter
that transported me and colleagues and some troops out of Beirut,
we landed on the HMS Illustrious, our aircraft carrier,
on the way back to Cyprus and there the Commander of the Fleet
explained to me how very precise they had to be with navigation
because otherwise they were going to get shot down, they were
going to get attacked by Israeli aircraft. I think the situation
was that acute that it was an extraordinarily delicate balance
between the desire to get humanitarian aid in and, as the Israelis
saw it, to continue to hit Hezbollah. Now, we urged the Israelis
at every opportunity that we could to allow humanitarian aid to
get in there. The Israelis came back to us time and again and
said, "As long as that humanitarian aid is humanitarian aid
and those trucks do not contain spares for Hezbollah's rocketry".
There were some very unfortunate incidents, we understand, where
convoys containing aid that probably came from elsewhere in the
Middle East, humanitarian aid, was stopped at the Syrian border
because the Syrians themselves had inserted other vehicles into
those convoys which were carrying armaments. Now, I do not know
if that is true, but I am trying to give you a sense of what the
atmosphere was like at the time. I would hope that this UN investigatory
mission that is there at the moment to look at these questions
of whether or not Israel was denying humanitarian aid when it
could have allowed it to happen, I will await the findings of
that investigation, but I am not in a position to tell you whether
or not that is true or false. I can only give you my impressions
and a kind of picture of what life was like at the time, but it
was a very, very difficult situation. It was so difficult in fact,
and I am sure, Mr Younger-Ross, you remember, that Hezbollah had,
amongst other things, some land-based missiles which are a bit
like Exocet missiles. They are made by the Chinese, we understand,
or maybe by the Iranians under licence from the Chinese. These
were fired from the shore and we understand that they destroyed
two Israeli naval vessels. The commanders of our naval task force
which was to evacuate people from Beirut, from Lebanon, were very
worried about the fact that they might get hit by these missiles
and this was not a frivolous consideration, but a very, very serious
one.
Q31 Mr Hamilton: Can I just ask,
Minister, what additional diplomatic, consular and financial resources
the FCO has had to find during the crisis in Lebanon? I would
also just thank you on behalf of one of my constituents who was
evacuated very efficiently right at the start of the conflict.
Dr Howells: I think our latest
estimate is that it cost us about £½ million more than
the normal running costs because we got a rapid deployment team
in there and we had to find somewhere for them to stay, we had
to pay transportation costs of course and all the rest of it,
but it looks as if it was about £½ million extra for
the Foreign Office. There are lots of other costs of course and
I think the MoD are still assessing their costs.
Q32 Chairman: You have referred in
a previous answer to Mr Mackinlay to Iran and its role. Can I
ask you for your assessments of what the Iranians are actually
doing at the moment? Are they using the conflict in Lebanon as
a way to divert attention from their nuclear ambitions and do
you believe it is still possible, despite the recent statements
of Mr Ahmadinejad and Iranian officials, that we will not be having
a breakdown of the relationship with the UN and that we might
actually be moving very, very soon towards UN resolutions and
sanctions?
Dr Howells: Mr Gapes, I think
we have reached a very special point in these discussions with
Iran about their nuclear enrichment programme. We have tried to
make it clear to them that we have got absolutely no objections
to them having a civil nuclear programme and I think Dr ElBaradei
has pointed that out to them time and again. What they have done
through this summer, I think, is they have played a masterly delaying
game. They have put off decisions and put off decisions in the
hope that perhaps other events would eclipse the importance of
dealing with this problem. Where we go from here is very difficult
to say. I think the world looks with great scepticism at some
recent attempts at imposing restrictions on a country like Iran.
There are often ways around it of course when one looks at the
way in which Saddam Hussein played the Oil for Food Programme,
when we look at the way in which these UN resolutions sometimes
break down when it comes to countries like Zimbabwe where we put
travel restrictions on them and then somebody suddenly invites
them to some conference somewhere. I think somehow, and this sounds
a bit aspirational, we have got to engage with the Iranians and
try to make them understand that with their great history and
their enormous potential, they are a nation that should be fulfilling
that greatness in terms of their diplomacy as well and their relationship
with their neighbours. I cannot see a military way through this
and I am not sure even that there is an easy way for the UN to
impose sanctions. It is a very diverse country and I do not doubt
that it could survive for a very long time and continue doing
what it is doing. What I know is that there is a great deal of
opposition to President Ahmadinejad's regime within Iran. There
are many people within Iran who think that ordinary people in
Iran ought to be a lot better off than they are and there are
many people who believe also that the vast amounts of money which
seem to be going into programmes like uranium enrichment ought
to be spent on more basic provision for the Iranian people. Therefore,
I think there is a lot to negotiate on yet and that we have to
try to persuade President Ahmadinejad no matter how difficult
it is and we have to convince the self-appointed theocracy that
pulls the strings in Iran that there is a better way for Iran
to move forward.
Q33 Chairman: Is not the reality
though that if you have got the reluctance from China and Russia,
and particularly from China, towards a credible UN resolution
and at the same time the Iranians hold all these cards and you
have got the Arab street which is agitated because of the events
you have just referred to, there is almost no possibility in the
next few months that we are going to get any real progress on
this issue? Are we actually really talking here about two or three
years ahead before we actually can come to any conclusion on this
matter?
Dr Howells: I think your pessimism
is very well placed. I live in hope that we can move more quickly
than that, but it could well take a very long time, I think. Now,
how fast the Iranians move on their nuclear enrichment programme
is another matter. We know that they have got some centrifuge
systems at work at the moment, we know that they are working on
the uranium hexafluoride, and they have got quite a lot of this
material around at the moment. We do not know how far they are
from actually designing a bomb, but I feel very pessimistic about
it. I do not know what the Committee is going to make of that
and it would be very difficult for me to explain it more precisely.
What we do know is that they are also working on delivery systems
on long-range missiles and that is a very worrying combination,
I think, and that is why we have to redouble our efforts, I suspect,
to try to get President Ahmadinejad to see sense and the manifestation
of the Iranian people to be what they ought to be, a great world
player, but they do not have to do that by developing a bomb which
is going to unsettle everybody in that entire area.
Q34 Richard Younger-Ross: There is
a belief amongst some of the Jewish Israelis we met that a peace
deal with Syria is possible. There is also a belief that America
is obstructing that, although not one I would necessarily hold
to as there are conspiracies everywhere. What do you believe can
be done and what hopes do you see in there being a proper and
long-lasting peace being secured between Israel and Syria and
what can we do to assist that?
Dr Howells: Syria is a very major
player in all of this, there is no question about it, and Syria
is a major player in Iraq. Those arbitrary frontiers that were
drawn up on a weekend in Cairo by Winston Churchill in 1921 disrupted
a lot of natural movement across that border and unfortunately
some of that movement has continued since the invasion of Iraq.
We hope very much that Syria will take a more positive role than
it has up until now. It has, I think, played a very negative role
in sabotaging the peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.
When I met President Abu Mazen of the Palestinian Authority, he
said to me that he thought that there were really three factions
now even inside Hamas, that there was the Damascus faction, which
was the hardest line of all, there were the kind of Provisional
IRA equivalents in Gaza and there were those who found themselves
suddenly in government in Hamas who realised that if they were
going to make any progress, they had to move themselves politically
and they had to begin to think about some of the positions they
had taken up previously, and I think he is probably right. Now,
if Damascus refuses to, if you like, assist with that process
of trying to encourage, however gently as possible and saving
as much face as they need to save, some kind of political reassessment
within Hamas, then I fear for the worst. Their position vis-a"-vis
Hezbollah, I think, is a very confused one for Syria. Syria, I
think much more than Iran, feels much more vulnerable to international
pressure and it has not got the enormous potential and wealth
in oil and gas that Iran has. It needs to be a trader, it needs
to be just like Lebanon and just like Israel actually and I think
it understands, or at least there are elements within Syria who
understand, that if it does not become that creature, that kind
of nation, it is going to become a very difficult place for Syrians
to live in. It is going to be a very poor place and its economy
will not flourish and it needs it to flourish, although there
is a bit of hope there, I think, but we have got to work very
hard on our diplomatic relations with Syria, there is no question
about it.
Q35 Mr Horam: Could I say I strongly
agree with what you said about Iran. I thought that was wholly
realistic and I think you struck a chord there about the nature
of the Iranian nation, its history and so forth and also the feasibility
and realism of sanctions. Do you think there is any possibility
of a change in the tone of our diplomacy—and I am interested
to hear what Mr Fender might say here—in appealing (a) to
the other elements in the leadership of Iran, as we know there
are other elements in the leadership of Iran, and (b) other elements
in the Arab world who are concerned about what you call the "Shia
Crescent" as well as moderating our own Bush-like rhetoric
on some occasions? Do you think there is a possibility of a change
in the tone of diplomacy for dealing with this?
Dr Howells: I am not sure actually
that the change that you describe is as kind of abrupt or as sharp
as some people might have it. I think we have been pursuing the
right kind of diplomacy with Iran and it is very hard to see at
the moment how that diplomatic approach could change very dramatically.
Remember, we are conducting this diplomacy in close collaboration
with the Germans, the French and other EU nations as well as with
the Russians and the Chinese. We do not buy any oil from Iran,
or very little anyway or I am not sure we buy any actually, but
the Chinese are very, very keen to buy Iranian oil and the Russians
have always worried about their southern flank, and the idea of
Iran on their southern flank armed with a nuclear weapon with
long-range missiles is something that must worry President Putin
a good deal, I would think, so people are coming at it with different
priorities. I think somebody mentioned earlier on that this has
got to involve the UN, it has got to be co-ordinated in some shape
or form, but I think you are absolutely right, Mr Horam, that
it has also got to constantly be able to reassess the political
realities from week to week and day to day because they do change
very quickly and Iran is notorious for the tactics that it uses
diplomatically; they are very, very clever diplomats.
Q36 Chairman: On the Middle East
generally, do you think that there is a need for a real move,
and you have already referred to it on the Palestinian issue in
passing, and the Prime Minister has been there? Do you think we
are actually making any difference? Are we moving things forward
or are we actually just recognising that things are in a really
very difficult situation?
Dr Howells: Mr Gapes, I have been
amazed ever since I have been interested in this area, and that
has been for a very long time now, at the potency of this conflict
and its effect upon the world. Almost everywhere I go, people
say to me, "The great motivator for our terrorists is the
plight of the Palestinians", almost everywhere. It is unbelievable
really and when you think of what a tiny area it is, I remember
the first time many years ago when I went to Gaza, Gaza is about
the same size as if you got in your car at Merthyr Tydfil and
you drove down the valley to Cardiff and that is about how big
it is, it is about as wide as that valley.
Q37 Mr Illsley: As long as that?
Dr Howells: Maybe not even as
long as that, you are quite right. Yes, you are probably right,
that is about 21 miles or something, 22 miles, and it has a population
that is a bit bigger. It is not an enormous population. It is
one of the most crowded and poor places on earth, I am told. There
is a lot of business there, there is a lot of ingenuity there
and they are people with huge potential and it seems to me that
it ought to be actually quite a wealthy place. It is on the eastern
shores of the Mediterranean and it is very close to potentially
very good markets, so it ought to be a great place, so why is
it not a great place? Why has this political paralysis been around
for so long? The people I have been most impressed with when I
have asked these questions have been people like Bernie Cohen
of the Portland Trust and others who have said, "We've got
to come at this not just politically, but economically as well".
I keep coming across projects, especially Gulf States, who have
said to me, "Do you know what we'd really like to do? We'd
really like to build perhaps a railway line or a road or a combined
railway line and road between Gaza and the West Bank. We'd like
to give those economies a chance and we would like to be able
to help to liberate those people". This is not rocket science.
This ought to be a lot simpler than we present it. The problem
is that we have been fighting these wars by proxy for so long
in that region now that we do not know how to take that step forward
and we ought to be able to do it and we ought to be able to do
it relatively quickly, I think, so I was very, very glad when
I saw the fact that a British Prime Minister had travelled to
Tel Aviv and gone to Ramallah to talk to people directly about
it because I think it could be solved. There have been many people
around, like me, who think it could be solved and who have disappeared
into the sand. I may be an absurd optimist in this respect, but
I think it can be solved and that the world ought to be ashamed
of the fact that it has not worked hard enough to find that solution.
Q38 Mr Purchase: The Arab street
you mentioned earlier, which may be no more than a virtual reality
construction perhaps, but I am afraid that our Prime Minister
got a welcome slightly less warm than he had at yesterday's TUC—
Dr Howells: I thought he did quite
well at the TUC actually!
Q39 Mr Purchase: In those circumstances,
is there any further point, at least for the foreseeable future,
to any British diplomatic activity in that region at all maybe
as part of—
Dr Howells: Yes, yes, Mr Purchase,
and I will tell you now—
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