Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-60)
DR KIM
HOWELLS MP, DR
PETER GOODERHAM
AND MR
BEN FENDER
13 SEPTEMBER 2006
Q40 Mr Purchase: Our reputation frankly
is on the floor.
Dr Howells: No, I do not agree
with you for one minute. You know, this Arab street which everybody
talks about is a very complicated place and it is a very perfidious
place as well. If you talk to the Egyptians, for example, who
have a big role to play in trying to construct a permanent peace
there along the lines of the road map, they will say to you that
opinion changes very quickly from week to week and month to month.
The fact that our Prime Minister has shown enough commitment to
go there and try to get talks started again will be remembered.
It may not at the moment compensate for the perceptions that are
on some parts of this Arab street at least over the events in
the Lebanon, but eventually I think it will and I will tell you
why. We in so many ways historically are responsible for the configuration
that now exists in that area. We tried, I think, with the best
will in the world to make an almost impossible situation work.
We have said that we believe that Israel should be a proper sovereign
state with a right to exist like any other nation on earth. There
are people and there are countries and there is opinion on the
Arab street which says that is not true. They trot out the old
arguments that this is stolen territory and that nothing that
can ever happen diplomatically will ever make any difference whatsoever.
I will tell you what difference it makes. I went to Jerusalem
recently and in Jerusalem we followed up, because I wanted to
do it, a couple of consular cases that we had been handling and
it involved the way in which this wall or barrier had been built
through Jerusalem where some of the decisions, these arbitrary
decisions, about which direction this wall should move in had
affected the day-to-day lives not just of all the Palestinians
who lived there, but also British citizens who happen to be married
to Palestinians. I went to one house which made a great impression
on me of a husband and wife. The husband was Palestinian, he was
a doctor and the wife was also a doctor and they were able to
travel to work via their children's school and it took them four
minutes. They were able to put the kids in the car, drive to school,
drop the kids off at the school and then go on to the hospital
where they worked, one of the big Jerusalem hospitals. They built
the wall across the end of their road and now they cannot do it.
Now it takes them God knows how long, 40 minutes or something,
to get to their place of work, they have to negotiate to get their
children to school and it is a dreadful situation. I discovered
while I was there that I was the only Foreign Minister of any
country and we are the only Consulate in Jerusalem that bothers
to follow up consular cases. Many countries may posture about
this, but in fact the only people who are doing any work on the
ground to challenge what is happening with that barrier as it
passes through Jerusalem is Britain. We are challenging very,
very hard on this and we have opposed the way it has been done
right the way along. Now, it is very curious really that we do
not trumpet that fact. We do not say it very often partly also
because we do not want to alienate the Israeli Government from
the possibility that there might be a change in their attitude.
Q41 Mr Purchase: And the Americans
as well.
Dr Howells: Well, I cannot speak
for the Americans and I am only speaking for the British Government.
We do an enormous amount of work there and we are a continual
voice in opposition to these illegal settlements which have been
built, and I have seen them myself many, many times. They are
not contributing to a peaceful solution. They are illegal under
UN resolutions and they should be dismantled and withdrawn. Now,
I think we ought to be telling this Arab street that as a very
potent and positive fact, but of course it is a story that never
gets told and it certainly does not get told by Al-Jazeera.
Q42 Mr Keetch: Minister, I am sure
many of us around this table, possibly all of us around this table,
would agree entirely with those sentiments and certainly I am
very grateful that you, as a British Government Minister, are
making that very clear in public and you are right, we ought to
make more of that as a country and a Government. I also think
you are absolutely right that the settlement of this issue is
key to a future of world peace and it affects all of us in all
of our constituencies and all of the organisations you have discussed.
Hamas—you rightly said that there are different types of
Hamas. The Finnish Foreign Minister recently has said that the
EU should be prepared to talk to Hamas, that we are part of the
quartet. Is that something that you would envisage could happen
in the near future and would the British Government support direct
talks between the EU and at least the elected Hamas Government?
Dr Howells: Well, I think if Hamas
moved towards the quartet's position on the Middle East Peace
Process, I do not see that it would be a problem to talk to Hamas,
but Hamas has got to make some movement. You know, we cannot talk
to a government, however democratic and this Government was elected
democratically, there is no question about it, they were free
and fair elections and a great triumph for the Palestinian Authority
and the Palestinian people, but we cannot be negotiating with
a government that is providing funding to terrorists and paying
the families of suicide bombers. What would the British public
feel about that, I just wonder, but if, as Jack Straw said when
he was Foreign Secretary, there are signs of some direction of
travel by Hamas towards a position where they could start to believe
that there is a two-state solution and that Israel has a proper
right to exist as a sovereign nation, I cannot see that there
is a problem with talking to the elected representatives of Hamas,
as long as of course they are not associated directly or we know
they have got associations with these appalling terrorist acts
that they have been part of.
Q43 Mr Keetch: But you have indicated
to us that the governments of Syria and Iran may well be involved
in at least supporting or at least being aware of, for example,
attacks on British troops in Iraq. You have already accepted today
that the Government of Iran has publicly called for the destruction
of the State of Israel. What is the difference between talking
to the non-democratically elected Government of Iran and the non-democratically
elected Government of Syria and yet we will not talk to the democratically
elected Government of Hamas, even though those governments say
much the same things?
Dr Howells: No, I think that we
can pin terrorist bombings directly on Hamas, there is no question
about that and nobody disputes it, and there is a great deal of
sentiment on Mr Purchase's Arab street about the right of Israel
to exist, there is no question about that. The Iranian Ambassador
said to me yesterday when I challenged him about President Ahmadinejad's
statement on wanting Israel "wiped off the face of the map",
he said, "Oh, that was only one sentence in a great many".
That might be sickening, which it certainly is, but I think we
have got a different problem with Hamas. Hamas, I think, is still
involved in a very direct and in a day-to-day way with much of
this terrorist activity in Gaza and in the West Bank, but sooner
or later I think they will move and I think the tactics have been
the right ones up until now. As soon as we see that movement,
I think we should certainly be ready to engage with them.
Q44 Richard Younger-Ross: One of
the problems with the two-State solution is the continued expansion
of the settlements. I was in, as I said, Bethlehem and apart from
meeting an elderly Palestinian lady who said she was glad to meet
a British politician because it was all our fault from the 1920s—they
have long memories—very clearly from Bethlehem you could
see the settlements being constructed, the cranes were in action,
building work was going on and it is going to be very hard to
find Palestinians who say that there can be a two-State solution
when Israel is expanding into what they see as their State.
Dr Howells: I agree with you entirely.
It is a situation that cannot be justified and it generates huge
resentment throughout the Middle East and throughout the world,
there is no question about it. We have urged the Israelis and
I will be urging the Israeli Ambassador this afternoon, a very
civilised and humane individual, to take that message back to
his Government again that this is not helping the Peace Process
in any shape or form and that they should not just desist from
expanding existing settlements, but they should start dismantling
illegal settlements.
Q45 Richard Younger-Ross: Can you
also take the message back that I met the Deputy Mayor of Bethlehem
and he had been shot and his daughter had been killed by Israelis
in an accidental shooting and he wanted to work for peace. They
are undermining in their actions at the moment and they are likely
to end up with Hezbollah getting a foothold in the Palestinian
West Bank which it does not really have at the moment, and that
is very dangerous for the long-term safety and stability of Israel.
Dr Howells: I am sure he will
be watching you at this very moment, but I will repeat your words.
Q46 Sir John Stanley: Minister, I
entirely agreed with you when you said that the Israeli/Palestinian
issue can be solved. Yes, it most certainly can be solved and
I would go further, that I think that everybody who is not in
one camp or the other knows that there is only one solution that
is actually going to endure territorially and that solution is
of course the withdrawal of Israel broadly to the 1967 boundaries,
withdrawal from the West Bank, withdrawal from east Jerusalem,
the proper connecting up with road and rail links to which you
have referred between the two halves of the Palestinian State,
Gaza and the West Bank, coupled absolutely crucially with absolutely
cast-iron international guarantees for the future security and
continuation of the State of Israel. Everybody knows that that
is basically the only solution that is going to endure, and the
question I put to you is: why does the British Government not
put its head above the parapet and not just talk in terms of trying
to solve it, regarding it as a priority issue, et cetera, et cetera,
but actually say, "This is the solution", and to try
to get the rest of the international community in support of that
one solution which is the only one which is going to end this
war?
Dr Howells: Well, Sir John, I
do not think there is a major disagreement among us about this.
I think basically that is the framework for the solution that
the quartet is aiming at and which the road map hopes to achieve
at the end. I am sure that there will be disputes about final
status and one thing and another about where 1967 ended up and
whether that is the proper place to be, but I absolutely agree
with you, I think we have got to have much greater clarification
than we have had about this and we have got a very clear target
to aim at and, if we have got that, then I think we can make the
kind of progress that you have identified which is absolutely
vital.
Q47 Sir John Stanley: Minister, no
British Prime Minister in recent years, and I think including
under Conservative Governments and certainly under the present
Labour Government, or none of the Labour Foreign Secretaries has
ever said, to my knowledge, that this is the solution, that that
territorial solution, that security solution which I have just
outlined to you which you have confirmed is broadly what is going
to be the outcome, I do not believe that any senior minister has
ever said, "This is the solution and this is what we've got
to achieve". Why can this not be said and championed publicly?
In my view, it would be a magnificent piece of foreign policy
and world leadership by the British Government.
Dr Howells: Well, I would dispute
the fact that we do not agree with those aims. You have got me
on the question of whether or not Prime Ministers over the last
50 years or something have ever stated it as baldly as that. What
I would say is this: that I think there is the most potent, multilateral
effort being made at the moment through the quarter to achieve
some kind of settlement and I would feel very worried about our
Prime Minister or anybody else who basically as part of that quartet
move through the EU tried to disrupt the progress of those discussions
and those efforts to bring peace to that area, but I take your
point entirely. I think all too often the language which we use
to describe what is happening in the Middle East and what ought
to be happening, I think, is very obscure. It is an extreme kind
of diplomatic language and people do not understand it and they
see things in much sharper and contrasting tones and they see
the subjugation of the Palestinian people, they see Israel in
a very different light and somehow we have got to get across that
this is a solution to this. I feel instinctively that there will
be a different kind of language from now on and you may be right,
it may be a language which is a lot clearer than it has been up
until now, but I want to reiterate that we are big supporters
of the Quartet's efforts and we do not want to see them derailed
in any shape or form because we cannot see another game in town
at the moment.
Q48 Mr Hamilton: I just wanted to
come back to the Palestinians for a minute because obviously once
Hamas were elected democratically as the Government of the Palestinian
territories, all EU aid stopped, aid from this country, and the
Israelis withheld Customs' revenues and taxes owed to the Palestinian
Authority and collected on their behalf. It cannot surely help
any efforts towards peace to see the Palestinians living in the
kind of poverty that they are now suffering. We have already seen
the strikes against the Government by civil servants in the Palestinian
Authority, but it could be argued that they are amongst the better-off
Palestinians, and I am thinking of the very poorest of people
that we ourselves have met in Ramallah and other parts of the
Palestinian territories which we have visited, people who really
need those revenues. Are we going to start paying those monies
again, those aid monies that we supply? Are we going to persuade
the European Union to resume their aid to the Palestinian Authority
or at least to the Palestinians and are we going to try and persuade
the Israelis as well to pay those Customs' duties? I understand
why they are not doing it, but my concern is not the Government,
but it is actually the people who are suffering dire poverty at
the moment.
Dr Howells: Well, we have certainly
been trying to persuade the Israelis to handle the money that
they have collected in taxes and we believe that they should.
As you know, Mr Hamilton, we have been very much involved in getting
the temporary international mechanism up and running, the "TIM",
as it is called, and that seems to be working pretty well at the
moment, but, as you pointed out, the problems are enormous. Whether
we should try to persuade other EU countries, for example, to
resume aid to the elected Palestinian Government is another matter.
I am not sure that I could go back to my constituents and say,
"Yes, we're paying a subvention to a political party which
is arming suicide bombers"—
Q49 Mr Hamilton: But can I just interrupt
you for one second because one of the reasons Hamas was elected
is because they are not only a terrorist organisation that does
support suicide bombing, but they also supplied some of the welfare,
health, education and social services which were so badly lacking
under the previous administration, so it is a very big problem,
is it not?
Dr Howells: Yes, it is a very,
very good tactic. When I went into the earthquake-affected area
of Kashmir shortly after the earthquake, some of the Pakistani
military there said, "Do you know what is extraordinary,
that within days of this earthquake happening we had Jihadists
setting up new madrases in this area, new schools in this area,
bringing the children in, the survivors, giving them food, working
very hard on it", and they were very upset by that development,
but it is a very good tactic. Now, it is another matter, however,
for a democratically elected government, like Britain, to say
that we oppose terrorism and we support the UN as far as terrorism
is concerned and then hand over money to a political organisation
that is actually paying terrorists.
Q50 Mr Hamilton: Are there not NGOs
there that could use that money? I am thinking of the people who
are suffering. I am not—
Dr Howells: You are absolutely
right and that is why we have worked so hard on TIM. Do you want
to say something on this, Peter?
Dr Gooderham: We do of course
also fund NGOs. What the Minister has been talking about is funding
to the Palestinian Authority itself and that is the temporary
international mechanism, the TIM, but the Department for International
Development also funds NGOs and of course we also contribute to
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is obviously
very active and has a very significant role in both Gaza and the
West Bank, so money is going in those different directions.
Q51 Sir John Stanley: Minister, I
am not going to raise the defence dimension, but, if I may, I
would like to express my own, and I am sure the Committee's, tribute
to our British Forces in Afghanistan in the incredibly difficult
and dangerous operations in which they are engaged and I express
the hope that the NATO Secretary-General's call for additional
forces there is going to be responded to. Can I turn to a key
responsibility of the Foreign Office in Afghanistan which is counter-narcotics
where of course the British Government after the war took the
lead on behalf of the international community in Afghanistan and,
as we all know, the whole issue of poppy money, drug money is
actually fundamental to funding the Taliban, funding the insurgency
and is fundamental to the exercising of political and economic
control over the lives of countless communities, particularly
in the south. It is very, very depressing and saddening that here
we are four years after the invasion and we have a record-sized
poppy harvest in Afghanistan and I have to put it to you, Minister,
is it not the case that sadly the Foreign Office's leadership
on counter-narcotics has been, it appears, an almost complete
and total failure?
Dr Howells: Well, I certainly
would not accept that and I do not think you would believe for
one moment that I would accept it, Sir John. I was very disappointed
with UNODC figures that came out of the hectarage of opium poppies
planted and grown this past season in Afghanistan, but within
that report I felt there were some very salutary lessons for any
observer who wants to take a look at the problem of narcotics
and counter-narcotics in Afghanistan. The huge increases in production
were mainly in the south, mainly in the Helmand province where
they were planted, I may add and we need to be clear on this,
not under our watch, but they were planted before we got there,
and I know that because I went down to Lashkar-Gar almost a year
ago now and there were about 100 GIs down there in a province
three and a half times the size of Northern Ireland where at one
point we had 30,000 troops stationed and we spoke the language.
This was an extremely difficult situation for the Americans down
there and quite frankly I do not think they in any sense engaged
in counter-narcotic activities down there. When we got down there,
we discovered that in fact there was a lot of opium that had already
been planted and we knew also that there were some very, very
powerful figures involved down there in the opium trade that went
right to the top, if I might put it like that, of local governance.
The moment we got down there, it was like poking a hornets' nest
because everybody and everybody's grandmother came out from the
shadows because they could see that here was a very potent military
force backed by a political desire to do something about Helmand,
to reduce the lawlessness, the sense of anarchy and the ease with
which drug-traffickers moved around that province, and they attacked
us and they have been attacking us every since and they attack
us very hard. We have killed a lot of Taliban and tragically we
have lost soldiers down there, but what we have been trying to
do down there is to bring some sense of extending the Government
of Afghanistan's democratic remit to a province that has never
known law and order or certainly not since the late 1950s/1960s,
so it is going to be a long haul and, Sir John, it has reminded
us that in countries like Burma and so on it took decades to get
rid of the heroin trade from down there and they never did it
entirely of course, but they reduced it pretty dramatically, as
they did in Pakistan as well. I think essentially this is going
to have to be a long political process and we cannot win purely
a military victory down there and anybody who thinks that by killing
lots and lots of Afghanis we are going to somehow stop them growing
opium poppy is deluded. There has got to be a proper political
process down there and that is what we have been looking to start.
There is a reconciliation process under way at the moment in Afghanistan
and it is a bit fragile at the moment, but it could contain the
germs of a way forward that does not involve pitched battles between
us and the Taliban who tell the farmers, "Don't worry. You
plant your fields and we'll protect you". You are quite right
to point out the connection between these holier than thou "God's
terrorists", as they love to refer to themselves, and their
connection with the filthy trade of heroin production. They are
like that [indicating] down there and they are in cahoots with
every gangster and smuggler and lawlord they can get their hands
on, so it is going to be a long and difficult process.
Q52 Sir John Stanley: Can you just
tell us what role the British Government wishes the NATO troops
and British troops to play, if any, in counter-narcotics in Helmand
province?
Dr Howells: Well, we went there
for a very specific purpose and that was to provide an environment
in which the Afghan counter-narcotics authorities and agencies
could go in and try to persuade the farmers not to grow opium
and to go for those medium- and high-level targets of the traffickers,
the organisers of the trade, the guys who are making billions
of dollars out of this and to try to capture them, and we have
been working very hard at this. There is a new prison which has
been built, for example, the first prison, as far as I am aware,
in Afghanistan that meets all the UN human rights stipulations.
That has been built and I saw it for myself near Kabul. We have
got a terribly delayed reform to the judicial system and we have
now got a judicial system which could begin to try these people
publicly and properly and sentence them properly and put them
into a prison that will meet UN standards. Now, they have never
had that before. There has been lots of talk, "Oh, we'll
find these drug-traffickers and we'll hang them from the nearest
lamppost", and I have heard this time and again and our troops
have brought, I think, a new perspective to this. They have been
war-fighting because I think the Taliban and their fellow travellers,
if I may describe them that way, know that they have got a force
to reckon with here that is going to challenge their authority
to operate their own law within that area. It is a difficult fight
for us and that is why I hope with you, Sir John, that NATO understands
today that it has got to start pulling its weight because that
poison that is going into the veins of our kids from northern
Scotland to southern England and Wales and Northern Ireland, that
is going into the veins of kids from Estonia to Chicago and everybody
has got to realise that they have got to play their part if they
are serious, as they always stated they were, about counter-narcotics
in putting their resources and their soldiers on the line to help
us out because we are bearing a very big brunt of this military
conflict at the moment.
Q53 Andrew Mackinlay: Our deployment
in Afghanistan has the cover of international law and it is a
laudable objective, but it does come back to the question of resources.
The plea for more troops through NATO today underscores the fact
that there clearly is a need for more if the objective is to be
fulfilled, but it seems to me that you and I, as Labour Members
of Parliament, have a particular responsibility because in a sense
we have been privy to downsizing our Armed Forces. It does seem
increasingly to me, as a legislator, that frankly our commitments
are now too great in comparison with our Armed Forces, our resources.
Now, of course you might say that this would be a matter for the
Defence Select Committee, but it seems to me that foreign policy
dictates that we are there and, as I say, I think it is a very
laudable objective covered by international law, but is it not
now obvious that clearly the United Kingdom as such is now on
overstretch with regards to its Armed Forces in relation to the
commitments we have entered into of which this is one?
Dr Howells: Well, Mr Mackinlay,
can I say that I went out to Afghanistan on this past trip to
ask the Commander of ISAF, General Richards, precisely these questions,
and I have no doubt that you will have the opportunity to speak
to General David Richards. He is an outstanding commander, he
is somebody whom President Karzai relies on a great deal and he
has got the respect of everybody of the 36 nations that are in
Afghanistan, working with the UN.
Q54 Andrew Mackinlay: He is very
professional.
Dr Howells: I asked him these
questions very directly and he told me that in terms of what British
troops are doing, they have the resources, but he said to me quite
clearly, and I am sure he will say it publicly quite clearly,
"We need NATO to be pulling its weight. They need to put
more resources in there and we need help". We went in there
on the understanding that there would be a kind of strategic reserve
battalion that would be ready to come in and help us and we assumed
that would be coming from NATO. Now, that reserve battalion has
got to be found and it has got to be activated very soon, I think.
Q55 Andrew Mackinlay: Well, if it
is not, and I listened carefully to what you said and I do not
mean this in a facetious way, but carefully crafted, the point
is that he is saying and you are saying, "Yes, we can",
but it is predicated, it is dependent upon there being this reserve
battalion. Also I can understand that we are professional and
disciplined Forces and we can cope for a while, but we cannot
sustain this commitment and achieve our objectives unless there
is relief and that is the way I understand it. As I say, we cannot
let this opportunity go and there needs to be an unequivocal statement
by Her Majesty's Government that we can sustain this and not put
in jeopardy, or unreasonably burden, our Armed Forces, the best
generals, the best soldiers.
Dr Howells: The way that General
Richards described it to me was like this: he said that we are
not in danger of not achieving our objectives, but we could achieve
them and we could achieve success much more quickly if NATO pulled
its weight as it should be pulling its weight, and that is the
point that I want to make. In other words, he said, "We can
achieve what we've set out to achieve in Afghanistan along with
all of our allies out there in terms of the troops that we have
there and the resources that we have there at the moment, but
if we want to do it more quickly, then, if you like, the 22 other
members of NATO out of the 26 have got to think very hard about
putting more resources in there", and I agree with him entirely.
Q56 Mr Illsley: When the Committee
was in Afghanistan, we realised that there are a number of warlords
out there who earn maybe £250 million per annum running border
controls by farming the opium. The farmers were in hock to the
warlords and they had to grow the opium to pay the debts they
owed to them. Now, given that each one of these warlords has a
standing army of about 8,000 men at arms and heavily armed, you
reach the situation where no matter how many troops we or NATO
put into that country, we are not going to succeed in that direction.
Have we now reached a stage where, rather than try to destroy
the crop and put it into alternative production, we simply use
the resources to buy it from them and control the supply of it
that way or destroy it?
Dr Howells: Mr Illsley, this is
one of the dafter ideas I have heard out of many in my time in
this job. I remember asking a very distinguished proponent of
the argument that the world needs this for the pharmaceutical
industry—
Q57 Mr Illsley: Not use it, but destroy
it, use what we are spending on the troops to spend on the damned
opium and destroy it.
Dr Howells: Well, you would have
to of course be able to police this brilliantly because these
people are geniuses. I often ask about the balloon effect—
Q58 Mr Illsley: But there is a huge
economic driver out there.
Dr Howells: Well, the problem
is that you buy the crop, but I would put a lot of money on the
fact that the moment they have the opportunity, those drug barons
would be growing it again somewhere else because they have got
three million customers in Pakistan just over the border, they
have got another three million customers in Iran just over the
border, they have a growing body, maybe as many as a million people,
who are hooked on some form of drugs inside Afghanistan itself,
so this is a very, very lucrative market for them. The very idea
that you could buy it and thereby kind of legalise the crop means
of course you would have to keep buying it up every year and I
do not know what it costs even, though we heard a figure the other
day that somebody made about $1.2 billion out of it who lives
in Dubai now—
Q59 Mr Illsley: What does a NATO
Force cost?
Dr Howells:— but it would
be an enormous amount of money. President Karzai himself has said,
"Look, the most corrosive element in our life at the moment
is the drug industry and the drug culture and it is undermining
everything we are trying to do to rebuild this country and to
create a viable economic state".
Q60 Mr Illsley: I take it that is
a no then?
Dr Howells: It is a no. Try and
persuade Gordon Brown!
Chairman: Minister, can I thank you for
coming along this morning and your colleagues. I would also particularly
like to thank you for staying longer. It is very important for
us, as a committee, and I think the public also will appreciate
the fact that we have had a Minister answering on so many different
issues.
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