Examination of Witnesses (Questions 187-199)
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP, MR DAVID
RICHMOND CMG AND
DR PETER
GOODERHAM
15 MARCH 2006
Q187 Chairman: Can I welcome you, Foreign
Secretary, and your colleagues this afternoon. We are very grateful,
once again, to you for coming before us. You were with us a few
weeks ago to talk about Iran, we will come on to questions on
Iran later on. If I could perhaps begin with the very serious
situation which has arisen in Gaza and the West Bank, and the
crisis relating to Jericho. Could you perhaps give us an update
on the current situation and also how you see the political situation
between the Israelis and the Palestinians developing?
Mr Straw: If I
could just introduce the officials who are with me. Peter Gooderham
is Director of the Middle East and North Africa, and David Richmond
is Director-General for Defence and Intelligence. There is not
a great deal to add to what I said to the Commons yesterday, or
what the Prime Minister said during lunchtime at Prime Minister's
Questions. I set out yesterday in my statement in the Commons
the circumstances in which I have reluctantly decided that our
monitors had to be withdrawn. That was principally because of
concerns about their security. That was tied in to repeated concerns
that the Palestinian Authority security personnel were not meeting
the clear conditions of the Ramallah Agreement and the possibility
of the monitors then having to insist on them meeting the Ramallah
Agreement was placing them in further difficulty. Representations
about this had been going on for many months. Then, with my agreement,
the Consul General for the United Kingdom along with the Consul
General for the United States wrote formally to Abu Mazen—Mahmoud
Abbas—the President of the Palestinian Authority, exactly
a week ago setting out what needed to be done and making it clear
that there would be a withdrawal of the monitors with immediate
effect if there was not an improvement. John Jenkins, who is our
Consul General in Jerusalem, on four separate occasions, after
the despatch of the letter, phoned the Chief of Staff of Abu Mazen
to check the letter had been received and understood and to ask
for a response. He was told on two occasions that the President
of the Palestinian Authority had noted the letter and was aware
of its contents, and indeed when I spoke to Mahmoud Abbas yesterday
he confirmed that he was aware of the letter. So there is no question
that it had not been noted. The problem was the lack of response.
On the issue of the timing of the response, the letter said that
we would withdraw with immediate effect and in the English language
the words are pretty clear "with immediate effect" means
with immediate effect. We gave them some days to respond. There
was no indication of a response. As I explained to the House,
Chairman, we decided, quite deliberately, not to give a timetable
for withdrawal and I am quite sure that was the right thing to
do for two reasons. First is that if we had given a timetable
to the Palestinian Authority that would have become known to the
prisoners, without any question, and so the monitors themselves
could have been at direct risk. Secondly, in giving notice to
the Palestinian Authority, in practice you give notice to the
Israelis because they monitor all telephone calls and much else
besides in the Occupied Territories. That would have given them
more notice than they had—they had no notice—to move
in, and again could have placed our monitors at risk. For that
reason, no notice was given and that was the right thing to do.
The final thing I would say is this: by the Ramallah Agreement,
and as I spelt out to the House of Commons on 29 April 2002, my
principal concern was the security of the monitors, but the responsibility
for their security rested with the Palestinian Authority, and
they knew that. They failed to meet the conditions of the Ramallah
Agreement and they placed the monitors in circumstances where
their security was being compromised. What has happened is tragic,
but I am afraid to say the responsibility has to rest with the
Palestinian Authority and with the prisoners themselves, who pushed
their luck in terms of wilfully breaking the terms of the Ramallah
Agreement. They knew, everybody knew, that this arrangement with
the prisoners being held in a Jericho prison under international
supervision was an alternative to only one thing, namely incarceration
in an Israeli jail, and I think they made the wrong choices.
Q188 Chairman: Can I ask for some
clarification. You said that communications were made to the President
of the Palestinian Authority. In your answer yesterday in the
House you mentioned the differences between the response in Ramallah
from the response in Jericho. Is this more symptomatic of a general
problem of lack of authority of President Mahmoud Abbas and the
Palestinian Authority generally and their inability to give directions
to people on the ground, or is it a reflection of the fact that
Hamas is now a factor in this equation and that people are expecting
the release of these people under a Hamas administration?
Mr Straw: I think a bit of both
is the answer. The problem of the writ of the government in Ramallah
running across the Occupied Territories has been an endemic problem,
and that was certainly the problem before the elections in the
Palestinian Legislative Assembly at the end of January. Security
concerns were exacerbated by the fact that Hamas had indicated
in interviews that they were going to seek the release of all
(as they call them) political prisoners, which would plainly make
the position of the monitors completely untenable, so that added
to the risk.
Q189 Chairman: What about the reaction
to our personnel in the British Council and their offices? What
is the current position with regard to the British people who
are, for example in the British Council office in Ramallah, which
we visited in December, and also the locally engaged staff who
looked after us when we were driven from Gaza city down to the
Rampa Crossing?
Mr Straw: My understanding is
that all the permanent staff of the British Council in Gaza and
also in Ramallah are locally engaged Palestinians.
Q190 Chairman: There are British
citizens in Ramallah. We met them.
Mr Straw: My information is as
I have just offered it. In any event, there have been no reports
of any staff, whether they are Palestinian or British, being injured
or placed at risk. They got wind of the fact there was likely
to be a demonstration and so they withdrew.
Q191 Sir John Stanley: Foreign Secretary,
can I turn to the wider issues between Israel and the Palestinians.
As we all know, the fundamental objective behind the Road Map
was the achievement of a freely negotiated land settlement between
Israel and the Palestinians. The fundamental change of policy
which took place in the last period of Prime Minister Sharon's
premiership was that the Israeli Government gave up on that concept
and made it clear they were going to go down the route of imposing,
unilaterally, the final land settlement. That was confirmed to
us by every single shade of Israeli opinion which the Committee
encountered when we went to Israel and the Palestinian Territories
just before the end of last year. May I ask you, what is the British
Government's policy in terms of preventing the unilateral imposition
of a new land border settlement between Israel and the Palestinian
States?
Mr Straw: First of all, we remain
committed to the key resolutions, Security Council resolution
242 and 338, and on 1373. That is our position and we have actively
supported the policy set out in the Road Map, and that remains
our position. As far as the withdrawal from Gaza was concerned,
since there was, in a sense, a happy coincidence between the requirements
of the Road Map (the withdrawal from Gaza) and the requirements
of the policy then being pursued by the Israeli Government, I
did not object to the withdrawal from Gaza because the withdrawal
from Gaza has to happen if you are going to set up a separate
and viable state of Palestine. In particular, I welcomed the decision
by the Sharon Government to take down more settlements in the
Gaza. That was just welcomed, full stop. We would object if there
were efforts—and some of those have been talked about more
recently—both to collate and confirm facts on the ground
and to say, "Well, we might have negotiated over borders,
but now we're simply going to impose them." I think you will
have seen, Sir John, the statement of the Quartet a few weeks
ago, which repeated the position of all four parties to the Quartet
against the extension of settlements and the building of the barrier,
and that remains our position. As to the amount of international
pressure which could be applied to Israel, the more Hamas show
themselves willing and able to do what the Quartet has asked,
which is to respect existing international agreements and to agree
on the non-violent path, the more pressure we can put on the Israelis;
the reverse is also true.
Q192 Sir John Stanley: Would you
not agree that all the hand-wringing that has gone on from the
Quartet and others, and all the noise and objections, have had
absolutely no impact whatsoever on the remorseless process of
re-defining the border along the line of the barrier and the walling
in of East Jerusalem which the Israeli Government has undertaken?
Mr Straw: No, I do not agree with
that. I do not agree with your pessimistic assessment of it. The
effect of this international pressure is bound to be limited,
but the pressure has produced a result which would not have been
there had it not been for the pressure, I am quite clear about
that. After all, there are many people in Israel who do not want
the state of Palestine at all and many who would be happy just
to see the Palestinian population corralled or exiled, so they
cannot follow that policy. There was good hope about the future
of Gaza following the withdrawal, and we are still putting in
a lot of money and effort under the Wolfensohn plan better to
assist the people of Gaza. A lot has been going on, but at any
one time the Israeli Government is going to make judgments about
what it judges is in the interests of the Israeli people and what
is necessary in terms of their security and, bluntly, also, what
it thinks the international community will tolerate. The more
you have a Palestinian Authority Government which is committed
to international laws, the more pressure we can in turn put on
the Israelis.
Q193 Mr Purchase: Given all that
is known about this situation and our great experience and knowledge
of affairs there, and I mention simply the PA's lack of authority,
its lack of resources, the turbulence of recent elections and
the known Israeli predilection for direct action, was this outcome
not entirely predictable and was it not entirely preventable,
given all that we know, and could measures not have been taken
to protect those interests which we felt were most vulnerable?
Mr Straw: You are talking about
the situation in Jericho?
Q194 Mr Purchase: Yes.
Mr Straw: We did anticipate that
there would be difficulties, and certainly it was always anticipated,
Mr Purchase, that if we withdrew the monitors the Israeli authorities
would move in. The Palestinian Authority knew that and the prisoners
knew that.
Q195 Mr Purchase: And we knew it.
Mr Straw: Yes, we did know it,
but we are not talking here about British or American prison guards,
we are talking about a dozen monitors unarmed and very vulnerable.
The responsibility for what happened has to rest with those who
breached the Ramallah Agreement, let us be quite clear about that.
It was not the British Government, it was the Palestinian Authority,
egged on by the prisoners, and they have to take responsibility
for that. My responsibility was for the safety of those staff
and had I had to go to the House of Commons yesterday not to announce
the withdrawal of these monitors but instead to announce their
kidnapping, their injury or their death, this Select Committee
would have been the first to suggest I had acted irresponsibly.
Q196 Chairman: Can I ask you about
the process the Quartet are engaged in, or not engaged in with
regard to deciding what to do with Hamas and given the Israelis
have stopped the customs payments and that the United States has
said that it will not provide financial assistance for the Palestinian
Authority, the 140,000 people who are paid for through the Palestinian
Authority (which is reliant upon international finances) how can
they be kept from adding to the unemployment, and also people
with guns from the Palestinian Security Services who will become
unemployed, how can they be prevented from adding to this sense
of unrest and disintegration?
Mr Straw: First of all, the Quartet
(which includes the United States as well as the Russian Federation,
the EU and the UN) has set out some broad conditions for the Hamas
Government. They are not difficult, in my judgment, to achieve.
Meanwhile, as you will be aware, payments of aid by the European
Union, the United Kingdom and other European bilateral donors
continues. In the case of the United Kingdom, we have continued
our payments at 100 per cent. The European Union originally decided
(I might say against my advice) to cut their payments to 50 per
cent, but they then said they would hope to increase it to 100
per cent after a matter of weeks. My view is that since there
was not at the time a Hamas Government, we had a responsibility,
Chairman, as you have indicated, to do everything we could to
ensure that gratuitously the very large number of people who depend
on Palestinian Authority funds did not lose their salaries or
livelihoods and that we should carry on paying the aid which we
had pledged until it became essential for us to withdraw if there
was a Hamas Government which refused to meet the Quartet conditions.
That is the current position as far as the United Kingdom is concerned.
I also believe the Israeli Government should pay over these custom
dues, which are actually Palestinian money. There is a quite separate
issue about what the Israelis do in respect of any aid or assistance
they provide, but they are acting as the tax collector. I do not
think it is appropriate for them to withhold it. I will ask Mr
Gooderham if he has got more information about that, but I think
much of their aid has continued in practice, has it not?
Dr Gooderham: Indeed. If I may,
just generally on the Quartet, it is important to stress that
they continue to liaise very closely and, in fact, there will
be a meeting of the envoys of the Quartet members tomorrow in
Brussels when they will have a further opportunity to look at
the set of issues. It is important to distinguish in terms of
assistance between the direct assistance which we have been giving,
together with others, to the PA's Ministry of Finance in the form
of budgetary support. It was that which was frozen back in December;
it had nothing to do with the PLC elections it was for technical
reasons because the World Bank (which supervises the assistance
directly to the Ministry of Finance) concluded, rightly in our
view, that the terms and conditions of that funding had not been
met by the Palestinian Authority. It had not put in place various
measures which we needed to see in respect of auditing and other
measures the international community were looking for. Since then,
they have managed to put in place a sufficient number of those
provisions to allow the World Bank and ourselves, and others,
to re-start that funding. As the Foreign Secretary was saying,
that has now been provided. The second set of funding is humanitarian
assistance and that has continued throughout. I think it is fair
to say that the Quartet are all agreed that it should continue,
irrespective of the position of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
There is a clear consensus, I think, across the international
community that the Palestinian people themselves should not suffer,
as it were, that there should be no cutting off of that humanitarian
assistance, we expect that that will continue.
Q197 Chairman: Can I put it to you,
Foreign Secretary, you said "the current arrangements from
the European Union", let us say, for the sake of argument,
that we have a Hamas-led Government established at the end of
the month in a coalition with some elements from elsewhere, but
in essence we have a government in the Palestinian Authority which
rejects Israel, which says it will not negotiate and has not given
the commitment the Quartet have asked for, at that point, what
do we do?
Mr Straw: We are not going to
get to that point. The Quartet conditions have been carefully
phrased, and I think phrased in a way that a Hamas-dominated government
can meet them rather than not meet them. We are all being realistic
about this and we anticipate that the best judge of the direction
of travel of Hamas is likely to be their actions rather than their
words. It is not realistic to expect Hamas to tear up its charter
the day after it assumes office, any more than it is realistic
to expect Sinn Fein to tear up its formal statements of position
the day after it has entered into negotiation with the British
Government. It is, however, realistic to expect it to acknowledge
Israel's existence. We are not asking it to celebrate Israel's
existence but to acknowledge that it exists and to understand
that democracy involves responsibility and you cannot lead democratic
government, at the same time as sponsoring actively terrorism.
These two are not compatible. The problem, Chairman, is that we
do not want to be in a position where aid is suspended to the
Palestinian Authority. We talk about this continuously inside
the European Union and with the Americans and we want to do everything
we can to avoid that, including looking at alternative conduits
for funds which to a degree would bypass a Hamas government but
the money would still go to the Palestinian people. What this
Committee would regard as intolerable, I believe, certainly the
British taxpayer would, is if we were then not able to say to
the British tax-payer, "Your money is not going to fund terrorism."
What are we supposed to do in that situation if there was no guarantee
that it was leeching through in that way? That is the problem.
I hope that when there is a government, which will be Hamas-dominated
for certain, and it assumes the burdens and the responsibilities
of office, it does send out signals indicating not that it expects
them to stand on their heads, but that it appreciates what it
has to do to respond to what the Quartet has said.
Q198 Chairman: If the money is cut
off and the Hamas government then goes to countries elsewhere
in the region—Saudi Arabia has been considered, Iran has
been mentioned—do you think realistically it will be able
to get the financial support to compensate for the European Union/Israeli
customs revenues and American funding?
Mr Straw: I doubt it is the answer.
Certainly the history of pledges from elsewhere in the Arab world
is that there are many pledges but rather less in terms of money
paid over, and for all the talk today about the fact that the
United Kingdom has been unhelpful to the Palestinians, it is worth
the Palestinians being reminded that we have been the second largest
donor to the Palestinian people. We have been keeping Palestinians
alive and we shall continue to do so, whilst others have been
making paper pledges and doing absolutely nothing, or precious
little. I do not want to be in a position at all where we are
forced to suspend significant sums of our aid and with Hilary
Benn, whom I talk to a great deal about this—and we are
in exactly the same place—we are applying all our imagination,
and so are our officials, to avoid that. It does require some
exercise of responsibility by the people who have just been elected.
Chairman: Thank you. I think we want
to move on to Iran.
Q199 Mr Hamilton: Foreign Secretary,
obviously apart from what happened yesterday, this is a very pressing
international matter for all of us, I think. We were in Vienna
in January, where we met Mohamed ElBaradei and discussed the current
situation as it was then and the possibility obviously of the
IAEA referring this to the Security Council. We also met in New
York, just at the end of last month, Javad Zarif, who is still
the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, though for how much
longer we do not know. He was very forthright in defence of his
country, as you would expect, citing to us the declaration (the
Fatwa I think he called it) by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini
that the development of nuclear weapons would be un-Islamic and
would go against the Holy Koran. The fact is, though, that President
Ahmadinejad has clearly stated that he wants to see Israel wiped
off the map, and then we know that there is a fuel cycle, an enrichment
cycle going on in Iran as part of their plans for civil nuclear
power, and that is what is causing the concern. In spite of declarations
by ambassadors and officials that this is an un-Islamic thing
to do, to develop nuclear weapons, the very fact that the President
of Iran has made it clear what his intention is and that they
are obviously trying to develop some sort of nuclear weapon do
you think this poses an extreme danger to not just regional peace
but world peace?
Mr Straw: To be fair to President
Ahmadinejad, he did not ever threaten Israel with nuclear weapons
and a nuclear strike against Israel would be the craziest thing
imaginable because it would kill millions of people of the Muslim
faith as well as Jewish people of the Jewish faith and it would
probably do more damage in that way as well as, of course, poisoning
the whole region. The concerns about Iran's nuclear ambitions
are more to do with the strategic instability which would be caused
if they were to acquire a nuclear weapon rather than any specific
target they might have in mind, and we have no information about
that. I know what Ambassador Zarif has said and this has been
said to us repeatedly, but the Iranians also acknowledge that
the international community has good grounds for suspicion. The
evidence is circumstantial. I have never said that it is categorical
and I will not unless and until it is categorical, but let me
just summarise the evidence. First of all, it is 20 years of basic
deception of the IAEA in breach of their treaty obligations, saying
that they were not doing anything significant in respect of the
fuel cycle when they were building these very large plants at
Natanz and Isfahan. Then the fact that, as it emerged, they have
been experimenting with plutonium and polonium, which are not
really of much use when it comes to generating electricity by
nuclear means. There is the discovery by the IAEA inspectors,
which they[1]
have yet properly to explain, of a significant manual from AQ
Khan, the nuclear proliferator, about the design and manufacture
of depleted uranium hemispheres, which have a purpose only in
nuclear bombs and not in nuclear power stations. And the fact
that they are developing the Shehab-3 missile system and analysts
suggest that this could be used with a nuclear warhead. You add
all this up together. You add up, also, the fact that Dr ElBaradei
in his latest report of 27 February complained that after three
years of intensive verification and inspection they are still
not able to come to a conclusion about Iran's intentions and you
have grounds for suspicion, and those suspicions are widespread.
They could be allayed if Iran came into compliance, and the whole
purpose of the E3 negotiations was to bring Iran into compliance.
Since the change of government they have decided on a different
course.
1 The Iranians. Back
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