Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-219)
MR GARETH
THOMAS MP, MR
IAN MCCARTNEY
MP, MR RURIK
MARSDEN AND
MR NICK
ALEXANDER
21 JUNE 2007
Q200 John Bercow: Yes.
Mr Thomas: One of the things that
I did agree with in what you said was that we should not, as a
Department, preclude giving more aid cross-border. I completely
accept that. I hope I made that clear in my answer to Joan Ruddock's
question. I come back to the figures that I provided, where even
the most wildly optimistic scenario suggests that 4.5 per cent
of the Burmese community could be reached cross-border. Given
the scale of challenges that there are around poverty in Burma,
at least a third of Burma's population, even on the very sketchy
data that is available, live on less than a dollar a day. 60 per
cent of households have had no education whatsoever. There must
surely be a responsibility on the international community to provide
assistance within-country to those poorest people too. One of
the challenges for a department like ours is to look at not just
what the UK can do but also what the international community more
generally is doing. What we are seeing is that there is a range
of donors providing aid cross-border. There is a very small number
of donors based in-country and who therefore have knowledge of
what works in-country. Without being disrespectful, I would gently
point out that the Committee was not able to go to Burma to meet
with NGOs, international organisations, et cetera, who provide
aid in-country. I have not been to Burma either for the same reasons
that the Committee has not. We have to look in the round. I do
not preclude additional assistance cross-border but one of the
particular challenges, given that we have staff in-country and
have had for some time, that we can bring to the table is the
knowledge of what works.
Q201 John Bercow: You are absolutely
right, of course. We did not visit Burma itself. It would not
have been possible to view very much and, if we had done, we would
have had to be escorted by representatives of the SPDC[15]
which is obviously a daily trial and tribulation for those DFID
staff working on the ground who, in undertaking their work, are
always so accompanied. Can I put a follow up to you because it
does seem to be the elephant in the room. It is blindingly obvious
that only an extraordinarily clever person could fail to see the
point. Precisely because it is some of the most vulnerable people—you
referred to the figures—who can be reached anyway by the
delivery of cross-border assistance and precisely because those
numbers are relatively small as a proportion of the population,
a priority to helping those people, because of their vulnerability
and because of the relatively modest cost, ought to be afforded.
What part of that proposition is it that over a period of years
DFID officials, who we know were against lifting the cap, resisted?
Would you accept that, as a decisive and forward-looking, thrusting,
almost certainly rising Minister, like the Minister next to you,
it is your role, which you will I hope perform with distinction,
not to follow officials who have been on the ground for years
and who have a fixed view, but to lead them?
Mr Thomas: With respect, I do
not think my officials have a fixed view and—
Q202 John Bercow: They have had for
years.
Mr Thomas: I have confidence in
their judgment and I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the
quality of the work that they do. Unpacking some of what you say,
what was missing, with respect, in your survey was any recognition
of what the wider international community can and indeed is doing
in terms of funding cross-border aid already as opposed to funding
work in-country. I therefore say we should look at things in the
round here. If other donors are providing substantial funding
already for cross-border work, should we not look at potentially
providing more funding, if we have more funding available, as
a priority in-country, if others are picking up the humanitarian
needs of very vulnerable people? Absolutely. If other donors are
not picking up those needs and that becomes clear in the work
that OCHA do, we should look at providing that assistance. One
of the reasons why we have sought to get OCHA involved as much
as we have done is because they are the lead international organisation
within the UN family with the responsibility for coordinating
international humanitarian assistance. They are the people who
do the data analysis as to what is needed. They are respected
by many other different donors and we will listen to the analysis
that they do in the same way that we know other donors will do
too.
Q203 John Bercow: We certainly would
not go in for the business of buck passing or saying that if somebody
else does it that is all right. That would not be a position that
an organisation of the repute of DFID would take, I feel sure.
If there is unmet need on a significant scale which could be affordably
met, DFID following the policy change—otherwise, what the
hell is the point of making the policy change—would be open
to providing an additional infusion of resources?
Mr Thomas: The straight answer
is yes. The slightly more complicated answer is to point out that
there is already significant unmet need in the Burmese context.
That significant unmet need, I would suggest to you, predominantly
can only be met in-country given the numbers that I have described
to you. I think the international community has not just the responsibility
to look at the cross-border situation and the cross-border groups
and those who are extremely vulnerable there; they also have a
responsibility to look at those vulnerable people who are living
within Burma itself and how best to get aid to them. We need to
look at the needs of those who can be reached cross-border, absolutely,
but I also think the international community needs to do more
in looking at the needs of those who can only be reached in-country.
If we get significant increases in our budget, in my view, that
should be the priority for our work. That does not preclude the
point that you make about potentially providing more funding cross-border
if OCHA identify the additional need.
Q204 Ann McKechin: Is one of the
distortions the fact that some of the other major donors, particularly
the US, will not fund in-country as a matter of policy? There
may be a need for the UN to have a wider discussion with all the
major donors about how their funds are distributed because at
the moment it seems to be very much policy driven in different
ways. It produces these distortions and inevitably there are some
misunderstandings between groups within-country and those cross-border
about who is giving the money and who is the better group to deal
with.
Mr Thomas: That is a pretty fair
reflection on the broader situation. We are trying to improve
coordination of aid more generally, not just the humanitarian
aid which Mr Bercow was asking about. We have funded a post within
UNDP to lead the donor coordination effort but there are donors
who are not providing aid from within-country for a variety of
reasons, no doubt. We do provide aid in-country. We are probably
the donor that has the lead in terms of expertise on working in-country
and that is something we need to put into the mix when we look
at how aid is allocated.
Q205 Sir Robert Smith: You quite
rightly point out that we did not go to Burma but we did meet
organisations that work in Burma from outside, who came to meet
with us, so we got some picture second-hand. You mentioned greater
coordination and data-sharing. I wonder how you monitor the ability
of in-country community organisations that you fund to reach IDPs.
Mr Marsden: The mechanism we use
is a third party monitor. The areas that are reached by community
based organisations which are not accessible to international
staff we monitor using a third party, a UN Burmese official expert
who goes and looks and checks what is being done and how it is
working.
Q206 Sir Robert Smith: One of the
concerns we have heard in evidence is that maybe there is not
enough sharing of that feedback to give other organisations an
understanding of what is being achieved or where it is being achieved.
Do you accept you could share more information about the UK assistance
to IDPs amongst trusted parties or organisations, either by meeting
in Burma or, if necessary, in confidential meetings outside Burma?
Mr Thomas: There is always more
we can do in terms of communication. It is clear from looking
through the transcripts of the proceedings that the Committee
has gone through that there are some people and some groups who
do feel that we do not communicate well enough to them. We have
tried over the last 18 months to step up our communication with
both international NGOs and other donors and share details not
only of what we do but also our analysis of the situation on the
ground. For example, I initiated a round-table of international
NGOs in May this year. I see that as the start of a process, something
that we might do potentially every six months. Whenever a number
of NGOs have asked for meetings with DFID officials, those meetings
have taken place. We have committed, for example, to hold quarterly
meetings with those groups who provide cross-border support, and
those who lobby for political change in Burma. We are stepping
up the donor coordination effort. As I described, we helped to
persuade OCHA to get involved in terms of the humanitarian system.
We are funding and supporting the UNDP to lead on the aid coordination
effort more generally in Burma. We are trying to step up not only
the coordination but the communication more generally between
those who work in Burma. More communication within Burma I would
be pretty hesitant about because of the relationships of individuals,
often very trusted people who have worked for a very long time
together. I would be pretty sceptical about whether or not we
should be increasing the dialogue in-country and outside Burma
too. There are occasions for obvious reasons where we need to
hold information back and I recognise that can be frustrating
for international NGOs on occasion, but I think we have to place
the utmost priority on maintaining the security of the organisations
we work through.
Q207 Sir Robert Smith: Are you suggesting
though that the UN may be the best placed rather than the EU or
DFID, to have an overall map of which organisations are reaching
which parts?
Mr Thomas: Yes. I believe the
UN should have that role. What we are trying to do is to increase
that current capacity to carry out that role, both through the
funding we are giving to OCHA and to UNDP. I would not say it
is perfect at the moment but we are trying to make it much better.
Q208 Sir Robert Smith: You see that
as the route?
Mr Thomas: We see the UN as leading
on that coordination effort, yes.
Q209 Richard Burden: We have been
told that the office in Rangoon is going to increase from 2 staff
up to 10. No doubt the idea behind that is to increase effectiveness
in-country and to improve DFID's effectiveness generally in that
part of the world. Given that you have already acknowledged that
there have been, to put it at its most neutral, communication
issues, for some time do you not see that concentrating all the
staffing of that part of the world in-country could send out rather
strange messages to those people who already think that DFID does
have a view that in-country is good and cross-border is not so
good? Does not concentrating all your staff in-country send out
some rather strange messages?
Mr Thomas: I hope, through my
appearance before the select committee and the appearances that
ministers make before the All Party Group, that I can help to
redress that balance by making very clear that I recognise the
role of cross-border aid. There are good reasons why we have been
reluctant on occasion to share details about whom we work through,
for example. I recognise that some people find that frustrating.
I hope the mechanisms that we have in place now, both in terms
of donor coordination and more regular meetings with NGOs either
here in London or in Bangkok, will help to address those frustrations,
but I do not accept that we should not close our office in Bangkok,
which seems to be the view of some who have presented evidence
to the Committee. We said in the White Paper which Hilary Benn
published last year that we wanted to do more in fragile states[16].
Closing the office in Thailand, which is a middle-income country,
will enable us to deploy more staff into fragile states within
the region, both into Burma itself but also, for example, into
Cambodia. We want to deploy more staff in-country so that we have
greater capacity to understand what works in-country. I point
out again that we are one of the few donors to have a presence
in-country. There are other donors who work on Burma but very
few have that in-country presence that helps you to really understand
what can work in-country. Now the senior civil servant oversight
of that programme will be based in London, closer to ministers
and closer to the concerns of parliamentarians and closer to the
debate which takes place here in London about what we should or
should not do in terms of our aid programme in Burma. There will
always be that out of country presence to reflect on both what
cross-border groups, et cetera, are saying, what other donors
are saying, as well as us getting more information about what
is happening in-country.
Q210 Richard Burden: Do you think it
could have an impact though, even though for all the reasons you
say there may be good reasons for scaling up in Rangoon and even
scaling down in Bangkok, but could there be nevertheless an impact
on co-ordination? By that I do not just mean co-ordination and
communication between DFID and agencies operating on the border,
for example, but communication between the Foreign Office and
DFID because they will still be based in Bangkok.
Mr Thomas: We work extremely closely
with the Foreign Office. One of the things we have said is that
in order to allay any concern that there might be any breakdown
in communication between FCO staff and DFID staff, and there certainly
has not been in any other context that I am aware of, we will
draw up a Memorandum of Understanding between the two departments
as to who does what. Co-operation is very good at the moment on
these issues. The fact that the two of us are here should give
some confidence to the Committee in that respect.
Q211 Richard Burden: It is very clear
that co-operation is good at ministerial level, and I am not suggesting
that at any other level there are any deliberate barriers. If
I just put to you discussions that we have had in the border area,
and it relates back to the conversation Mr Bercow mentioned about
the fact that the head of office from DFID's point of view had
not been up to the border area. We said to a number of people
"How often have you met DFID officials?" and they said,
"We never see DFID up here, they never come up here".
That surprised us. We then discovered, in one of the answers we
got back from DFID and the Foreign Office, that even though DFID
staff had not been up around the border area, the Foreign Office
staff had been, on apparently fairly regular occasions, to the
refugee camps. If the people working in the camps, and working
in some cases cross-border, do not see that the United Kingdom
is up there listening to what they have to say, or explaining
what is going on, and they see that DFID is not up there, at the
very least that indicates there is a problem with communication,
either a problem with communication between us as Britain and
agencies operating up there or communication between different
government departments, or both. If that is the case now, which
it is now, when both operations are operating out of Bangkok,
could it not be even more of a problem when one of them is just
in Rangoon?
Mr McCartney: Can I come in here.
I can understand, Mr Burden, your concerns and rightly. I want
to absolutely reassure you about two things. One is the absolute
clarity of the responsibility and objectives in respect of the
working arrangements both at Bangkok and Rangoon. It is important
that the Foreign Office has this co-ordinating role, both directly
with the NGOs in the refugee camps but also the work that we do
with the Home Office in respect of the Gateway Protection Programme
which is vitally important. It is a programme of assessment and
arrangements for the most vulnerable to come to the United Kingdom
from the camps. That has linked with another programme with Burmese
refugees in appalling circumstances for a number of years now
in Bangladesh. We are linking these two programmes which later
this year will see a significant number of the most vulnerable
refugees coming to the UK in a programme of extracting them from
the camps and in the circumstances they are in. It is absolutely
essential that the Foreign Office has this direct role. I think
we have done eight visits to five camps already this year with
more to come. The fact we will co-ordinate our staff both in Bangkok
and Rangoon is important because we will also have the lead role
in working with the Thai Government in our activities in terms
of engaging with them and also with the other EU ambassadors in
the other EU countries in the region to co-ordinate activities
in relation to the camps with NGOs and the conditions within the
camps. There is a clarity about this. DFID has got its skills
and knowledge which it deploys and we have got ours but we deploy
them together on an agreed basis.
Q212 Chairman: Can I just reinforce
that. I think we accept that entirely and the work of the Foreign
Office and the Embassy in Bangkok we were impressed with, that
was not a point of criticism. The point we are probing is that
if DFID is not represented in the Embassy at all in Thailand,
given activities with the refugees, given activities across border—maybe
Mr Marsden should answer this—is there not a danger, and
that is what some people have put to us, that their perspective
will be dominated by the fact that they are all in Rangoon? Is
there not a case for an extension officer almost being there so
that the work of the Foreign Office and the work of DFID proceeds
with day to day engagement rather than occasional meetings from
two different posts?
Mr Thomas: Let me say, whether
it is DFID staff or the FCO Political Section, as Ian has described,
there are regular visits to the refugee camps and there is regular
sharing of information between our two departments, as a result,
about the situation in those camps, and the views of the groups
who are based there and who go cross-border. To deal with the
worry that, Mr Bruce, you described, we have agreed to draw up
a Memorandum of Understanding between the two departments to scope
out what the role of each department is in relation to the refugee
camps and, for example, in relation to liaising with the cross-border
groups. Let us be clear, Rangoon is only an hour's flight away
so I do expect our staff to be going back to meetings in Bangkok,
on occasion to be part of visits to the refugee camps, certainly
to be meeting with cross-border groups and I expect the dialogue
with those cross-border groups to continue here in London as well.
I do not think the closure of our particular bit of the section
within the Embassy is going to lead to the scenario that you paint.
I think instead what we will have is the additional benefit of
extra staff working in-country.
Chairman: All I can say—and
I can see one or two colleagues want to come in—is we certainly
observed a clear breakdown of communication internally which does
not look like it will be improved by taking people further away.
Q213 John Bercow: First of all, can
I say to Ian McCartney, thank you very much for supporting the
magnificent event to mark Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday on Tuesday,
that was very warmly appreciated by her supporters and Burmese
exiles, and thank you, Minister, for the evidence you are giving.
Can I politely say to you that although it is great that you have
come here today, and you have always been a model of courtesy
in engaging with parliamentary colleagues interested in this subject,
listening to representations and so on, there is a difference
between an occasional visit when requested or a meeting and the
day-to-day experience on the ground for which you obviously cannot
be responsible, and which nobody would expect you, as ministers,
because it is not your job, to undertake. In the end, Minister,
words of support and underlining rhetorically a commitment to
cross-border aid is better than having no such commitment but
it does not count for much with the importance of the deeds, seeing
the increased assistance. In these situations I think, if I may
say so, we all want to be polite, and we all want to try to avoid
matters becoming personal but it is incredibly important that
ministers should be under no misapprehension whatever about the
scale of the problems we observed when we went to the border,
in terms of dysfunction and lack of co-ordination, by comparison,
for example, with what I think generally was regarded as a truly
first-class experience when we went to Vietnam, a superb office,
hugely focused, very committed, highly successful, brilliant inter-personal
skills. With great respect, the head of DFID South East Asia,
Mr Elliot, has been in post—you talk about regular visits,
Minister—three years—three years—it was his
first visit to the border. He was unfamiliar with and frankly
completely discombobulated from the organisations and personnel
operating on the border. That is the reality of the matter—it
may not be comfortable but it is our job to probe these issues.
I welcome your response to that and I welcome, also, hearing from
you because it would offer me some encouragement, and your failure
to say it would offer me considerable discouragement. Are you
saying that this office closure is going to happen irrespective
of what the Committee in its report says? Who dreamt up what I
confess I personally consider a barking idea? Where is the piece
of paper? Is there a trail and could we see it?
Mr Thomas: The policy of increasing
our work in fragile states starts with the White Paper that we
published last year. As I say, the closure of the office will
allow us to deploy both more staff into Burma itself and more
staff into Cambodia. Our staff are not deployed at the moment
to anywhere near the refugee camps. People do visit, as I have
said, either from the FCO Political Section of the Embassy or
from the DFID section of the embassy. I come back to the figures
I gave to the Committee at the very beginning. There is an important
but a relatively small section of the Burmese people who can be
reached cross-border as against the huge numbers that can only
be reached through internal methods of delivery of aid. I do think
you have to look at those figures and decide where to deploy one's
staff accordingly. I think we would be neglecting our responsibility
to the rest of the Burmese people if we did not scale up our aid
and as a result did not scale up our staffing numbers in Burma
itself. I accept the point we have to maintain the links with
the cross-border groups, we have to maintain our understanding
of what is happening in the border areas, and that part of doing
that is to have the discussions with those groups and to see what
is going on in the refugee camps. We have to make sure that co-ordination
between every bit of government that works on Burma is clear and
coherent. That is why we have said, for the avoidance of any doubt,
we will draw up a Memorandum of Understanding between our two
departments, and it is also why we have committed to hold quarterly
meetings with those groups who do provide cross-border support
so that that we will continue to hear and understand that dialogue.
In the end it is the responsibility of ministers as to how we
offer our aid. We are bringing back senior civil servant oversight
of our aid programmes to London, to be closer to ministers and
the parliamentary debates which take place. As I said, the round-table
of international NGOs working on Burma that we have kicked off
I see as the beginning of the process, not as a one-off, and I
hope that too will improve co-ordination. You asked me whether
the Committee can have a bearing on the decision that we have
taken. We always look at the recommendations the Committee makes
very seriously. I would say that it would have to be a pretty
powerful reason that the Committee offered for us to want to go
back on the decision that we have taken, and I think it is the
right decision but I will obviously look at what the Committee
has to say.
Chairman: At the moment we differ,
I think you appreciate that, but we have a report to make. It
is pretty clear we have a difference of view. We will reflect
on what you have said Minister.
Ann McKechin: I will give you
one compelling reason, Mr Thomas, which is the issue of the fact
that Foreign and Commonwealth staff are not development experts
but DFID staff are. It seems to me there is a very clear lack
of development analysis of what is going on in the refugee camps,
I cannot speak about the cross-border work because we cannot examine
it directly, but it struck me that it was a shockingly poor analysis
that had been carried out about what was going on in the refugee
camps. To give you one example which glared in our faces as we
came in the door: we are giving food aid in a camp where there
clearly is a thriving cash economy, and where I have never seen
so many shops in a refugee camp in my life. At the very least
that should raise questions. It may not be raising questions amongst
Foreign Office staff who have another agenda, a very important
agenda as the Minister has indicated, but it is one in which I
think someone has to have an analysis and a proper contact with
to make sure that the British taxpayers' money, which is being
spent in these camps, is being spent correctly. I have to say
that the current arrangement is entirely unsatisfactory and one
which your Department should take a much closer look at.
Q214 Chairman: I am not sure whether
you need to respond to that, Minister, or take it as a comment.
I think it is a reflection of what the Committee have seen and
heard. I think you are getting an indication of the sort of things
which might go into our report.
Mr McCartney: I accept that, Mr
Bruce, and I will take my lead from Mr Bercow and be very polite.
Before we starting battering our heads off the wall here, to an
extent, there are a million people alive each day in Burma because
of our co-ordinated and partnership efforts. The EU is there for
one simple reason: the leadership in the UK. There are other countries
in Europe, the northern hemisphere, that are there because of
our leadership role with them. I think it is critically important
alongside a debate on improving and extending the aid programme,
ensuring it is effective and transparent and co-ordinated and
also the potential for increased investment, for that to happen
something else has to happen and it has to happen in the region
and that is a capacity for us to ensure that within ASEAN[17]
and with other big players in the region they co-operate in an
effective way to get a more open approach by the Burmese Government.
I think you need to take a wider reflection here. You cannot take
one aspect of this work on its own, you have to look at the wider
picture and when you put those two bits together, thank goodness,
we are there.
Q215 Chairman: I accept that, although
the criticism was not directed at what we heard from the Embassy
but there are some concerns about the relationships.
Mr Thomas: I just want to say,
briefly, 20 million of Burma's population live on less than a
dollar a day as compared with the relatively small numbers that
we can reach either in the refugee camps or cross-border. Should
we not deploy our staff to the place of greatest need and that
would surely suggest we are right to increase our staff.
Q216 Chairman: We understand that
argument entirely. I think this is an exchange of views, we need
your evidence but I think it is important that we get into our
report what we saw and heard on the ground and the judgments we
made about it.
Mr Thomas: Sure.
Q217 Mr Singh: First of all, can
I commend your speech, Minister, the other day on the occasion
of celebrating the birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi, it was an excellent
speech, and the lead that you have taken generally on the issue
of Burma. You quite rightly condemned, in the strongest terms,
the Burmese regime's decision to close the International Committee
of the Red Cross office in Burma. Have you made any direct representations
to the Burmese regime on this issue? Secondly, there is an issue
of funding, you were funding the ICRC: are you continuing to fund
the ICRC or has that funding been shifted to somebody more appropriate
who is operating inside Burma?
Mr McCartney: Thank you for that
question and thank you for your very kind remarks. I do not deserve
them really. Can I say I have taken 28 separate actions so far
in the last 12 months to engage directly with the regime, either
at a bilateral level or a multilateral level. I took the decision
on the 28 May when we were at Hamburg for the ASEAN/EU summit
to seek out a personal one-to-one meeting with the Foreign Minister.
It was the first time there has been such an intervention for
some considerable time. I did this because I had written to him,
having had meetings with the ambassador here on a detailed range
of human rights abuses, and the difficulties being caused by lack
of access for our staff and other international staff to work
effectively in Burma. At that meeting I set out in great detail
to him what we wished to see happen in terms of developing a more
open relationship, commitments on UN activity in Burma, an effective
role for the ILO and immediate release of all the political prisoners,
not just this remarkable woman leader, and also the capacity for
them to indicate to us that they were prepared for the UN to set
out in the summer a proper programme leading to direct democratic
elections. Our encounter was a polite but extremely firm encounter.
That was followed up by a further encounter within the whole of
the EU foreign ministers meeting. Interestingly, at the meeting,
for the first time ever were the Chinese foreign minister and
the Indian foreign minister, at the end of which, for the very
first time, we got a common agreement which China and India supported
in regard to our very firm statement of what needed to happen
in Burma. I will continue this and not because of today, it is
a coincidence. I have written—it will probably go out today
but certainly by tomorrow—a further letter to have a further
dialogue with the foreign minister, directly if necessary, and
certainly will be with his ambassador in the run-up to their convention
meeting on 18 July to see what progress I can make. Can I say
they are very debilitating meetings. There is a complete lack
of any understanding of what the international community are asking
them to do. I think ASEAN, including China, are now becoming thoroughly
embarrassed by their activities. It is very important after 18
July we see some improvement. ILO have already started work in
Burma, and they are giving absolute commitment of total co-operation
with the ILO. This has led—and I will send details to the
Committee—to some actions already in respect of child labour
and forced labour but it is only a miniscule start. We have still
got issues with the international community on the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and others about both their
access and their capacity. The ICRC have got a clear strategy
not just in Burma but other places about visitations to those
jailed and about their ability to work independent of the Burmese
Government. I do not think the Burmese Government will allow that
to happen, for obvious reasons. Again, I had a recent meeting
with the head of the ICRC over Burma and other issues, and I will
write to the Committee about that. I hope to have a fuller meeting
when I next go to the Human Rights Council later this year with
the head of the ICRC on other actions we can take to help facilitate
them having an effective programme in Burma. The final point—I
apologise for giving such a long answer—the UN Special Representative,
Mr Gambari, I have also met with him and intend to build a relationship
with him because it is critically important for the UN to have
an effective role in the country, and without that much of it
will be rhetoric. There is an absolute need, now that he has been
reconfirmed in his post, for us to see what proactive work we
can put in place in the country with the leadership of the United
Nations.
Q218 Mr Singh: Just on the point
of the funding that the ICRC was receiving, are they still receiving
it or is it going elsewhere?
Mr Thomas: They are not receiving
any money this year because of the situation as you describe,
Mr Singh, so we have deployed the money elsewhere within-country.
Q219 Chairman: Mr McCartney, you
have partly answered my question, and I was interested to hear
that you had engagements with both India and China which sound
as if they have some positive dimension. One of the comments that
we get from people is, "Well, if the international community
puts pressure on Burma they have only got to get comfort from
China, India and Russia." What you said is you have got some
positive response from India and China, which is very encouraging.
Have you had any similar discussions involving the Russians who
are about to build a nuclear power station in Burma?
Mr McCartney: No, but again I
am happy to send a short note to the Committee. We are aware of
the situation with regard to the discussions Russia is having
with Burma over the nuclear issue. I will write to the Committee
with that. I have had no discussions with my Russian counterpart
other than discussions around whether or not they should have
access to the WTO, which is another story.
15 State Peace and Development Council (the Burmese
regime) Back
16
Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the
Poor, Cm 6876, July 2006 Back
17
Association of SouthEast Asian Nations. Back
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