Examination of Witnesses (Questions 362
- 379)
THURSDAY 26 APRIL 2007
RT HON LORD PATTEN OF BARNES
Q362 Chairman:
Lord Patten, we do not have to tell you anything about the way
in which committees like this work but we are very glad that you
have been able to come to see us and that your current work with
the International Crisis Committee in other ways is certainly
involving you very much in the issues which we are considering.
We are of course a sub-committee of the European Union Committee
and therefore we are particularly concerned about the role the
European Union has been and is playing in the problems in the
Middle East and could in the future. We had a very useful session
in Brussels a month ago with Javier Solana and with people from
the Commission and we were quite impressed by some of the initiatives
which are now being taken but there are also some frustrations
because of the current restrictions on some forms of action. You
do not want, I think, to make an opening statement, so perhaps
I might begin with a question. In view of the current discussions
on new political horizons, I wonder whether you have any suggestions
as to the steps the European Union should now take to reinvigorate
the Middle East Peace Process and how far you feel a road map
still is the right approach or whether we ought instead to be
seeing what more support could be given to the recent Arab initiative.
Lord Patten of Barnes: There is a lot in that
question. Perhaps I can unparcel it and just begin by making one
point. Critics of the European Union very often walk on both sides
of the street: they both argue that Europe is not doing enough
and when Europe does try to get its act together that it has the
pretensions of super-statehood. The truth is that Europe gets
as much done collectively as individual nation states allow it
to do. For example, we do have single policies with supranational
institutions in some areas, like trade, like single market and
there are other areas, foreign policy is the most obvious example,
where we attempt to cooperate and attempt to put together a common,
not a single, policy. I think that reflects the extent to which
foreign and security policy go right to the heart of what it is
to be a nation state. That has inevitably impeded the development
of the common policy. After the humiliations in the early 1990s,
we put together a common policy in the Balkans. I think we have
failed badly in relation to Russia and we have failed pretty badly
in relation to the Middle East. There is perhaps one principle
cause for failure in the Middle East. While it is true that the
United States matters far more in the Middle East than anybody
else, and while it is true that without the American initiative
we are unlikely to see a rejuvenation of the Peace Process, there
is more that Europe can do independently than simply lash itself
to American policy, taking the view that we should not allow a
piece of tissue paper to come between us and the United States.
If you lash yourself to a vacuum, your own policy becomes fairly
negligible. Without totally downplaying some of the important
initiatives that Europe has taken, I think there is no issue which
has produced more hand-wringing and more anguished communiqués
in Europe but not much in the way of the sort of actions one would
have liked to have seen. It is true that Europe has, for example,
taken the principle responsibility for the road map. It is important
to correct the history on this. The road map did not emerge from
Washington; the road map was produced principally by the Danish
foreign ministry during the Danish presidency. We then took it
to Washington, where the state department made one or two amendments,
perfectly reasonably. We then, I recall, went to the White House
to get the President's endorsement and the Presidentand
I always wondered about the significance of the indefinite and
articles at the timecommitted himself to "a"
road map for the Middle East. But it was within days of his appointment
of Elliot Abrams as his principal advisor on Israel and Palestine,
and we know Mr Abrams' feelings on these issues. So, from the
outset, I think the main principle of the road map was not likely
to be implemented unless there was more American involvement and
commitment than proved to be the case or unless Europe raised
the embarrassment bar for not pushing the road map hard enough.
The great principle behind the road map was to forget about sequentialism,
which had been the principle behind Oslo; the notion that you
would work through confidence-building measures, that one party
to the dispute would take certain action and then the other party
would respond. It was very much: "After you, Yasser."
"After you Ariel." The point about the road map was
its proposed parallelism; that both parties should move down the
road at the same speed to predetermined and timed rendezvous,
and there has never been pressure to do that. During the first
Bush administration the argument was that Arafat was the problem;
that you could not negotiate with the Palestinians because of
Arafat. I was always prepared to accept that Arafat was a problem
but not the problem and I do despair of a situation in which whoever
has political responsibility in the Palestinian Authority is deemed
to be somebody you cannot deal with. We have, I hope not mortally,
undermined Abu Mazen and undermined the present President, who
was deemed sufficiently moderate to be invited to the White House
but has not received the support that he deserves, at least until
the Mecca Agreement, which I hugely welcome. I fear that while
the European Union has dashed about trying to be helpful, while
it has occasionally, for example on the war, taken positions which
are slightly different from those of the United States, while
it has played the principal role in providing humanitarian assistance
recently in Palestine and before that in sustaining the Palestinian
Authority, its policy has been too much in the last few years
to have another meeting of the Quartet. The Quartet was described,
I think not unreasonably, by the Secretary-General of the Arab
League as the "Quartet sans trois" so there are
lots of family photos and there are lots of communiqués
but I am afraid we have gone through a period during which the
number of fatalities in Israel and Palestine has far exceeded
the number in the last five or six years of President Clinton,
which makes a policy which was initially based on ABC (anything
but Clinton) seem less than wholly successful. I think that is
the background, which may be excessively critical of the European
Union but I know of no subject on which we talked more when I
was a Commissioner and no subject on which we failed more spectacularly.
Russia should have been a lot easier, so the failure is perhaps
even greater there.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q363 Lord Lea of Crondall:
Lord Patten, may I welcome you and thank you for that provoking
overview. You mentioned that following on the coat tails of America
was not very satisfactory and I think this is pretty much a part
of our report, but I would like to bring Israel into this. We
not only had a senior Israeli telling us that it was settled Israeli
policy to make sure the United States had the political lead and
to ensure it stayed that way (in other words, the EU was not going
to have any comparable political role) but at the same time the
view in Brussels has begun to be quite sharply different from
that, along the lines you have been stating when you saw Mr Solana.
I think he used the phrase "one or two steps ahead"
or a few steps ahead of the United States. Leaving aside all your
interesting remarks, that the EU is not a state, et cetera, et
cetera, could you comment on the apparent contradiction. The Arab
states generally want Europe to be more active and yet it is pretty
settled Israeli policy to have no such thing, even though they
recognise that Mecca and Riyadh meetings have been very constructive,
maybe because of the threat of Iran or whatever motives, and yet
we still have this contradiction. We are going to ask you a lot
of questions about Palestine in a minute but what about Israel
and the Israel/America special relationship. Will that block everything
that Europe tries to do?
Lord Patten of Barnes: It does not make it easier.
There is a special relationship between Israel and the United
States and it works in both directions. I think it sometimes shows
up in the sort of behaviour that one friend should not demonstrate
to another. I do not think, for example, that it was helpful for
the US to egg on Israel in Lebanon against Hezbollah. I think
that was like encouraging a friend of yours who has had too many
drinks to drive home from the party. I think it has proved to
be absolutely disastrous. I know many Americans, Rich Armitage
and others who make exactly the same point today. I do not think
it is true that all Israelis regard the Europeans as being beyond
the pale. The European Union, for example, played an important
role in funding the Geneva Peace Initiative, in providing some
of the resources for that. One of the extraordinary disjunctures
in Israel is that between public opinion and the public's attitude
towards political movement and political accommodations and the
leadership of the main political parties. But it is true, undoubtedly,
that there are suspicions about Europe in Israel, partly because
of history and the holocaust; partly because of the occasional
and appalling manifestations of anti-Semitism in Europein
France, for examplein recent years; partly because Europe
has not been prepared to go along with whatever Israel has donefor
example, in the security area. I would have wished that our relationship
had been better than that. I would wish that our relationship
with some of the Israeli leaders in the last few years had been
as constructive as our relationship with people like Yossi Beilin
and other leaders of the Peace Movement. It has to be said that,
while some Israeli politicians have been very rude and critical
about the European Union, they have wanted very badly to be part
of the Barcelona Process and the Euro-Med partnership, and they
have wanted Europe to pay for some of the consequences of the
occupation of Palestinian territories. If it was not for the European
Union putting money into humanitarian relief and into the attempts
to sustain the Palestinian Authority in the past, it would have
been extremely expensive for Israel. When I used to be criticised
for the support we were giving through Salam Fayed to the Palestinian
Authority, I was never criticised by an Israeli government minister
because they knew perfectly well what would happen if the European
Union was not putting in the money. I think the situation is more
mixed than it should be but, plainly, it has been a difficulty
that successive Israeli governments have not wanted to listen
to Europe except on economic and trade issues. We had a very difficult
issue in the past involving Israel's reluctance to declare products
which were coming from the occupied territories when they were
coming into the European Union and I can tell you there was an
awful lot of diplomacy and negotiation about that, so there are
some issues on which Israel is a little more active than others.
But so long as there are at least some members of the US administration
encouraging Israeli politicians to think that there is no political
cost for vetoing any movement towards the Arabs, then I guess
you are going to have people in the Israeli political system who
will take the view of Europe that they do. But it is not helpful.
Q364 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
Do you think we should, therefore, as Europeans, (a) do more to
bring more direct pressure on the Americans for more open disagreement
and (b) should European politicians frankly get in more on the
Hill to talk to American politicians? I find it staggering how
strong their opinions are and frankly how completely ignorant
they are about what is going on on the ground. Is there more we
could do with our friends from the United States to try to influence
opinion?
Lord Patten of Barnes: Yes, I think there is,
and I do not think it is anti-American. I think it is critical
of the present administration but I do not think it is anti-American
to put forward our arguments when we think America is getting
it badly wrong. I think America got it badly wrong over Lebanondescribed,
as I recall, by Condoleeza Rice as the birth pangs of a new Middle
East as the bombs rained down. I think they were stopped when
she visited Beirut, but, otherwise, people in Beirut were having
a pretty miserable time. I think it was wholly wrong when President
Bush encouraged the view that settlement activity represented
facts on the ground to which we would have to adjust ourselves,
for the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to give the impression
that nothing new had been said, that nothing had changed, when
what was being said was a fundamental shift in American policy
of some considerable consequence. I have never believed you are
likely to win an argument if you do not take part in it. Of course
it is true that the American political establishment has a view
of the Middle East which is very different from that of the political
establishment here or in Europe as a whole. My colleagues may
have noticed the other day that when Senator Obama referred to
the suffering of Palestinians, he was obliged to make it clear
very rapidly that he was not really sympathising with Palestinians,
that he sympathised with everybody who suffered in the Middle
East. There is a sort of political correctness on these issues
which is pretty worrying. But that political correctness should
not go unchallenged and we should argue our corner, because I
feel passionately that not to do so is unfair to Israel, as well
as unfair to Palestine and other countries in the region. The
situation goes from worse to much worse. We now have probably
the weakest government in Israel in anybody's recollection. The
situation is on a knife-edge in the West Bank in Gaza with real
problems of fragmentation politically between the two. If Hamas
is driven back into the shadows, I do not think it will be possible
to reach a settlement, but I hope we can come on to that later.
I think it is a really worrying moment and a moment when it is
in everybody's interest, not least the United States, to get much
more involved in a hands-on way and try to get the Peace Process
back on the road, because at the moment the Peace Process is a
question of following funeral processions.
Q365 Lord Crickhowell:
I am going to take you promptly to where you want to go on the
question you said you wanted to come back on. It is not so much
my King Charles's head, but it is now known in the Committee as
"the Crickhowell question". You referred, (in the context
of Arafat), of him being seen as someone you could not talk to.
I have been expressing my feelings of discomfort at the fact that
after you have an election. There are some you cannot talk to.
Admittedly you and I come from a background based on the principle
of collective responsibility and so on which is very different;
but I do find it quite difficult to say you can deal with one
group of people but cannot deal with others. On the other hand,
it is clearly an issue about which Israel feels very strongly:
that you cannot talk to people who do not accept the three basic
principles. You have expressed in public some views on this; and
I think we all want to hear just how far you feel one can go;
and what you see as the obstacles in going too far in talking
to part of the administration about what the whole of the administration
ought to be concerned with.
Lord Patten of Barnes: Perhaps I can put this
issue in a slightly broader context which touches on some of my
own experience. It is an exaggeration but not much of one to say
the world is full of governments, some of whose members used to
be terrorists. We know perfectly well that in area after area
we have found ourselves obliged to swallow hard and deal with
people who spent part of their lives arguing that violence was
the best way of accomplishing political objectives. I can remember
us being pressed by the United States over getting involved with
Sinn Fein IRA in order to get the peace process in Northern Ireland
off the ground. I found myself in 1998/1999 having to deal with
Mr Adams and Mr McGuinnesswho was not called the butcher's
boy because he worked at Dewhurstand as a democratic politician
I found that pretty unattractive, but it was part of the settlement,
just as dealing with Irgun and the Stern Gang in Israel were part
of a political settlement. So I say to myself: Why does anybody
think we are going to get a peace in the Middle East if we do
not talk with Hamas, with a group which was radicalised, after
its Muslim brotherhood past in Jordan and Egypt, by the occupation
and by the Intifada. I have a second point I want to make. Diplomacy
is not about endlessly setting preconditions before you do anything.
If you set preconditions which do not allow you to talk to Iran,
Syria, Hamas or Hezbollah, then good luck when it comes to trying
to construct a foreign policy in the Middle East and its various
problems. This is not grown up behaviour and it is particularly
worrying because it is the world's only superpower which seems
to have fallen into this mode of political activity. If we were
prepared to talk to the Russians when they could have ended civilised
life, any life as we know it, in the 1970s and 1980s, I cannot
for the life of me think why we are not prepared to talk to people
today without, by doing so, implying that we share their set of
values or what they are prepared to do. Let me turn to Hamas and
the new horizon opened up by the Mecca Agreement. The Mecca Agreement,
I think, at least for a time, ended the immediate prospect of
civil war in Palestine, in the West Bank and Gaza between Hamas
and Fatah and it does give us an opportunity of re-establishing
institutions of government in Palestine which are virtually non-existent
at present. As far as dealing with Hamas is concerned, we have
gone along with a set of conditions which make it more difficult
for them to ease around the corner from violence to politics rather
than easier. What should we be asking of Hamas in order to do
serious business with them? First, we should judge them by what
happens on the ground. Will they renounce themselves in principle?
Will they, in principle, renounce any use of violence? Very unlikely.
Should we judge them on whether they are trying with Fatah to
stop rocket attacks by Islamic Jihad on Israel? Yes, we should.
Should we judge them by whether or not they secure the release
of Corporal Shalit? Yes, we should. Should we judge them by whether
or not they are prepared to deal with Israel on day-to-day issues?
Of course we should. Should we regard it as imperative that they
sign up to the President negotiating or trying to negotiate a
final settlement agreement with Israel, and that such an agreement
they would accept if it was endorsed by a democratic process,
either a referendum or through the Palestinian Liberation Organisation?
Yes, we should. That seems to me to be a practical way of domesticating
and politicising a movement which will otherwise, I fear, drift
off into the shadows. What is the alternative? The alternative
is that there will not be any agreement between Palestine and
Israel; because, unless Hamas are part of an agreement, it is
not going to happen. I am afraid there would not have been an
agreement in Northern Ireland unless Sinn Fein had been part of
it. I repeat: as much as sometimes it stuck in one's gorge to
do some of the things which were necessary in order to accomplish
that, there is now peace in Northern Ireland. I think we have
to be more sensible and grown up in our relationship with Hamas.
There are three other reasons why I think that is important, as
well, to judge them by what they do not by these tests which we
apply. First of all, one of the tests we apply is not a test which
could be passed by some of our moderate friends in the Middle
East. Which of our friends in the Middle East recognises the State
of Israel? Does Morocco? Does the Kingdom? There are members of
Israeli cabinets who have not been prepared to recognise the State
of Israel because they are religious parties with all the hang-ups
that the religious parties have about a Zionist state. So it is
pretty ridiculous, I think, for us to find ourselves in that particular
posture. Secondly, I have dealt a good deal with Salam Fayed,
as Finance Minister a man of legendary propriety. In the last
year and a bit Europe has put more money into the Palestinian
territories (I think $140 million equivalent) through something
called the temporary international mechanism. I look forward to
seeing what the auditors think about the way that money can be
checked, because what is for certain is that, if we go on simply
trying to provide humanitarian assistance and relief through mechanisms
outside the single treasury account which is under Fayed's control,
we are going to find ourselves undermining the attempts to establish
a decent government in Palestine rather than the reverse, and
certainly undermining the most credible interlocutor we have in
Palestine. For myself, I would be looking now for ways in which
we can hold the National Unity Government to account for those
practical things which I have mentioned and I would be looking
at ways in which we can work again with Salam Fayed because, unless
we do that, I fear that the institutions of government will continue
to fray, that we will be conniving at the creation of anarchy
in Palestine and that the money that goes into Palestine will
be going in in suitcases from bits of the Middle East that we
are rather suspicious about.
Q366 Lord Crickhowell:
That is very comprehensive answer. I have just one supplementary.
When you talked about governments, you said governments include
terrorists. You talked about Hamas in a collective way but I suspect
there are different sorts of Hamas. There are those who will always
be terrorists on the ground and there are some who are Hamas but
pretend they are something else. Do you see that there are distinctions
and that it may be easier to talk to some than to others?
Lord Patten of Barnes: Yes. Unfortunately, because
of what American politicians would call the "difficulties
of scheduling", I missed an opportunity of meeting the head
of Hamas, Meshal, in Damascus. I saw the President of Syria there
but not the head of Hamas. I am told he gave every impression
of being committed to a political process, but it is a political
process which should, in my view, be another condition for European
or British or anybody's preparedness to assist a Palestinian Authority.
All the conditions we apply are ones we see through the prism
of our relationship with Israelunderstoodbut what
about the conditions that should be applied because of what is
happening on the ground in Palestine? There are worries about
the extent to which Hamas will try to Islamise education, social
activities and other similar things in Palestine and I think that
should be concerning us. For example, there were recent efforts
to censor books used or a book used in Palestinian schools. I
think that is the sort of issue, as well as the other ones, on
which Europe and outside friends should take a very tough line
with Hamas. When I was there last we raised the issue pretty vigorously
with, as it were, the Hamas Education Minister (as I recall it,
a DPhil graduate of Manchester University), and they moved very
rapidly to rescind a decision which they claimed had been taken
by Fatah civil servants rather than Hamas ministers, but, anyway,
it is an issue on which we should be very tough and on which we
should be very vigilant.
Q367 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
This is critical really to making any headway. There is some suggestion
that the National Unity Government is a bit fragile in anybody's
language but really Hamas seems to hold many more of the cards
than Fatah do. Would you negotiate with Hamas and not with Fatah
at times? Obviously it all has to come together in the end, but
would you initiate a series of talks with Hamas to start off with
and see if we could square them first, and slightly finesse the
question of dealing with the Unity Government?
Lord Patten of Barnes: No, I would try to deal
with the Unity Government. I agree it is weak, though stronger
than its predecessor. The Foreign Minister, the Finance Minister
and the Security Minister all have a good deal of credibility.
Not to deal with the government as a whole, I think, undermines
Abu Mazen. I met him in Ramala last month and after Mecca he looked
and sounded a lot more positive and cheerful about life than he
had before. I would deal with the National Unity Government, even
though it is comprised of difficult political influences and individual
members have their own problems, something which I am told even
happens occasionally when you have parties of governments of one
party.
Q368 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
Could I go back to the question of the road map and final status
issues. I was slightly surprised that you regarded the road map
as non sequential. I can accept entirely it is less sequential
than Oslo but it is the sequencing which has broken down in the
implementation of the road map because there has been the failure
of both sides to do the first stage, the violence and the settlements.
On the question of what is now called political horizonswhich
is polite diplomat speak for final status issuesthere does
seem now to be a rather broader consensus, including the United
States and certainly including the Arabs in their latest pronouncements
and Abu Mazen, that there really must be some addressing in substance
of the political horizons if you are to deal with what happens
on the road to get there. I want to ask you whether you agree
with thatbecause of course in the road map the political
horizons are concerned to a happy future after you have done all
the other thingsand, if that is so, do you think the European
Union should be trying to define some ideas on the final status
issues or do you think that is just too dangerous? Do you think,
for example, they should be trying to say in their discussions
with the Arabs, "You cannot have the return of every single
Palestinian who has ever lived in the piece of territory that
is going to be occupied by the two states. You cannot have that;
there will have to be some compromise"? Saying to the Israelis,
"You cannot have the fact that you possess the whole of Jerusalem."
Should the European Union be trying to define positions on these
highly sensitive but absolutely crucial issues or should we simply
be saying, "Well, they have to be talked about but somebody
else had better do the talking" and that probably means the
Americans?
Lord Patten of Barnes: First of all, we are
both right about parallelism and sequentialism. Of course it is
true that it was proposed that you should do a series of steps,
that when you had taken those steps you should then go on, as
it were, from a bachelor's to a master's degree, but the steps
you took before each stage were to be taken in parallel rather
than each thing depending on the other party acting in a certain
way. I do not think it makes very much sense to try to find where
we left the road mapwhich certainly has not been on the
driver's seat for some time. I think there is a great deal to
be said, not least because of the weakness of the parties, in
trying to cut to the quick and for Europe to argue with the United
States and with the Arab League and with the parties to the dispute
on the ground that we need to go to some form of conference in
which we try to define the final status issues. I put my name
to an advertisement in the papers which was sponsored by the International
Crisis Group saying that a few months ago, and I do feel that,
unless the members of the Quartet and Arab League work together
with the parties and try to push them into agreementincidentally,
not just on Israel/Palestine, but Syria/Lebanon as wellwe
are not likely to get anywhere. We all know what the outlines
of an agreement will be. They were there at Tabah, they were there
at Camp David, they are there in the Geneva Initiative. We all
know it is absolutely clear that no final agreement would be acceptable
to Israel which completely changed the demography of Israel. It
is a point which the Israeli Foreign Minister feels very strongly
about and I greatly sympathise. I do not mind saying that in public
and indeed have done in the past. It is equally the case that
you cannot possibly have the sort of settlement activity which
is now taking place east of Jerusalem without it making a viable
Palestinian state simply impossible. When you look at how close
to the Dead Sea the planned settlement activity goes, it makes
that plain as a pikestaff. I do not think it is unhelpful for
Europeans and Americans to make these points, otherwise the "facts
on the ground" are going to continue to dictate that we do
not make any progress anyway. I am sure that Javier Solana, who
has worked so hard on these issues, and his team in Brussels could
write on the back of an envelope what are going to be the main
issues to which both sides will have to agree sooner or later.
I would not propose turning the Beirut Declaration, as repeated
recently, into a negotiating document. I do not think it is that.
I think it describes the world after a settlement; nevertheless,
it offers a political horizon and a very important one.
Q369 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
We have had contradictory signals from different parts of Hamas
over the past few days in respect of the ending of the ceasefire.
Does that tell us anything about the possibility of reaching a
consensus within Hamas itself?
Lord Patten of Barnes: Yes, it does. I think
that probably reflects the recent activities of the IDF in Gaza
and elsewhere. As Lord Crickhowell said, just as there were different
elements, some more military than others, in Sinn Fein IRA, so
I think there are in Hamas too. A lot of Palestinian casualties
play to those who say that there is not going to be a political
settlement.
Q370 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
You had a fairly unique position in trying to understand the different
national viewpoints within the European Union in seeking to bring
a consensus. Are the EU national positions so different that it
will be very difficult to reach a consensus, for example in what
you are now describing on the policy towards Hamas?
Lord Patten of Barnes: I think it will be difficult.
I have always regarded Russia as the biggest failure in European
common policies because it should not be difficult to establish
a common position on Russia rather than to allow oneself endlessly
to be beaten at the card table by somebody playing low sixes and
sevens. In the case of the Middle East, I think it is much more
difficult to shape a common policy because of the different histories
of European countries, not least in Germany, because of this country's
relationship with the United States, because of the French and
British relations with countries in the region, some of which
we created at Versaille and in the aftermath for reasons which
have very little to do with nation statehood. So I think it is
difficult to pull things together and one must always be careful
that you do not just pull together the lowest common denominator
all the time.
Q371 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
Is there any prospect, then, of a highest common factor in respect
of dealing with Hamas?
Lord Patten of Barnes: I would hope that European
foreign ministers would see the awful damage which will be done
if we undermine the National Unity Government, not least to our
moderate friends in the Arab world. Here we are, we have encouraged
the Saudis and the Jordanians and the Egyptians to get more involved
in resolving the issue and to do so on the side of moderation
rather than the reverse. If, after they have done that, we still
will not deal with the government that has resulted then I think
it would weaken our position and weaken our relationship with
them.
Q372 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
You mentioned the need to bring Syria and Lebanon into any attempt
to get a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East and that
does seem to be a genuinely shared view now in the EU, but what
sort of role could the EU play in bringing that about and what
sort of policies should it be pursuing; for example, with respect
to the internal Lebanese situation and the implications for that
of the UN process of following up the Hariri murder, and to what
extent should the Syrians be pressed to enter into direct negotiations
with the Israelis at an early stage? A highly sensitive issue,
of course, which the Syrians appear to want to pretend at least
they wish to do, and the Israelis certainly not pretending and
fending them off.
Lord Patten of Barnes: I think the Syrians want
to negotiate with Israel and I think they are absolutely genuine
about that. There is, of course, some feeling, I suppose, in Damascus
that all they can do is wait out the presidencies of President
Chirac and President Bush and hope for better in the future. But
they are not in a very strong position. The economy is extremely
weak and I think that for the allies to be seen to have lost both
Lebanon and not regained the Golan would be quite a political
failure and one difficult for them to sustain for very long. First
of all, I do not think that engaging Syria means that we give
up on the Hariri inquiry. I think the important thing about the
Hariri inquiry is that it should be seen as a judicial process,
not as an attempt to secure regime change. Secondly, unless we
negotiate with Syria as well as promote negotiations between Israel
and Palestine, the danger is that Syria pulls some of the strings
attached to Palestinian groups and makes it very difficult to
secure any progress with Palestine. Thirdly, just as the outlines
of an agreement for Israel/Palestine are clear, so are the outlines
of an agreement for the Golan. But I suspect that the Golan would
be more difficult for an Israeli government to deliver, because
of the settlement activity, than it was to deliver the unilateral
withdrawal from Gaza. What is plain is that you cannot, I repeat
myself, have a policy on the Middle East which involves trying
to freeze out the Syrians. I suspect that at the moment one of
the reasons why no progress is being made with the Syrian track
is because the Americans are discouraging the Israelis from responding
to Syrian overtures. I think there is a view in America, in parts
of Washington, that if you do not talk to Syria you isolate them,
and sooner or later that promotes regime change. I just do not
think it is true. It is true that Syria would remain economically
weak but if you want to strengthen a weak autocratic government
in the Middle East then the best thing to do is, from the outside,
say you want to overthrow it and then it gets all sorts of popular
support which would not otherwise be the case. Some people may
think I am a bit naive about Bashar Assad. I think he is genuine
in wanting to secure a peace agreement on the Golan and I think
he is genuine in wanting to open up the economy. I almost managed
to negotiate a Euro-Med agreement with Syria, got very close to
the end and then it was scuppered by events, not least in the
Lebanon.
Q373 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
I too have negotiated on the Euro-Med Agreement and I agree with
what you say about Bashar Assad. The times I have dealt with him,
I thought that was what he wanted. We tend to have coupled Syria
and Iran together in the Middle East Peace Process, not least
because of the terrorist activity which is widely perceived to
have roots in both countries. Would you deal with Syria and Iran
differently? The Iranians do have a stake in this, but they are
not Arab League and the point about Syria is that Syria is an
Arab country. It is one of their own. Although economically weak
and in a precarious position, one has a very strong feeling that
the rest of the Arab League wants Syria back in that fold hook,
line and sinker. Looking at the two countries, would you encourage
the United States to engage directly now with Syria and Iran?
They seem to be more keen on talking to Iran than talking to Syria.
It is the direct discussions with those countries. You spoke about
it in relation to Israel, what about the United States? Secondly,
what stage would you give Iran in any process of negotiation?
Would you have it in the fold or outside the fold?
Lord Patten of Barnes: I would talk to both.
As I have said, I do not think you can have a policy in the Middle
East if you do not talk to Syria and you do not talk to Iran.
If you do not recognise, for example, how badly things have gone
when the Sunni world supports Shi'ite military activity through
Hezbollah or whatever. That was an extraordinary moment and I
think should give us some indication of just how we have cocked
things up in the last few years. I would not deal with Syria and
Iran as though they were hyphenated. I would deal with them on
their own terms and I would not regard dealing with them as a
sign of feebleness. I do not know how we are going to resolve
the Iranian nuclear issue unless we try to bring Iranians in from
the cold. I do not know how we will find any even passingly acceptable
political settlement in Iraq unless we talk to its neighbours.
I do not think we will get a peace in the Middle East unless we
involve Syria. I think we have to talk to the Iranians and the
Syrians. It is a negation of leadership diplomacy not to do so.
We got quite a long way with dealing with the crazies in North
Korea in the 1990s by talking to them. They ratted on the agreement.
They ratted on the agreement partly, I think, for the same reasons
that teenagers trash houses when their parents are away. I think
they were trying to bring attention back to themselves. But it
did not work when for four or five years we simply did not deal
with them. We have the makings of an agreement now by working
with them, and they are a pretty nasty, very nasty regime. So
we have to talk to these people.
Q374 Lord Crickhowell:
There has been a good deal of agreement from our witnesses about
the fact that we have to involve Syria in the settlement. Whereas
they spoke about the weakness of the Israeli government, the Israeli
Ambassador to the Commissionwho has been engaged in this
almost longer than anyoneexpressed himself extremely strongly,
and has clearly been advising the Israeli Government to the same
effect: that you cannot run the Syria and Palestine things in
parallel because of the timetable of dealing with Syria in Israeli
terms. By the time you have taken the case and done all the things
that have to be done, and had referendums and so on, it would
put the Israeli Government in an impossible position which would
destroy it. This was his argument to us, expressed from that seat
with great force. Would you comment about the difficulties of
it from an Israeli point of view? We have seen all the arguments
in general terms and I agree with you; but it was very interesting
how powerful he was in putting this view. If you ran the Syrian
Golan Heights issue and so on at the same time as you were doing
the other things probably no Israeli government could survive.
That was really what he was saying.
Lord Patten of Barnes: We have a government
in Israel at the moment which is not talking to anybody and is
barely surviving, so I do not think that is a knockdown argument.
I think myself that if you had to choose at which end to start
you would probably start on the Syrian end. I think that unlocks
a lot more and is a much simpler issue to deal with. You are talking
about 20,000 settlers, I think on the Golan. You are talking about
proposals for national park around the lake which would help deal
with people's security worries and the ability to drive all around
the lake. There are a lot of very practical ways that have been
put forward with dealing with that issue. I do not believe it
is really a security issue for Israel because anybody trying to
come down from the Heights in tanks would get them blown off the
face of the earth very rapidly. I think that what some Israelis
find very difficult is explaining to the world how they will not
now negotiate with the Syrians, even though the Syrians want to
negotiate with them, after years in which the Syrians said "We
can't possibly talk directly to the Israelis." The situation
has changed now. I think Syrians, like Mr Muallem the Foreign
Minister, are sophisticated and pretty open-minded interlocutors.
Q375 Lord Lea of Crondall:
We have debated on and off on the Committee how far Iran is a
totally separate question, as it were, from our inquiry but when
we took evidence from the Israeli Ambassador to the European Union,
Dr Eran, he said Iran is a serious threat of a different nature.
There is a big debate whether the policies all of us are pursuing
are aimed at the end of the nuclear programme or are we also looking
at regime change in Iran. The two are necessarily linked and connected.
Obviously there are two timetables involved because if we do not
know when the regime change is going to occur we cannot wait for
that because the nuclear clock is ticking and ticking very quickly.
You do not need much imagination to see a scenario there where
everything can be hijacked by a kind of new crisis to do with
Iran/Israel relationships. Could you comment on how far that should
be seen as a big part of the picture. We have mentioned Mecca
and Riyadh and how far it is influencing the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia and so on. Would you comment on how far the Iranian question
is right there, somehow mixed up with what we call the Middle
East Peace Process?
Lord Patten of Barnes: It is right there because
at the root of all these issues is a profound worry about security
which is held across the region. If you were starting with a blank
sheet of paper, I think you would be wanting to engage in the
sort of diplomacy which produced regional security pacts in the
years after the war. Unless there is some sort of UN Security
Council backed stabilisation pact for the region, I think a lot
of these issues are going to be very difficult to resolve, particularly
in circumstances where the non proliferation treaty is starting
to fray at the edges. The implicationperhaps I am reading
too much into itof what the Israel ambassador was saying,
was, "Look, unless diplomacy gets somewhere in dealing with
Iranian civil war military nuclear ambitions, then we will have
to take things into our own hands and we would expect the Americans
to look the other way while doing so." I think that would
be an unmitigated disaster. Among other things, I think it would
blow apart any prospects for the indefinite future of peace in
the region. I also think it would blow apart the sort of global
economic growth that we have started to take for granted. I think
one thing which could end that would be a war in the Gulf, in
the Middle East. I have a rather unfashionable view about how
to deal with Iran but you might not want to pursue that. I think
we are getting the worst of all worlds at the moment because I
think Iran will simply continue with its nuclear activities without
any verification or any intrusive international regime keeping
an eye on what it is doing. If you fetch up at the end of the
day with our diplomacy not working and Iran having a nuclear weapon,
then the impact on other countries in the region will be huge.
Q376 Lord Lea of Crondall:
Some of us have raised several times in the House the question
of what you call the security guarantee in the Middle East, which
translated into English I always assumed meant that the two nuclear
states, Israel andrapidly becoming so, at any rateIran,
would be parties to some guarantee of no first-use of nuclear
weapons or whatever. Is that what you call a security guarantee?
What do you call a security guarantee or who has put something
on the table to that effect?
Lord Patten of Barnes: Nobody has. I do not
regard that as the security guarantee. I regard the security guarantee
as the members of the Security Council guaranteeing the borders
of all the existing states and making it clear that they themselves
would be prepared to intervene militarily if there was any attempt
to change those borders. I do not think you could base a security
guarantee on no first-use pledges by the Israelis and the Iranians.
I happen to believewhich some people may think is spectacularly
naivethat it is not proven that the Iranians want nuclear
weapons themselves. I think what they want is what the Japanese
have, which is a basement capability. Whether it is easier to
draw the line at the ceiling of the basement rather than where
we are trying to draw it at the moment is the real issue. In other
words, if we cannot get them to pull back from completing the
fuel cycle, whether we should be looking at an agreement with
them which involves delaying their nuclear activities, involves
a very intrusive inspection and verification regime, and involves
trying to draw a line with much tougher sanctions between civil
and military use. I think that is the real debate and there is
a lot more interest in that idea in parts of the American foreign
policy and security establishment that people here think. I do,
on the whole, share the view of people like Graham Allison that
we should be looking at the three noes: no loose nukes, no nuclear
states, no proliferation of nuclear weapons, but I fear we may
be trying to draw a line in Iran in a place where it is not going
to work.
Q377 Lord Swinfen:
Do you think that the EU should do more than it is already doing
to engage with the other states' organisations in the area: the
neighbouring states of Israel, the Arab Quartet and the Gulf Cooperation
Council?
Lord Patten of Barnes: I do not think one should
underestimate the amount that in terms of trade, diplomacy, development,
cooperation and other forms of diplomacy, the European Union is
dealing with both the countries of the Mediterranean southern
literal and the Gulf Cooperation Council states as well. I do
think we have not been sufficiently aggressive in pushing the
free trade area which was supposed to be constructed around the
Mediterranean by 2010 and I think there are still some serious
agricultural issues which have held that back. It is completely
absurd that you see products being grown in, for example, the
south of Spain on plastic sheets, with water brought down from
the north of Spain, with crops being picked by illegal Moroccan
migrants, when if you go across the water to Morocco you see them
without the plastic and without the movement of water, growing
the same things but not able to ship them into Europe, with the
result that instead we get illegal migrants. It is a completely
mad world: if we do not take their tomatoes, we get their illegals
instead. I think we should do more to push the elements in the
Euro-Med. When I look back at my own time as a Commissioner, I
wish I had spent more time on that issue; although, to some extent,
as a Commissioner you can only go as far as the elastic band will
allow. There is an issue here which has worried me over the years,
which is our attempt to knit together commercial and political
issues. Any agreement which you sign now in the European Union
has to involve human rights clauses and clauses about terrorism
and nuclear weapons. You will find yourself, as I do, negotiating
with some difficulty the precise terms of an agreement on human
rights with some of these countries, only to discover a little
later that your country and others have been looking the other
way when extraordinary rendition has been dumping people into
these countries so that they could be tortured in exactly the
same ways you have tried to prevent happening in the negotiations.
So I think we have to be a bit more sophisticated in the way that
we pursue our political objectives as well as our economic objectives.
The attempt to reach agreement on a free trade pact with the Gulf
Cooperation Council was held back, as I recall, by endless debates
about the Sharia law. I remember one late night session in Brussels
when we discussed stoning, at the end of which I wondered whether
the way I could best secure the agreement was by rushing down
to the Grand Place in Brussels and seeking one or two adulteresses
to stone. I mean, I obviously engage in a rather cynical observation,
but it does sometimes make it difficult to secure one lot of objectives
to write into it another set of objectives. Are we tough in policing
the sort of human rights and other clauses that we write into
the agreements? No, we are not. If President Chirac regards the
President of Tunis as somebody to support, then you will not make
any progress if you try as a Commissioner to raise the question
of human rights abuses in Tunisia. I am sorry, that was a slight
digression.
Q378 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
President Chirac restrained you from pursuing the human rights
theme in Tunisia. President Chirac has personal ventures into
Lebanon and elsewhere. Our Prime Minister equally goes to the
Middle East. Where is the dividing line between what national
governments have traditionally done in their foreign policy in
the Middle East and the value-added which comes from the European
Union? Given your vast experience in the British Cabinet and the
EU, where is the appropriate dividing line as you see it?
Lord Patten of Barnes: First of all, I repeat
what I said earlier. We will never be in the business of having
a single European foreign policy. It will be common. For example,
you are never, in my judgment, going to be able to persuade people
that they should allow decisions on whether or not to send their
children off to risk being killed to be taken by a European Commissioner.
Nobody would ever agree that that decision should be taken by
a European Commissioner. It seems curious that in some ways they
seem less worried when that decision is taken by an American president,
but I put that on one side. I would hope member states would see
how much more impact Europe has when France, Britain, Germany
and others do act together. I mean no disrespect to the other
24 Member States of the European Union when I say there is not
a European policy unless France, Germany and Britain agree on
it. I think we should recognise much more how we have a greater
impact when we work in common. I have been very struck in recent
years by the extent to which a lot of our American friends wish
we did more in common. They do not like very much dealing with
a fractured European response to tough international questions.
The value-added is not just the value-added of 27 countries working
together, which is clearly a huge value-added when it comes to
trade policy; the value-added is also that you pool together in
external relations, in a much easier way than is possible in government,
all sorts of instruments which have a bearing on political issues:
development policy, trade policy, harmonisation of regulation,
migration policies, all sorts of policies which are increasingly
what the foreign policy agenda consists of. I was struck in my
years as a Commissioner by the way the foreign policy agenda was
moving and the way in which foCeign ministers found themselves
discussing the sorts of issues which in the past they would have
expected to be somebody else's responsibility. So I think that
is a second way in which you can strengthen the instruments of
foreign policy by deploying some of the other aspects, where Europe
has agreed not just to be intergovernmental but to a degree of
supranational activity too.
Chairman: Lady Symons has asked to come in on
this.
Q379 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
Lord Patten has been making a highly persuasive argument about
the levels of engagement, how we engage as Europeans and the fact
that you never find an answer unless you talk to people. But the
recent past demonstrates that by talking to some people you take
yourselves out of the conversation with others. The real problem
we had over this is that, as you know, when people spoke to Yasser
Arafat they were simply not allowed to engage with Israeli ministers.
We are now in a position where certainly this country has at least
a level of engagement, a small level of leverageI would
not overplay itwith the Israelis. It concerns meand
one might as well surface the argumentthat if we pursue
a policy, which on the whole I agree with, is there not a danger
of simply talking to only one side of the argument and never really
having the ability to speak frankly then to the Israelis, both
as Europeans, in the way you have been describing, but also as
individual countries?
Lord Patten of Barnes: That can be a danger
but I am not sure that it is one that lasts for very long.
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