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Darfur Crisis

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the direction of my comments—I am glad to have given a good steer. It seems critically important that the UN force should as far as possible be made up of troops from other African countries, or, potentially, from the Arab League. How do we deal with the concern that deploying white troops—troops from the west—on the ground will be treated as an echo of an imperialist past? I have concerns about bringing in NATO; I understand the logistical need, but how do we do that without creating a concern about those troops that could fracture an already fraught and rather fragile Government in Khartoum? I was concerned to hear a statement by President Bush in which he basically said that there would be NATO stewardship of the UN peacekeeping operation. That is an area in which we have to think things through extremely carefully.