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Darfur Crisis

With the leave of the House, I would like to respond to this excellent debate. I say that not because there has been a cosy consensus, to address the point made by the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) directly, but because, in the past two-and-a-bit hours, we have laid bare the practical and moral choices and challenges that we face in trying to do something about the trauma that the people of Darfur have suffered. I shall take each speech in turn and do my best to respond to the many points raised. I begin by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) for the interest that he has taken, for his visit, for the pertinent questions that he asked, and for going to the heart of the moral challenge that we face. I shall try to respond to each of his questions. As far as humanitarian access is concerned, one bit of progress—they are small steps—was made earlier this year. I raised this point during my visit a couple of months ago. The Government of Sudan have been operating a fast-track process to clear humanitarian workers’ visas and permits. They proposed to bring that process to an end, but others were able to persuade them to extend it to the end of the current year. That is one example of the constant struggle—I use the word deliberately—that we must engage in to get a lobby as each case comes up. It is a responsibility of the ambassadors and representatives in Khartoum and of each Minister to play our part. I will continue to do what I have done throughout: if people bring cases to my attention, including hon. Members taking part in this debate and others, I will take them up. Experience has taught me that that is the only way to keep up the pressure. During the course of my visit, one of the questions concerned AMIS’s difficulty using the el-Fasher airport at night. It had been said that the problem was a lack of lighting. Because of my visit there, I was able to say to the Minister, ““Well, that’s very curious. I’ve seen the lighting on the apron and the runway, and as far as I understand it, the problem is you providing someone to open up the control tower, turn on the lights and provide air traffic control after the hours of darkness so that if AMIS wishes to fly in and out, it can do its work.”” It was as absurd as trying to apply a curfew to AMIS in Darfur in the interests of security instead of applying it to those causing trouble. Have the Government of Sudan complied? Self-evidently, none of the parties has complied. That is why one of the individuals against whom sanctions have been applied is someone from the Government of Sudan military. The Select Committee report to which the hon. Gentleman referred asked the Government to get on the case and do something about it. That is why we have been working so hard to get the sanctions committee to do its work—to look at a list of names, to weigh up the evidence and, if the evidence is sufficient to justify sanctions, to get on and apply them. That is how to send a message. It is not by saying to the parties, ““Please do what you promised””; it is by demonstrating the consequences. Have others in Africa helped? As well as paying tribute to President Obasanjo, I pay tribute to President Konare, as he is known, of the African Union and President Sassou-Nguesso, the chair of the African Union. They both came to the final stages of the negotiations in Abuja and lent their weight and moral authority on behalf of the nations of Africa. They put pressure on the parties, who were invited in one by one to sit at the table and be asked, ““Are you going to sign? What’s the problem? Why won’t you do it?”” I do not think that the one signature, that of Minni Minnawi, would have been achieved if the African Union had not demonstrated its determination to help in that practical way. On the African stand-by force, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the G8 countries that committed to help with that training are well on target to meet their commitments on training requirements, and that the AU is making progress in setting up the necessary logistics to make the force work. If he is interested in more information about that, I shall be happy to provide it. The hon. Gentleman raised a point about the UN force, as did the hon. Member for Buckingham and others. We have heard various estimates in this debate, ranging from 12,000 to 40,000. To be honest, I have no more expertise than the hon. Member for Buckingham. That is why the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations exists. It needs urgently to get in there and make its assessment through a UN technical assessment mission so that it can confirm what the right numbers are, what the mandate should be and how the force should be composed. UN Security Council resolution 1679, which was passed recently, was important because it called for that to be done by 23 May. The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield is absolutely right to want practical steps. The first practical step to answering all the questions about how the UN force should work and be composed is getting the team in so that it can work. But in all honesty, because of the loss of time, the chances of getting a force up and running by 1 October are very slim. That is the truth, because that team has not been able to get in and start the process of preparing. One issue that the UN force is going to face is providing water for troops. I spoke to the deputy head of the DPKO in New York a month and a half ago, and I remember that she put her hand on a map of Darfur and said, ““There is not a lot of water north of this line.”” Such practical considerations will have to be addressed if the force is to be able to do its job. I assure hon. Members that we will press for a sufficient number of troops and a strong mandate at the UN Security Council in exactly the same way as we did in the debates, about a year ago, on the size of the MONUC—Mission of the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—force in the DRC. Some people did not want an increase in those forces at all, and some wanted a lot. Britain pressed very hard for an increase. NATO has already been providing logistical support, including heavy lift, to get the AU troops in and out of Darfur as their terms have rotated. All of us in the international community, including NATO, need to consider what further practical support to the AU mission is required. Another practical thing that Britain has done is to provide vehicles, because AMIS said that, ““If we don’t have vehicles, we can’t get out and do our job.”” That is why we have taken responsibility for one of the fuel contracts, so that there is enough fuel to put in the vehicles and helicopters for AMIS to do its work. I have to tell hon. Members that about 90 per cent. of helicopter hours currently available to AMIS are spent resupplying its own troops. Its representatives need more capacity to spend a greater proportion of their time going out and about and doing their jobs. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) made an extremely well-informed speech. She is absolutely right to say that this is a tense and fragile moment. I very much welcome what she said about the African Union. She reminded us about the tribal make-up of the conflict when she talked about the Fur. That is important, because it is one of the layers of complexity in Darfur. It is not a reason for not trying to do something, but it is important that we understand what we are dealing with. I want to address the hon. Lady’s point about compensation directly, because I feel strongly about this. I spent a lot of time in Abuja trying to point out to Abdel Wahed and his people what is in the agreement. I entirely accept her point about the importance of compensation psychologically and politically. It is part of the culture: you kill my family, you take my goods. Compensation is one of the ways in which the people make amends. We may find it hard to understand that the loss of life can be expunged by the payment of money, but that is part of the culture in Darfur. As for any help that anyone else can give to try to get the point across, it is all in the Darfur peace agreement, which provides for the setting up of a compensation commission, which would have wide powers on the form and nature of compensation, including that for loss of life and loss of land. You name it, it is there. The draft that the AU tabled said that the Government of Sudan would make a contribution to the compensation fund, but no sum was mentioned. So the second thing that we did in Abuja was to ask the Government of Sudan what they were going to do. They said, ““We will make an immediate initial contribution of $30 million.”” There is also provision in the Darfur peace agreement for a reconstruction and redevelopment fund. The Government of Sudan have committed to put into that fund $300 million this year and $200 million next year and the year after, making a total of $700 million. Perhaps I should not say this, but I will: if we want to be creative once we have signed an agreement and are getting on with implementing it, it is perfectly possible to say, ““As an aid to reconstruction and redevelopment, people will need to resettle themselves in the places that they have been burnt out of.”” There is a big pot of money that could also be used to make payments in recompense for loss of livelihood, animals and household utensils if one cared to look at what has actually been negotiated by the rebel movements and had the confidence to say, ““Look, you wanted compensation: look what we brought back.”” I say this with force and passion, because I learned something most forcefully during those peace negotiations, which was my first opportunity to participate in such negotiations. I learned that the texts and demands are important, but there comes a moment when we have to decide whether to make the psychological step from being a victim and a demander, a fighter and an outsider, to saying, ““I am now going to take that step for peace and be part of trying to implement a solution to the crisis””. I could see Minni Minnawi doing that, and through the medium of this debate—though I do not know whether he will read it—I would plead with Abdel Wahed to do the same.