---

International Affairs

I do not want to apportion blame about the G8. I am making a general point. The United States has enormous influence over Israel, but France has enormous influence in the Arab world and Russia has enormous influence when it comes to Iran. There is a general argument to be made about the ability, willingness and capacity of the leaders of those countries to work together on something such as this. The finger cannot be pointed just at the United States. Greater co-ordinated action, not just in the UN, is now needed. I hope that the Government can tell us more about the apparent plans of the US Secretary of State to travel to the middle east, about whether there is any possibility of the Prime Minister travelling there, as he clearly offered to go in his conversation with President Bush, and about whether the announced visit of the French Prime Minister to Lebanon is in any way co-ordinated with British and American diplomatic efforts. It is also important to hear much more about the proposal floated by the Government for an international force to act as a buffer in southern Lebanon. We should have an open mind about such a proposal, but not forget the immense difficulties faced by such a force in the 1980s, which resulted in heavy loss of life and mounting resentment against the west. To avoid the limitations of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, such a force would have to have a robust mandate, operate on a large scale, and be well equipped and made up of good quality troops. Given that the British Army is stretched to the limit, and American forces could not fulfil a peacekeeping role in this context, it is not clear where those forces are to come from. I hope that, when the Minister winds up, he will be able to say more about the discussions taking place with our allies, particularly France, and about whether these proposals are being worked up in detail and whether it is understood that, to be useful, such a force would have to be involved in actually disarming Hezbollah—obviously a difficult undertaking. We all hope that the meeting of the UN Security Council will help to produce a strong impetus for a co-ordinated approach from the world’s leading powers—particularly one involving Russia and France, for the reasons that I have just given. We all fully realise that the Government cannot bring about such co-ordination on their own, but the efforts of the British Government in calling for it should be vigorous and clear. So far, the failure to produce an international initiative is ominously reminiscent of the early stages of the Balkan crisis of the 1990s. One of the reasons why this is so worrying is that the crisis in Lebanon is likely to make the other problems of the middle east harder to deal with. Those problems, taken together, are becoming by far the single greatest foreign policy challenge for us and our allies. It should be a sobering thought for all of us who deal with foreign affairs—in government or opposition—that instability in the middle east could become seriously worse in the coming years. Whoever wins the next election in this country or the United States could easily face a nuclear-armed Iran, continued violence in Afghanistan, a still unstable Iraq, a stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians and major instability in one or more of our major Arab allies all at the same time. All those conflicts have the potential to feed into, or to be hijacked by, forms of international terrorism.