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Debate on the Address

My Lords, in the debate on 12 July I expressed my anger at the mess that we have allowed ourselves to get into in Afghanistan and Iraq and my belief that there was going to have to be a serious inquiry about the circumstances that allowed this to develop. I still believe that—and I must say that I was appalled at the House of Commons only a few weeks ago being unable to rally enough support for such an inquiry. But time is short and I wish to be positive and to consider some of the diplomatic issues that face us. First, we must be frank about the difficulty that we face in bringing Iran into a positive and constructive mood about Iraq. If Iran can see that it is in its interests that we have a federal unitary state in Iraq—and I believe that it is in Iranian interests—Iran can be a decisive influence in bringing this about. But we have to face the fact that we will not get Iran in a constructive role while it sees itself under military threat because of its nuclear programme; nor will they respond to the United States while the United States continues with the sanctions imposed after the occupation of the Teheran embassy all those many years ago under President Carter. During the Reagan years an ill-fated attempt was made—ill-fated especially because it was linked to the contras—to reopen a serious dialogue between the United States and Iran. It could be said that we cannot influence that American issue and that that is really for the Baker commission, and that may be so; but in one area we will have to rethink our own policy—with regard to the dialogue developing around Iran’s nuclear pretensions. I, for one, believe it is clear that Iran is after at least an option on being able to build a nuclear weapon. That would be extremely damaging to the region, if Iran developed such a weapon, and we would be highly likely to see more proliferation to at least Saudi Arabia, Egypt and possibly Syria. We have had the experience of the success of skilful diplomacy with President Gaddafi and Libya which started, against all predictions, after the shock of the Reagan attack on Gaddafi because of the Libyan involvement in terrorist activity in La Belle discothèque in Berlin and also, later with Lockerbie. It is a fine example of serious diplomatic engagement in which the British and American Governments worked closely together. One of the deals that was done was that Gaddafi was given an assurance that if he was co-operative, the idea of regime change would be erased and he would be able to continue in power. That was realpolitik of a fine and an intelligent order. I believe there is a direct parallel between how we dealt with the Libyan issue and how we deal with the Syrian question. In my judgment, we are not going to get Syria seriously engaged while it thinks that, as soon as it does this, we will simply try and remove the Ba’athists and the young President Assad from power. We have to grapple with that issue. Regarding the use of sanctions as an incentive to Iran, I am not sure what will happen, but I believe the British Government will have to pull back a little from the rhetoric of the past year or two about sanctions against Iran. We will have to recognise that if we are to going to resolve the nuclear problem, that will be further down the track, and that the immediate priority is to have a more constructive attitude from Iran to getting stability in Iraq. If that means we have to adopt a different tone from the Americans on this question, so be it. As for Syria, many Israelis in the past have been ready to put a negotiation over Golan in advance of a negotiation over Gaza or the West Bank. That was Barak’s view for quite a while. I hear all these pleas for an engagement in the West Bank at the moment, but I think the fragility of relations that exists in Israel itself makes it extremely unlikely that we will get much progress in a rapid way on this issue. We ought to look at the one area where substantial progress could be made; that is, over Syria, Golan and Lebanon. We saw, in July and August, how badly it is possible for both the British and the Americans to handle the issue of Lebanon. Those few weeks,in my view, saw the most disgraceful piece of diplomacy. What was so tragic was that it cameafter the communiqué that was issued by the G8 atSt Petersburg, which could hardly have been better. If the eight countries had all acted to put a force into Lebanon immediately, as was envisaged in that communiqué, it would have been a remarkable success for the G8. The problem was that both Prime Minister Blair and President Bush thought that the Israeli armed forces could, in that space of time, deal with Hezbollah. Not even many of the Israeli military believed that was possible. We have to learn from that mistake. One way now would be to put Syria top of the negotiating table. With regard to Lebanon, we must try and improve the quality of the activity of the UN force currently in Lebanon, which is not dealing with Hezbollah anywhere near strongly enough, and at least raise the profile of the Arab/Israeli dispute and hope to make progress there, while doing everything in our power to get back into a dialogue with President Abbas and have a Government that speaks for the Palestinians and can negotiate with Israel. I have said enough. This is a very difficult diplomatic area. I urge one thing: that the Prime Minister drops his constant personalised diplomacy and allows the experts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in the Ministry of Defence and in the intelligence services to create strong and coherent policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Israel. It is high time that No. 10 quietened down a little. It has made some disastrous mistakes. If the Prime Minister will not resign, he should at least now step back and let these areas be dealt with by the professionals. In that way, Britain might be able to recover its influence and prestige in all these complex issues.