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Foreign Affairs and Defence

The hon. Gentleman helps my point. We would then provide an alternative livelihood to the Afghan poppy farmer that he would not have if we simply destroyed his crop or tried to persuade him with a packet of seeds to grow some alternative crop for which there is no market mechanism. We have to work constructively first, to ensure that we preserve the livelihood of Afghan farmers and their families and secondly, to create the market mechanisms for the alternative crops that I know they can grow. However, that will take time and patience on our part, as well as money. We need to commit that money, because if we cut off the money supply of the Taliban and the other insurgent groups, we will have gone a long way towards winning the battle in Afghanistan. In the last few minutes left, I want to refer to Europe—not to the treaty or the referendum, but to the common foreign and security policy, which is of course mentioned in the treaty, in the sense that it is intergovernmental. I remind the House that when the break-up of Yugoslavia took place some years ago we all lamented the fact that Europe was unable to respond either politically or militarily. We all had different responses as individual nations, recognising different bits of the break-up of Yugoslavia at different times. It was not until we managed to enlist the United States and NATO that we were able to bring a military presence to the area. We lamented what happened because Europe had no mechanism with which to respond. It did not exist at that stage; it now does exist. We have developed the common foreign and security policy over a number of years. One of the organs of that, through the European security and defence policy, is Operation Althea, the peacekeeping force in Bosnia, which has worked reasonably successfully, although there are currently a few concerns. At that time there was a security and political situation on Europe's doorstep that was degenerating fast, but to which we had no means of responding. Today, there are at least two other situations on Europe's doorstep that are developing in a not dissimilar fashion, although one is about break-ups. I refer to the situation on the border between Turkey and Iraq—a situation involving an applicant member for the European Union and a full NATO member being bombarded from the other side by terrorists groups and on so—and to Georgia. Georgia wants to join NATO and eventually the European Union, but has disputed territory in which Russia is playing an unhelpful part. Now that we have developed the apparatus of CSFP, with battle groups that are ready to be deployed at 15 days' notice, are those not areas where we could prove once and for all that European nations can work together to respond to situations that develop in our own backyard and that we are not for ever dependant on the United States to come to our rescue? I make a plea to the Minister to ensure through his representatives in Brussels that both the political and security committee and the military committee of the European Union discuss the issue urgently.