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Burma

Forgive me, but I will not give way. I welcome the new money that the Secretary of State pledged, and I welcome the fact that he clarified that it is additional money. I have a couple of brief points; I do not intend to go over ground that other speakers have gone over already. Earlier on, there was a discussion about air drops, and I sensed a false argument. No one is saying that all the aid should be dropped from the air, or that we should drop water from the air. However, it is not the case, as was suggested by the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke), that all the NGOs are against air drops. Oxfam and Save the Children have certainly expressed concern about air drops, but one of the directors of the United States Agency for International Development has said that unilateral air drops should be considered as a lever of policy. On the misappropriation of aid, a couple of speakers have already referred to aid being commandeered by the regime, re-badged, and then either sold on the black market or used inappropriately. During the past 48 hours, I read that some of the high-energy biscuits that arrived on one of the first World Food Programme flights had been taken to a military warehouse. I was not clear about to what use they had been put, but my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) hinted at it when he said that aid is a powerful tool for the junta in Burma. The concern is that because the regime relies so heavily on the support of the military, the 400,000 Burmese soldiers and their families will be prioritised in the disbursement of aid. One senior person from an NGO has expressed to me concern that low quality alternatives are being substituted for high quality, high nutrition biscuits before the aid is distributed to the mass of the population. Indeed, CARE Australia has put on record its concerns about the quality of rice being disbursed, which is very mouldy and of poor quality. There is a need for high quality, nutritional aid. On the United Nations, the Secretary of State referred to the discussions that the Prime Minister was having with Ban Ki-moon. I am afraid that I do not share the Secretary of State's optimism for what can be achieved at the UN. Indeed, Ban Ki-moon said that he had spent all weekend trying to get through on the phone to Senior General Than Shwe, with no success.