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European Affairs

And, indeed, what he said in public a few weeks ago. However, the Finnish Foreign Minister then came round to my office and I have to tell the Foreign Secretary that the Finnish Foreign Minister and I concluded that there was plenty of scope for easy co-operation between the Finnish Government and a Conservative Government after the next general election, so the Foreign Secretary needs to be a little careful with his quotes. I believe that the significance and seriousness of events over the past six months make our present debate a little different from usual. Since our last debate on these matters, the economic downturn has intensified, there has been war in Georgia, the situation in the Balkans has in some respects deteriorated and the Lisbon treaty has remained becalmed after Ireland's rejection. All those matters require some examination in the debate. The Foreign Secretary raised some broader issues that I hope to turn to if I can catch your eye again tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, in the Queen's Speech debate on foreign affairs and defence. For now, let me refer to what the right hon. Gentleman said at the beginning of his speech about Zimbabwe and yesterday's discussion among EU Foreign Ministers. We—and, I imagine, all quarters of the House—very much welcome the discussion and the agreement to add 11 more regime officials to the EU travel ban and assets freeze list. However, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will agree that if the bans are to carry any weight with the regime, they must be scrupulously enforced by all countries of the EU. Banning more than 100 officials from the EU had very little point when Mugabe himself was welcomed to Lisbon last December, notwithstanding the fact that all the bans were supposed to be in place. I know that the Government felt as strongly about that as we did and the Prime Minister did not attend the summit. The Foreign Secretary was also right to seek to take this matter back to the UN Security Council—he referred to that in passing today—and to say that African countries now have a particular responsibility to bring about positive change in Zimbabwe. We certainly welcome the robust statements of the Governments of Kenya and Botswana, urging Mugabe to go. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition spoke yesterday to Botswana's Foreign Minister, who has called for a ban on fuel supplies to the Zimbabwean army and police. We hope that the Government will lend their support to such proposals that target the regime and urge African countries to implement them. We also hope that the Foreign Secretary will intensify the preparations, for which we have called, for the days after Mugabe, so that when a new Government are in place in Harare, arrangements will already be in place, backed by EU nations, for the massive programme of aid that will be needed, for the establishment of a contact group to provide diplomatic support and for assistance to rebuild the economy, reform the security services and so forth. We particularly hope that Ministers will raise with African nations the need to develop the capacity to deploy a humanitarian force in Zimbabwe at short notice if required—an over-the-horizon force that would be ready to make sure that the basic functions of the state could continue and that aid reached those in need.