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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I take seriously the experience with which the right hon. and learned Gentleman speaks. What I say to him is that we could not get a majority for sanctions on individual members of the regime—[Interruption.] I assure hon. Members that it remains pretty difficult to do so. We could not go beyond that. He raises a point about death and destruction, saying that some people would die if there was a fuel blockade and that the process would be short. I do not think that one can guarantee that. We are talking about life and death decisions involving potentially tens of thousands of people. He is right to say that mass slaughter—mass death—is going on at the moment, but a blockade would certainly hasten that. I repeat that the regime would be the last to bear the burden of any such blockade. I have tried the House's patience for a long time and I have tried to be generous in answering questions, so I think I should finish my speech and then allow others to speak. I want to cover the root causes of conflict. Our work on tackling those must be backed up by counter-proliferation treaties and restrictions to curb the fatal flow of weapons. That is why I was in Oslo last week to sign the convention on cluster munitions—over the course of 2009, we will encourage other countries to sign it too. We will also endeavour to accelerate work towards an arms trade treaty. The most lethal and immediate proliferation challenge is the nuclear one. This Government have made it clear that they are committed to a world without nuclear weapons, as per our non-proliferation treaty responsibilities. US President-elect Obama has done the same, so we will work with the US and other allies to bring the comprehensive test ban treaty into force, thereby banning all nuclear weapons test explosions. Early US ratification would do much to encourage the few states remaining outside to follow suit. We will also work together to push forward multilateral negotiations on a treaty to end the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, thus helping to make reductions irreversible, and to secure renewed agreement among all NPT states that tougher prevention measures are needed to tackle proliferation in the future. That brings me to the issue of Iran, which will be one of the most difficult issues in 2009. Iran continues to increase its enrichment programme in the face of repeated International Atomic Energy Agency requests for more access and information, and in defiance of five UN Security Council resolutions. The threat is real—we are talking about a matter of years, not decades—and in 2009 it will continue to grow with every day that passes, as Iran continues to enrich and to increase its capacity to enrich, so we need urgently to make diplomacy work. That means a more vigorous pursuit of our dual-track approach: the pressure of sanctions coupled with the promise of engagement and reintegration if Tehran co-operates with the UN Security Council and the IAEA. If Iran continues to ignore the UN Security Council and disregards the requests of the IAEA, it will face increasingly tough sanctions and worsening diplomatic isolation. The alternative is for it to accept the E3 plus 3's generous offer of June this year, which would give Iran financial and technological assistance to develop its civilian nuclear capacity—that is what it claims to want—and a range of other benefits. We will lead the effort to make its choice clear, through national measures and with our partners in the EU and UN. As our June offer made clear, we are not opposed to Iran or other countries having access to civilian nuclear capacity, as long as there is absolute confidence that there is no leakage into a nuclear weapons programme. Far from being opposed, we see civilian nuclear technology as a crucial part of the answer to climate change and energy insecurity, but we need to manage the risks that this technology might be diverted for more malign purposes. In the past three years, climate change has become a foreign policy issue discussed annually in these debates. Today, I have time to say only that although a high-growth global economy is essential, it is only half the story. The Government's goal is a high-growth, low-carbon global economy. We cannot afford to defer energy efficiency and the drive for low-carbon fuels, because the short-term and long-term case for acting now is compelling. Equally, amid the financial crisis we must not lose sight of the millennium development goals. Some $17.5 billion was committed at the high-level event at the UN General Assembly this September. The UK remains on track to meet our Gleneagles commitments, but too many of our partners are not. In addition, there is a growing risk that donations will fall away, despite the fact that the poorest countries, whether resource rich or resource poor, are often hit hardest by global shocks. We need to keep leading by example. In order to deliver on this broad and ambitious agenda, we will need to work with partners and allies, and to mobilise collective action through international and multilateral institutions; I have already mentioned the new US administration. But if we want the multilateral architecture to continue to be the basis for international engagement and co-operation in the 21st century, we need to build support for reform. The economic crisis has highlighted the failings of the international financial architecture and should help to galvanise support for our efforts to reform the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. We now need to update the world's political architecture to ensure that its contours map the new distribution of power, and regional structures are important in that. Massive progress towards peace and prosperity has been spurred by the creation of, first, the European Economic Community and the subsequent development of the European Union. Nation states have learned to come together to share power, not to dilute their national identity but to reconcile it with the reality of economic, social, political and environmental interdependence. The EU has an important role to play in each and every one of the priorities that I have identified today: nation building in Afghanistan and Africa; European security and defence policy missions in countries ranging from Congo, Chad and Somalia to Bosnia, Kosovo and Georgia; the provision of humanitarian aid, which totals €750 million and helps 20 million people across 50 countries; and leadership on climate change. A global Europe that capitalises on its soft power by keeping the door open to further enlargement keeps countries in the western Balkans and eastern Europe moving in the right direction and engages, rather than isolates, Russia. But we also need a global Europe that builds its hard power, not as a threat to NATO, which, in its 60th anniversary year remains the cornerstone of European defence, but as a complement to it. France is on the verge of the historic decision of fully rejoining NATO, because it recognises its indispensable role. The US welcomes stronger EU efforts, both military and civilian, in the security sphere—