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Foreign Affairs and Defence

Egypt does indeed maintain a blockade of Gaza, but it is not the country that is threatening or trying to occupy Gaza. The crossings between Gaza and Israel, where there are endless restrictions on UN trucks, food, medicines, building supplies and everything else, make life intolerable for people in Gaza. At the moment, a peaceful flotilla of vessels is going from Turkey to take aid, support, succour and comfort to the people of Gaza. I hope that the British Government will put all the pressure that they can on the Israeli Government not to interfere with that flotilla and to allow it to land, so that the people of Gaza can receive the support that is being offered by peaceable people from all over the world. We are not going to solve the problems of the middle east region by further rearmament. I am concerned that the United States' policy, announced last week, of giving a further £150 million for a new missile defence system for Israel is a provocative act that will only encourage further armament within the region. The same applies to the deployment of Patriot missiles all along the Gulf. There must be dialogue, negotiation and debate on all the issues, including human rights, with Iran and every other country to bring about peace in the region. We will not achieve it by rearmament, by nuclear weapons or by turning a blind eye to what happened in Operation Cast Lead or to the abuse of Palestinian rights by Israel in its process of occupation. The Foreign Secretary made a strong point about human rights being the core of foreign policy. Indeed, the previous Foreign Secretary made much the same point. There are many issues that could be raised on human rights, but I just want briefly to say that, if we go down the road of lifting the universal jurisdiction that applies in British courts to people against whom there is prima facie evidence of war crimes or the abuse of human rights, we diminish ourselves in the eyes of the rest of the world and undermine the whole principle of international law and international jurisdiction. If there are people in any country against whom there is such prima facie evidence, they should be brought before a court and tried for war crimes or the abuse of human rights, as appropriate. If we start being selective about this because we like or dislike a particular person or country, it diminishes our standing in the world. I also ask the new Government to pay attention to the deportation of people from this country to countries that have not signed the various protocols on torture and the abuse of human rights. I ask them to stop the process of such deportations. I want briefly to mention three other issues, which I hope the Minister will be able to respond to later. There is massive abuse of human rights and massive loss of life going on in the Congo. This was not mentioned in the speeches of those on the Front Benches. It is the largest loss of life in any conflict anywhere in the world at the present time. Millions have died, and tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of women and families have been abused in the eastern part of the Congo. The Government have a decision to make on the future deployment of the MONUC force, and I hope that they will do that with sensitivity. I also hope that they will recognise that human rights abuses have not gone away just because we have good relations with the Government in that country, or indeed because the Congolese army is in the east of the Congo—I have to say that the reverse is the case. I also want to mention the right of return of the Chagos islanders to the islands in the Indian ocean, which has been fought for through our courts. The case is now going to the European Court of Human Rights. I hope that the Foreign Secretary will intervene, withdraw the case from the European Court and accept the inalienable right of return of those people to the islands from which they were so brutally dragged away in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, there is a group of people living in refugee camps in Algeria who were driven out of Morocco in the 1970s as part of the war waged by the Moroccan forces against Western Sahara. Western Sahara remains a territory occupied by Morocco. Unfortunately, Britain acceded to the European fishery agreement, which means that fishing takes place off the coast of Western Sahara, mainly to the benefit of Spanish vessels. The people of Western Sahara remain in those camps. Let us make some effort to ensure that a referendum takes place that allows peace to return, and allows those people to return. They must be allowed to exercise their right under decolonisation statutes to decide on their own future. Whether they become independent or not, they should at least have that free choice. It is simply not right to have left them living in refugee camps for more than 30 years. We can do better than that, and it is up to us to make sure that we do.