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North Africa and the Middle East

I am keen to make just a little progress. The Foreign Secretary said on 27 February that"““it is time for Colonel Gaddafi to go, that is the best hope for Libya.””" A few days later, on 3 March, President Obama stated that ““he must leave””. But since those categorical statements the urgency of the diplomatic efforts have, alas, not matched the urgency of the situation. The Foreign Secretary has already told the House that the Prime Minister and the US President speak ““extremely regularly””, so may I ask the Foreign Secretary to take this opportunity genuinely to confirm to the House what is more than of passing interest: whether or not the Prime Minister has spoken to President Obama regularly in the wake of this crisis, over the past seven days? I ask that question because Downing street briefings suggest that there has been only one telephone call, and I would be happy to afford the Foreign Secretary the opportunity to intervene on me today to clarify the facts. Calling for action is not the same as acting to ensure that the action takes place. Public statements at a time of crisis need to be matched by the important work of private diplomacy. I suggest that if ever there was a time when such dialogue, leader to leader, was needed, it is a time like now. Indeed, not only has uncertainty about the international community's position delayed action, but it will have been closely observed in Libya itself. As United States Senator John Kerry commented yesterday, the time lost by the international community has"““compacted the choices, diminished the options. And it's changed the state of play somewhat.""The calculation that many people in Libya might have made a week…10 days ago, if we'd started to announce and move certain things, might have been considerably different than the calculation that they might make today. And those calculations are critical in these kinds of events.””" Senator Kerry's analysis is as accurate as it is devastating, for as we debate today the opportunity for meaningful action is simply slipping away.