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North Africa and the Middle East

I am not sure what I am supposed to say to that, except that I have already said that I support a review of international policy. That has to happen quickly. We also need to review—unfortunately—how we treat brutal dictators who survive using violence and repression. That needs to be addressed urgently. At an international level, we need a strategy for persuading Russia and China in particular—both quick enough to intervene in their neighbourhoods—that the international community's responsibility to protect needs to become a practical reality. Perhaps we also need some fresh faces in the international community's peace efforts, not least in the context of the middle east, and Israel and Palestine. In that vein, will Ministers tell us exactly what contribution and progress the former Prime Minister Tony Blair is making in his role as the Quartet's special envoy? He was always a rather bizarre choice as a middle east peace envoy, and I would like to know whether Ministers think the time has come for him to go and to make way for fresh faces and those slightly more actively engaged in the massive changes taking place in the region. The clear policy of Arab partnership also needs to extend to states and people currently overlooked. I will end with one example that I hope Ministers will take up: the case of Dr Kamal al-Labwani. He is a Syrian doctor, writer and artist who took part in the brief but unsuccessful Damascus spring in 2001 and the founder of the excellently named Liberal Democratic Union. In 2005, he was charged with weakening national morale and imprisoned. He was behaving only as a free citizen in a free country would have done—an extraordinarily courageous approach once described in Europe by Vaclav Havel as living in truth—but it resulted in his imprisonment. The charge was changed to scheming with a foreign country with the aim of causing it to attack Syria, and he was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment. He is now on hunger strike, along with other prisoners in the Adra prison. His detention has been condemned by a UN working group on arbitrary detention as arbitrary and contrary to the UN declaration of human rights, and there is now disturbing news of fresh detentions and disappearances, including of members of Dr al-Labwani's family, who bear no responsibility for any of his political actions. If we are to have a real Arab partnership for peace, democracy and reform in the region, it must reach out to people such as Dr al-Labwani and other courageous members of democratic movements who might not be in government, and not just to the emerging democratic Governments.