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Middle East and North Africa

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman particularly for what he said about various countries at the beginning of his questions. I am sure that the whole House will join him in welcoming the seemingly successful efforts of the Gulf Co-operation Council in relation to Yemen. There is also agreement across the House, I think, about the importance of the middle east peace process and a bold and ambitious European neighbourhood policy. The right hon. Gentleman asked some specific questions about Syria. About 700 British nationals in Syria are now registered with us, although some of them of course will be dual nationals with their families in Syria, and we should not assume that they would want to leave Syria whatever the circumstances there. However, we have contingency plans for their evacuation. Previous to the change of travel advice on Sunday, we advised them to consider leaving Syria by commercial means, and it is still possible to do so—for instance, over the land border to Lebanon and by commercial flights still running every day out of Damascus. The right hon. Gentleman asked about the conversations that I had with President Assad at the end of January. From those conversations, I think I can fairly say that what has happened in Syria over the past couple of weeks will have come as a surprise to the President and the Government. I asked him then why he thought that Syria would be different from what had already begun to happen in Egypt and Tunisia, and he said that it was because of Syria's clear ideology, the continuing resistance to Israel and the popular support for the Government in Syria. Clearly, however, there are common aspirations in many of these countries for economic freedom and greater political rights, and therefore the position of the Syrian authorities in relation to their population was not as strong as he and his Government assessed. Of course, we have many differences with the Government of Syria on many foreign policy subjects that I discussed with him. For a long time Governments of the United Kingdom have urged the Government of Syria in the direction of greater respect for human rights. Had they taken that advice, including from previous Foreign Secretaries, such as the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), they would be in a stronger position today. The right hon. Gentleman was right to ask about work with the Turkish Government. I regard them as holding a central position in working with other nations on how we should proceed on Syria. I discussed the matter at length last night with the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and we are in close and daily touch with the Turkish Government. The work on what may happen at the UN and in the EU is of course at a preliminary stage, and it will be difficult at the UN Security Council, because not all the permanent members will see this in the same light, so I do not want to raise expectations of action at the Council. That would be unrealistic. However, we are working closely with our European and American colleagues on the Council to see how we can proceed, and we are doing initial work on what action the EU could take. However, I cannot go into more detail about that at this stage. On Bahrain, the dialogue between the Government and the opposition is not overtly progressing. However, the authorities there have reiterated to us their determination to proceed with and reignite that dialogue. I spoke recently to the Foreign Minister of Bahrain, Sheikh Khalid al-Khalifa, to ask for his commitment to that, as well as to investigation of the human rights issues that I have mentioned in the House, and he has given those commitments. As I said in my statement, therefore, we look to all sides in Bahrain to commit themselves to that dialogue. That is the only way forward for a country in Bahrain's situation. However, I do not have any reports of success in that dialogue to give to the House now. The right hon. Gentleman asked about Libya and our various announcements over the recess of non-lethal assistance to the transitional national council. It was my decision in every case to make public the information as soon as possible about every form of assistance. It might have satisfied his desire to avoid what he called ad hoc announcements had we waited to put them all together, but in my view it would not have satisfied the interests of full transparency and of giving Parliament the necessary information as soon as it became available by depositing it in the Library. This is a fast-moving situation. How we help the transitional national council has to be agreed with other countries in order that we do not duplicate what they do, so how we are able to assist the council will change from week to week. However, we will keep the House informed as rapidly as possible, as we did over the recess, even if that means that announcements come out at different times and are followed one after the other. It is important to remember that the military situation remains fluid and has not settled into a stalemate. Hon. Members will be aware of how much the situation in Misrata has changed over recent days. Fighting has gone backwards and forwards on the western borders of Libya, and although there is a fairly static situation on what might be called the eastern front, between Brega and Ajdabiya, it has not yet settled into what one would call a long-term stalemate. The military mission is defined by the United Nations resolution, and what the Prime Minister said about that on 21 March absolutely stands. That has not changed, although it is the common assessment of all NATO and Arab League nations involved—there might be a difference of view in some African Union nations—that it is impossible to see a way of securing the full implementation of the UN Security Council resolution while Colonel Gaddafi remains. That is why it is quite right to reiterate, as we all do in this House, that Gaddafi should go. However, the military mission remains defined by the UN Security Council resolution, and there has been no change in the Government's approach to that. On the question of NATO participation, there are 16 nations participating in the military effort at the moment. The shadow Foreign Secretary asked whether the contact group of 21 nations and seven international organisations was unwieldy. My experience so far is that it is not unwieldy—provided that it is well chaired, which it has been—but works together well. Having such a wide spread of nations and international organisations might initially look unwieldy, but it allows the contact group to continue the international legitimacy and the broad-based coalition that are present on this occasion and in these operations, the lack of which has sometimes bedevilled our efforts and those of the previous Government in foreign affairs, so it is important to maintain that. The right hon. Gentleman asked about the Defence Secretary's remarks about Afghanistan. The Defence Secretary was simply saying that we wanted Afghans to be able to take on responsibility for their own security; he was not comparing the conflict in Libya to the conflict in Afghanistan, and we should not give that impression. I absolutely agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary that NATO ground troops will not be going into Tripoli to resolve this matter. It is clear in UN resolution 1973 that there should be no foreign occupation of any part of Libya. We will adhere strictly to that, as to all other parts of the resolution. The strategy going forward is what I set out in the statement—to intensify the diplomatic, economic and military pressure. The point that I made at the Cabinet this morning was that in this situation, time is not on the side of Gaddafi. We are often asked in international conflicts whether time is on our side. We should be confident that in this situation—given this coalition, this range of sanctions and these intensifying efforts—time is not on the side of Gaddafi, and the members of his regime need to know that. The resolve of the international community to implement the UN resolutions—and our resolve, separately from those resolutions, that he should go—is undiminished; indeed, it is strengthened by the experience of recent weeks. We have already achieved the saving of thousands of lives, the assembly of a remarkable international coalition and the prevention of the regime's re-conquest of Libya by force, which could also have destabilised Egypt and Tunisia. These things have been worth achieving in the last five weeks, and if we continue to intensify our work in the way that I have described, we will indeed go on to success.