Middle East and North Africa

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

As I mentioned in answer to earlier questions, it is not a simple matter to pass a United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria—of course that may change as the situation in Syria develops. The important thing for today is to emphasise that, as I said in my statement, the Syrians are at a fork in the road and are coming to the last point at which they can say, “We are going to embrace the reform that is necessary in our country and that will be supported nationally and internationally.” If they continue down the alternative route of ever more violent repressions, our concerns will of course be shared more widely at the UN Security Council and the situation there may change.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I sympathise with the Foreign Secretary, but I am afraid I agree—I do not often say this—with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) in that the arguments that the Foreign Secretary is using increasingly sound casuistical, especially when he tries to draw a distinction between why we are engaged in Libya but not in Syria or anywhere else and, in particular, when he says that although we are providing equipment, that is all right because it is non-lethal, or that although we are providing military personnel, that is all right because they are not instructors. Surely we are coming to a fork in the road: either we want rid of Gaddafi and we should get rid of him, or we should get out of there.

[Mr Hague]

Sympathy from the hon. Gentleman is entirely unnecessary in my case; I can assure him that I will be fine without it. Anyway, I suppose I am grateful for it. Let us think about the alternatives for which he seems to be calling. One is to weaken in what we are doing, to say that we do not really care what happens in Libya, and to allow Colonel Gaddafi to run amok in murdering thousands of his own people, destabilising everything else in north Africa. I reject that alternative. The other alternative to our policy is to say that we are not really going to abide by the UN resolutions and that we will do whatever we are urged to do, because we think that our public’s patience is too limited in any matter of international relations and so we will be panicked into doing other things. I reject that alternative, too. For too many years, we have been accused of not having the necessary legality or moral support for, or an international coalition behind, what we are doing. We are going to maintain those things in what we do in Libya and that requires persistence in the policy we have adopted.