Syria and North Korea

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

The hon. Lady will know that the UK is already the second biggest donor of humanitarian aid to the region, so we have a record that we can be proud of. I return to what she had to say about the American strike. I am looking at faces that are familiar from previous statements on Syria; month after month I have come here to update the House on how that tragedy is unfolding, and I see people who have taken a passionate interest in this subject and have called repeatedly for us to do more. Finally, the United States has taken what we believe to be condign action—action that I think is entirely appropriate—but somehow it fails to find favour with the hon. Lady.

I think that what has happened is a good thing, but we should not overstate its importance from a military point of view. We have to recognise that this is a political opportunity, and it is an opportunity for the Russians to recognise the manner of regime that they are propping up. That is the message that we need to get over loud and clear, and unanimously.

As for North Korea, the hon. Lady makes a good point about the need to get rid of nuclear weapons. I think it would be foolish—I hope that she agrees—for the United States even to begin to think of getting rid of its nuclear weapons before we have a denuclearised North Korea.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for the detailed evidence he has presented to the House about the responsibility for the nerve agent attack in Syria. I commend him for giving the House that detail and, in doing so, I invite him to depersonalise his assessment of the Syrian regime simply around the personality of its President. We already have in place a mechanism by which that President will be held to account in future by the Syrian people if he wishes to seek their views under the International Syria Support Group conclusions of November 2015. That process has already been agreed on by 20 nations, and we should be relying on that and not using rhetoric that might make it more difficult to get into that process.

Finally, if I may ask my right hon. Friend about North Korea, I invite him to put pressure on the United States to try to dial down the public rhetoric. In some ways, North Korea is like an attention-seeking child who happens to belong to someone else—in this case, China. While the United States has proper responsibilities to the other nations in the area about their security, ratcheting up the rhetoric with North Korea is probably the wrong way of publicly dealing with it.

[Boris Johnson]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that we should be clear that our quarrel is not only with Bashar al-Assad, but with others in his regime. It will be possible to sketch out a route map to show how we can keep the institutions of Syrian government and yet get rid of the most murderous elements of the regime. We need to be getting that idea across clearly in the next weeks and months.

On North Korea, I am sure that my hon. Friend’s words on the need to avoid ratcheting up the rhetoric are wise—he speaks from experience—but I believe that the key lies mainly with China in this arena. It is very much in the interests of the Chinese and the Russians, who share a border with North Korea, to rein in Kim Jong-un and persuade him to abandon what I think is a path of self-destruction.