G8 Foreign Ministers

Douglas Alexander Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and for advance sight of it. The G8 Foreign Ministers meeting covered a range of subjects, as the Foreign Secretary made clear in his statement, but I will focus on Syria and North Korea.

First, however, it would be remiss of me to do anything other than express my personal congratulations to the Foreign Secretary on his leadership on the issue of sexual violence in conflict zones. His steps to bring the international community together to tackle the horrific use of sexual violence in conflict have rightly received warm support from Members in all parts of the House. I also pay tribute to the civil society groups that have campaigned tirelessly on the issue, and on whose significant efforts the Foreign Secretary’s engagement has been built.

The Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have speculated in recent weeks about the need to ensure that the Syrian rebels are armed and trained. The Foreign Secretary will be aware that the G8 communiqué made no reference to international efforts to stem the flow of arms into Syria, but did he raise the transfer of weapons at the meeting or, indeed, in any bilateral meetings with G8 Foreign Ministers in attendance, in particular with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov? In his statement, the Foreign Secretary stated that the UK has “taken no decision” on arming the Syrian rebels, but in the Liaison Committee on 12 March the Prime Minister struck a rather different tone, as he was keen to stress that the UK

“might have to do things in our own way.”

He added that the UK was “still an independent country”.

Will the Foreign Secretary clarify those earlier remarks from the Prime Minister, and will he further clarify whether the Government’s approach to arming the rebels has altered in any way in the light of recent evidence of radical Islamist militants operating on the ground? That includes the al-Nusra Front, which only last week confirmed its affiliation to al-Qaeda. Indeed, the Foreign Secretary will be aware of a letter that I sent to him on 20 March raising questions about the British Government’s decision to

“fund training to help armed groups understand their responsibilities and obligations under international law”.—[Official Report, 6 March 2013; Vol. 559, c. 963.]

I have not yet received a reply from the Foreign Secretary, so in the light of the upcoming deadline for the renewal of the EU arms embargo, will he kindly confirm his intention to reply to that letter?

I also welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary said that one of the immediate priorities arising from the meeting was ensuring that donors provide the funding that they have promised for Syria. Will he confirm whether all the states represented at the G8 Foreign Ministers meeting last week have provided all the funding that they have promised?

A key priority on Syria as we approach the G8 summit must be to build influence with Russia, and encourage it to stop its continued sponsorship of the Assad regime. Given that, I found it a little curious that the Foreign Secretary restricted his observations about discussions with Russia to a single line in a statement of six pages. Will he clarify what, in the light of the final communiqué from the Foreign Ministers meeting, is the British Government’s strategy to help to bring an end to the violence in Syria? If it is the Geneva accords, what practical steps have been taken to secure the anticipated negotiations?

Finally, I should like to turn to the points made by the Foreign Secretary on the ongoing situation in the Korean peninsula. We support the agreement reached by Foreign Ministers following the G8 meeting to condemn the continued aggressive and provocative actions of the North Korean regime. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that China’s role as an historic supporter of North Korea is key to defusing the crisis, so will he join me in welcoming its constructive engagement on the issue to date?

The efforts of others will not absolve the North Koreans of their own responsibilities, so does the Foreign Secretary agree that the responsibility is now on the North Korean leadership to accept an open offer that has been extended from the international community to initiate meaningful negotiations in relation to this troubling and dangerous situation?

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his questions and for his strong endorsement of the initiative that I have been pursuing on preventing sexual violence in conflict. This is a cross-party issue that is of concern to people in all parties in the UK, and we can all enthusiastically get behind it. We are, as he said, building on the efforts of people in civil society, many NGOs and people who have already worked at the United Nations for some years, but it is time for the most powerful, active Governments of the world to get behind the initiative, make major international diplomatic progress, and show that we can change the situation on the ground. I will keep the House updated throughout the year on our efforts.

On Syria, the right hon. Gentleman asked about discussions on the transfer of weapons. We had a long discussion about Syria at the G8 and with the Russian Foreign and Defence Ministers when they made a bilateral visit here on 13 March. So in the past month we have had two substantial rounds of discussions with Russian Ministers—indeed, three rounds in just over a month. Of course we discussed the continued flow of weapons to the regime in Syria. Part of the problem is that the regime can continue to receive weapons, but many moderate figures in opposition groups say that they cannot obtain them.

What the Prime Minister said last month about the possibility that we might have to do more is very much what I am saying here and what I said in my last statement—that our policy cannot be static. He said, and I repeated in the statement, that we have not taken any decision about arming the opposition ourselves. There are legitimate arguments against that. They have sometimes been put in the House, and the right hon. Gentleman has raised some of them. If we were to take that step, we would have to assure ourselves to the maximum degree possible not only of the international legal position, but that the weapons could not be misused by others for whom they were not intended. Those are major considerations.

It must also be a major consideration that we currently face a humanitarian catastrophe, with tens of thousands of people being killed and millions in desperate need. A regime that is not bringing the conflict to an end can get weapons and extremists can get weapons, but people who are in favour of a free, democratic and moderate Syria find it very difficult to do so. We all have to ask ourselves how long we can go on with that situation if the conflict continues and if it continues to get worse. Of course, what we need most of all is a diplomatic and political settlement. Giving additional assistance to the National Coalition is part of putting pressure on the regime to come to a political settlement.

To expand on our discussions with Russia about that, we have discussed with our Russian colleagues several times in the past month how to try to come together to bring about the Geneva communiqué—a transitional Government drawn from regime and opposition, with full executive authority—but no one in other western or Arab nations, nor the UK, has yet succeeded in agreeing with Russia the mechanism to bring that about. A United Nations Security Council resolution would, in our view, be the appropriate mechanism, but Russia and China have vetoed that in the past and would do so again under current circumstances. It could come about through each of the countries involved—through us, the United States, the Russians and others—putting pressure on all the parties involved to negotiate that. We are ready to do so. We are always doing that with the national coalition, but sufficient pressure has not been put on the regime to do that, so we will always work hard on a diplomatic and negotiated way forward. In the absence of that, we have to do what we can to save lives and to try to make a resolution of the conflict more likely.

I agree with the thrust of the right hon. Gentleman’s questions about China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. China’s position of agreeing to UN Security Council resolution 2094, which put additional sanctions on North Korea, is welcome. I will discuss that with the new Chinese leadership over the next couple of days to see how we can work together on it. The message should be clear, as it is from the whole House and from the whole UN Security Council: North Korea has a choice, and with the choice it is making at the moment it will end up with a country that is even more broken and even more isolated, even from China. It is not too late to make an alternative choice; the path of multilateral negotiations and greater engagement with the international community is still open.