Syria

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The European Union has also been engaged in trying to promote a political solution. For instance, the EU High Representative attended the Geneva talks in June. It is realistic, however, to point out that the diplomatic focus is on the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the Security Council as a whole. It is the work of nation states on the Security Council to try to settle our differences. In that respect, the EU has a more limited role, but there is a strong degree of unity across the European Union and the External Action Service strongly supports the actions we have taken.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Even though the Government are being so helpful to the Syrian opposition, have we sought to extract an undertaking from them that any store of chemical weapons discovered will be handed over for destruction so that it cannot possibly fall into the hands of al-Qaeda?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, we have very much made that point and my hon. Friend is correct to bring it up. We have made it very clear to the National Coalition that we would expect any future Government of Syria to join and to adhere to the chemical weapons convention and the biological and toxin weapons convention. In all the conversations we have had with the national coalition, its horror of the chemical and biological weapons that all the evidence suggests have been amassed by the Assad regime is very clear. I hope that one thing that will happen in a future Syria will be the destruction and disposal of those weapons.