Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The right hon. Gentleman is conflating several different subjects. What I said needed fleshing out in more detail was the immediate planning of the national transitional council in Benghazi for the day after Gaddafi—if we can express it like that. It is doing a lot of that work, and we are looking forward to it communicating that. That is taking place, and we are in the lead in terms of looking in detail at the stabilisation response. Our stabilisation response team has been in Benghazi and is now writing its report, but we have been working with Italy and Turkey on that. So the UN will have that responsibility for co-ordination of humanitarian assistance and for the future, but Britain has taken the lead in putting people on the ground and doing the thinking. None of those things is inconsistent with the others.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will the Foreign Secretary take up with the Bahraini Government the specific case of Ayat al-Qormozi, the young woman who has now been imprisoned for nothing worse than reading out a poem to freedom at the Pearl roundabout, and can he do that as part of a more robust approach to the Bahraini Government and their Saudi guardians?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, of course we take up and express to the Bahraini authorities the need for universal respect for human rights, including for due process, and that is what we look to them to bring about in their judicial process. I have strongly expressed that view to the Crown Prince of Bahrain, and we will continue to make those representations to the Bahraini authorities.