Peacekeeping Operations

HC Deb 13 December 1993 vol 234 cc702-42

[Relevant documents: The Third Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee of Session 1992-93 on The Expanding Role of the United Nations and its Implications for United Kingdom Policy (House of Commons Paper No. 235) and the Government Observations thereon (Cm 238) are relevant.

The Fourth Report from the Defence Committee of Session 1992-93 on United Kingdom Peacekeeping and Intervention Forces (House of Commons Paper No. 369) and the Sixth Special Report from the Committee of Session 1992-93, containing the Government's Observations thereon (House of Commons Paper No. 988) are also relevant.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a supplementary sum not exceeding £98,121,000 be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to defray the charges which will come in course of payment during the year ending on 31st March 1994 for expenditure by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on grants and subscriptions etc. to certain international organisations, special payments and assistance, scholarships, military aid and sundry other grants and services. —(Mr. Douglas Hogg.]

4.31 pm

Mr. David Howell (Guildford)

I am grateful for this opportunity to debate the vital questions of peacekeeping, the United Nations' contributions to peacekeeping efforts around the globe, the third report from the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, "The Expanding Rôle of the United Nations and its Implications for United Kingdom Policy", the Government's recent reply to that report, and the Government's reply to the recent request from the United Nation's Secretary-General for follow-up comments on peacekeeping operations—all of which documents are available.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee report published last June was a substantial piece of work and it is appropriate to offer words of thanks to those who contributed to it, in addition to the hard-working Committee. I refer in particular to Mr. David Travers of the university of Lancaster, specialist adviser to the Committee.

The study of the United Nation's expanding role involved extensive travel, although not exactly to holiday spots. Members of the Committee visited Cambodia, Croatia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Nairobi and Somalia, as well as the United Nations. I thank my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary for arranging for posts to give members of the Committee strong support. I mention in particular Sir David Hannay at the United Nations, Mr. Burns in Cambodia, Mr. Sparrow in Croatia, and Foreign Office officials who accompanied some visits where there was no diplomatic representation—such as Mr. George Busby, who travelled from Belgrade to accompany the Macedonia and Kosovo group, Mr. McCrudden from the post in Nairobi, and Mr. Geoff Cole, who travelled specially from London to join the Somalia group.

There was a considerable amount of support and help for the Committee, and I am grateful for that. The report was written and prepared while enormous changes were going on in the material that we were studying and in the nature of the United Nations operations around the planet.

In May the Foreign Secretary stated that the United Nations had operations in four of six continents. At the beginning of 1992—some 23 months ago—there were 10,000 peacekeeping troops deployed around the globe. At the beginning of this year, that figure was 60,000—a vast increase. Indeed, if the Mozambique deployments during this year develop as it was thought that they would, the figure would rise to 100,000 peacekeeping troops deployed around the globe and administered and directed from the United Nations in New York and Geneva.

The cost of those operations in 1992 was $3 billion, of which the United Kingdom contributed $90 million. The figure has risen rapidly during this year, with the latest figure showing that the United Kingdom contributed $60 million in the first three months of 1993 alone. I imagine that our contribution for the whole year will be far in excess of any that we have made in the past.

While the Committee was writing the report, huge changes were occurring. Since then, even more rapid and striking changes have occurred in peacekeeping operations and in world opinion about those operations. I think in particular of the virtual flip in opinion in the United States about the new world order and about the role of the United Nations. I am afraid that that change has occurred since June and has been driven primarily by deep disappointment and bitterness over events in Mogadishu.

The change has been driven in particular by the vivid photographs of the corpses of American service men being dragged by jeering mobs through the streets of Mogadishu. The photographs have had a fundamental effect on American opinion. More than any other communication, those horrific photographs have had the effect of turning opinion in the United States—and possibly elsewhere—against the high hopes of the United Nations of managing a new world order, and against a great deal of the work of the United Nations. The photographs also turned opinion against the idea of America playing a forward role as the world's policeman here, there and everywhere.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Boutros Ghali, has gone on record as saying that the United Nations is giving up on the idea of peace enforcement—perhaps as a result of that incident. It is not giving up on peacekeeping, of course, but it is giving up the idea of military enforcement to bring about peace in the world's trouble spots. That has occurred in the past in the Korean war and to a considerable extent when Saddam Hussein was pushed back out of Kuwait. The Secretary-General's comments came after the production of the report and to that extent events have overtaken us.

Meanwhile, since we visited the former Yugoslavia as part of the production of the report, there has been the grim recognition that the partition of Bosnia is inevitable. I think that it might have been more realistic to realise earlier that that was coming, and to raise hopes of keeping an independent Bosnia less high. Many lives have been lost in pursuing that unattainable objective.

Meanwhile, again, Mr. Arkan terrorises Kosovo. Preventative deployments have taken place in Macedonia and that is a good thing. Sanctions against Serbia are still in place, but they do not seem to be working effectively. As the House has heard, others are pressing for sanctions against Croatia, and that has also happened since the Committee produced the report.

Also, Mr. Jan Eliason—who the Committee met when he was head of the department of humanitarian affairs—has resigned amid some doubts about the effectiveness of those new arrangements at the United Nations. The United Nations has sent a mission to Georgia, and there has been an international peacekeeping effort of a kind which, I confess, I know little about. The United Nations has also been involved in Haiti, where frigates—including one from this country—have been deployed. In the middle east, the PLO-Israeli deal is now threatened by extremists, while elsewhere in the middle east, Saddam Hussein continues to assert his claim to Kuwait, to question the implementation of United Nations resolutions and to attack the marsh Arabs. Indeed, he may have been implicated in using chemical weapons yet again.

Although there may be many other developments, the final development that has occurred in respect of United Nations peacekeeping and its financing is the fact that the United Kingdom has unfortunately been pushed off the United Nations Budgetary Committee. When the Minister replies, I would like to know how serious that is. We tend to be pushed off every three years and then get back on again. However, this is a bad time not to be as near as we can to the centre of the administration of United Nations finances.

All these developments have produced a change of mood since the summer and earlier in the year when it was thought that the United Nations would be the answer to every prayer. We have now gone to the opposite extreme: from excess euphoria, we have bounced over to excess gloom. It seems that the United Nations cannot achieve many of the things that people hoped it could after the end of the cold war.

I believe that the gloom is overdone. When Dr. Boutros Ghali paid me the honour of asking my opinion on the matter, I told him that, despite all the criticism and the change of opinion in America, I thought that the gloom was overdone and that the United Nations remained a very powerful instrument which, reformed in the right way, can deliver a major contribution to world stability and the ending of violence and fragmentation around the globe.

That was the spirit in which we wrote our report. On that basis, we set out a range of proposals for reforming the United Nations and its administration and methods for tackling international crises and for intervening. In our very long report, we argued that the United Nations cannot do everything. That was obvious. As the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) put it very graphically—and we used his words in paragraph 263 of the report—the United Nations cannot wipe the tear from every eye.

When deciding where it should intervene and where it should move on from humanitarian intervention to more heavyweight intervention, it is necessary to have criteria to decide upon what principles it should work. We set out some of those criteria in paragraph 267. We argued that they were the kind of questions that policy makers and national governments should ask before they decide to support a resolution to intervene in a particular trouble spot.

The Government have produced a reply to our lengthy report which is, if I may say so, a little diffuse and not made easier to comment on by the fact that there are no numbered paragraphs. However, from reading the report, I feel that the Government are not so enthusiastic about those criteria as the Committee was. At least the Government agree that there must be a mandate specified from the outset before intervention. That is very important indeed.

We argue that one must go further than that and ensure that countries which commit themselves and their policies and resources must be aware from the start that the most timid initial humanitarian intervention can lead to a much more complicated military involvement. That is the point at which people who have committed themselves at the start must stay committed and not turn their backs and walk out leaving the United Nations floundering.

It appears from the Government's response to our report and their response direct to the Secretary-General that they agree with our Committee that better command and control procedures at the United Nations are badly needed. They agree with our suggestions, and the suggestions of others, that a proper planning and operations staff at the United Nations is required. They agree with our thoughts about better communication and information flows for the United Nations.

When the United Nations tries to command and control a force in the field, in a sense it operates blind because it does not have its own intelligence networks. We must consider what nation states can do, without undermining the national interests concerned, to provide better information and intelligence flows. I detected from the Government's reply that they recognise that that problem can be met.

The Government also agree with the Committee that one should be sympathetic to the idea of stand-by forces for the United Nations. There is a sharp distinction between stand-by forces and standing forces. Stand-by forces would enable the United Nations to know what capabilities are available for certain needs and requirements around the world. The United Nations would be able to have an effective list of what was available.

The Committee turned down very strongly the different idea of having standing forces waiting about to be deployed by the United Nations in certain missions. We believe that that idea was not sensible because missions vary vastly and one never knows exactly what kind of troops are required. The same argument applies to the idea of earmarking particular forces for United Nations work.

In their reply, the Government do not appear to agree with our argument about sanctions. We argued that really limited sanctions tend to become more and more limited and are finally eroded to the point of uselessness. We believe that if sanctions are to be effective, they must be applied with vigour in a full-blown way from the start. We made that point in paragraph 130.

It is a pity that there is reluctance to recognise that point. It would be very valuable to have sanctions working effectively on Serbia at the moment—although I am not sure whether it should be part of a deal in exchange for land. If they were working really effectively, they would at least create conditions in which the Bosnian Muslims do not feel that they are being asked to accede to a totally unjust peace. That is what they feel now as they know that the sanctions are not working thoroughly and that both their opponents, Serbs and Croats, have access to more arms than they do.

We should now re-examine the sanctions procedures. We should argue that very much tougher sanctions should be maintained at all times, and particularly now with regard to Serbia.

All in all, the aim of the report was, as we state in paragraph 263, to describe a range of practical ways in which the work of the United Nations could be made more effective, which we call upon the United Kingdom Government to support—especially ways of extending the diplomatic and other preventive work of the Organisation, its Secretary-General and the other UN agencies. Obviously what we said was not comprehensive. There are United Nations missions and activities around the world which we did not get near and some of those may turn into demands for heavier commitments of resources before very long.

We are at a critical moment. There is a tug of war between the belief that the United Nations can solve all the post-cold war problems as they grow and the belief that the United Nations had lost credibility in various areas, including in Yugoslavia and particularly in Somalia. The Americans say that they are going to pull out on 31 March whatever happens—and heaven knows what will happen after that. There could be some very dark developments in some of these areas.

There are regions of success. Namibia prospers as a result of United Nations efforts. The United Nations is withdrawing in Cambodia and it looks at the moment, although this may be a dangerous prediction, as though a more peaceful order will prevail. However, there is nothing but defeat and setbacks in other areas.

With those mixed feelings, with some caution about over enthusiasm and hope that the United Nations can be reformed, we set the report before the House. I hope that it will be valuable and useful to hon. Members as we contemplate this vast business of peacekeeping, with all its expenses and frustrations, which lies before us in ever growing quantity.

4.48 pm

Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda)

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) and his Committee on a most comprehensive report on an extremely important and difficult subject. Over the next few years, the report will be regarded as absloutely essential to how the United Nations develops.

I also thank the Government for choosing this aspect of the Foreign Office estimates to be discussed. The debate enables hon. Members to examine many of our international commitments. We do not normally have such an opportunity. Also, the debate allows us further to re-examine the role of the United Nations in this post-cold war era, with the background of the Select Committee's valuable report.

The debate also encourages interested hon. Members to come to the House on a Monday, when there is only a one-line Whip and when there will probably be only one vote, to advance their interests in respect of many countries. The Government participate in a very wide range of peacekeeping activities within the United Nations.

I must admit that, not being an expert or an accountant, I lost my way somewhat when I examined the estimates. I thank the Foreign Office officials for their generous help in filling in the gaps—literally. Some sections of the estimates, particularly those dealing with international organisations and peacekeeping forces, are not clear to the lay person. Perhaps the Government could do a better job in presenting funding figures in the same currency, providing more comprehensive explanations of expenditure, and advising when assessments correspond with projections.

Our present commitments are comprehensive and world wide, but they are also different and reflect different involvements. As the right hon. Member for Guildford said, one cannot anticipate problems or what one needs to do to try to resolve them. One of the biggest issues that we fact—it is mentioned in the report—is when and where the United Nations could and should be involved. When does it have, as the French call it, le droit d'ingerence, or the right to interfere?

In his "Agenda for Peace", Dr. Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary-General, suggested that it was time for the United Nations to consider fighting natural disasters as well as man-made ones. However, the continual question is whether an ostensibly global organisation should infringe the national sovereignty of affected nations when their own Governments do not meet their needs. That question is much easier to answer when it is applied to natural disasters or humanitarian crises, but it is much more difficult to resolve, as we have seen in Yugoslavia, when sanctions and military force need to be deployed.

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee suggested some guidelines that should be drawn up for humanitarian assistance, but the Government pointed out—yet again, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman—in a most inadequate response to the Committee that such guidelines would erode the flexibility of the United Nations to respond to emergencies. However, it is obvious that the present system is not working. Some guidance is necessary, but only to reassure a Government or areas that come under scrutiny or need action that they are not being picked out for special treatment and that nations are responding objectively.

Sir David Steel (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the universal declaration of human rights gives the basis for such an alteration in guidelines? It is a later document than the charter and it emphasises that individuals and communities have rights under whatever nation state. That should be the starting point of the guidelines.

Mr. Rogers

I accept that that point could be considered, but the Select Committee and the Government, in fairness to them, realise the enormous difficulty in drawing up guidelines. Bearing in mind the report to which the right hon. Member for Guildford referred, one could make a very strong case for interference by the United Nations in the affairs of this country, particularly in respect of Northern Ireland. I do not know whether Parliament would agree to that.

The right hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel) should bear that point in mind when it comes to interfering in the affairs of sovereign states. After all, the United Nations was founded on the principle that member states are sovereign, that their boundaries are inviolate and that it would be wrong to interfere in the affairs of a member state.

When discussing the United Nations and peacekeeping, it would be wrong to ignore or overstate the part played by non-governmental organisations. The commitment, dedication and humanitarian work of NGOs is unquestioned, but a lack of both funds and Government support often prevents them from fulfilling or completing their tasks.

In a written answer on 16 July, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said that the Government do not earmark money for British-based NGOs and that money is neither given directly to NGOs nor specifically to United Nations programmes for the funding of NGOs. Perhaps the Minister will say whether that is still the Government's policy. I am sure that other hon. Members agree that the ability of NGOs to act swiftly in providing humanitarian aid is not only crucial in relieving suffering but could obviate the need for more formal United Nations intervention, even of a non-military kind.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg)

I am sorry, but I do not quite understand the hon. Gentleman's question. On occasions, money is made available to NGOs to spend in countries of concern. That happens quite frequently. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is seeking an answer to a different question. I did not quite follow the line of his question—I apologise.

Mr. Rogers

On 16 July 1992, a written question was answered by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. He said: We shall continue to consider on their merits requests from British non-governmental organisations to fund specific projects … We do not earmark for non-governmental organisations any specific part of our contribution to the United Nations programme."—[Official Report, 16 July 1992; Vol. 211, c. 968.] The Government should re-examine that policy and perhaps set aside a small amount for NGOs to ensure that relief operations can begin in the interval between the emergence of humanitarian crises and the decision of member states to send in a United Nations mission.

Mr. Jim Lester (Broxtowe)

If the hon. Gentleman analysed the facts, he would agree that the Governmnent have consistently used NGOs more and more each year, as they are very relevant to certain countries and certain conditions. If the hon. Gentleman analysed the Foreign Office estimates, he would find that non-governmental organisations have had more and more money each year to carry out the work that we all agree is necessary.

Mr. Rogers

The hon. Gentleman may be right—I confessed that I had difficulty in wading through the estimates. However, I looked for that specific matter, and it is in a special section. If the hon. Gentleman examines it, he will see that money is not specifically earmarked on a year-by-year basis for NGOs, but that is not to say that money is not given on specific request.

As we know, the end of the cold war brought about a completely different international situation. There was a period where there were clearly defined roles and interests, but now there is a great deal of uncertainty. We also know that the United Nations has never functioned as originally intended because of the bipolarity in the exercise of the veto when interests were threatened. The Security Council of the United Nations was able to make firm decision on only a few occasions—for example, with regard to Palestine, Korea, the Congo, South Africa and the Falklands.

The passage of resolution 678 in 1990 with regard to the cold war led everyone to hope, as the right hon. Member for Guildford said, that the United Nations could fulfil the constructive role envisaged by its founders and perhaps positively create a new world order. Unfortunately, since then—partly because of the accelerated break-up of totalitarian regions—the number and complexity of conflicts has meant that the United Nations has been asked to fulfil tasks that, for many reasons, it is unable to do. Of the 27 peacekeeping operations undertaken since 1948, 13 are still under way and eight have been launched in only the past two years.

I am sure that we can recall all the relative optimism when it was agreed that the United Nations should be used to resolve the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Indeed, last year, the right hon. Member for Guildford told the House: The Select Committee took the view that our hopes must rest on the United Nations as an effective force. It may have to remain in Yugoslavia for some time."—[Official Report, 5 March 1992; Vol. 205, c. 464.] That comment expressed hope, but it also realistically anticipated despair—an anticipation which has been fulfilled. One cannot see a resolution to the problems in the former Yugoslavia—but that is true in almost all instances. Most of the problems in which the United Nations has become involved have remained unresolved. In Bosnia, peacekeeping forces have an inadequate mandate and are too small to be effective.

In Cambodia, the elections were monitored and the United Nations will now withdraw, but the UN was still unable to cope when one side did not accept the result. At present, the difficulties between the Khmer Rouge and the elected Government are still on the table. In Somalia, a massive force is unable to resolve the problems because of the lack of administrative and government structures and a mandate that is not clear. In Western Sahara and Angola, the same inabilities persist.

An analysis of those relative failures shows that there is a common theme in all the situations. The Security Council of the United Nations was not able to act decisively and quickly, its mandates were inadequate, its resources were inadequate, and the problems and political aims were not clearly identified. Those shortcomings raised the whole question of the future of the United Nations, its role and its effectiveness.

As the right hon. Gentleman said, some people now question and criticise the United Nations as an institution. Some talk about using other institutions and structures to resolve conflict and, indeed, creating new structures to achieve that objective. Fortunately, a vast majority of politicians and countries realise that there is no real alternative to the United Nations. What is also evident from analysing the issues that have been resolved by the United Nations is that regional organisations have not been able, for various reasons, to do much about the problems either.

Neither the European Community nor the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe is able to stop the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia. In Angola, Somalia, Mozambique and the Sudan, the Organisation of African Unity has been unable to resolve the conflicts. The Organisation of American States is still unable to deal with several crises in its hemisphere, especially in Haiti.

Obviously, the answer lies in increasing the effectiveness of the United Nations, both internally by improving its decision-making processes and making resources available to implement decisions taken, and externally by reviewing its relationship with member states and the regional groupings of those states. We believe that there is a role for regional organisations, either independently or in conjunction with the United Nations, in resolving most conflicts, which are, after all, almost always regional.

We know that peacekeeping and peacemaking can be brought about not only by sanctions and the use of force but by such means as arms control, disarmament and confidence-building measures, improving the economic and social conditions in the areas of conflict—that is perhaps ignored and not invested in—using effective preventive diplomacy and providing efficient peacekeeping mechanisms.

Undoubtedly, the present resources and energy of the United Nations are spread too thin. Member states still prefer action that is low cost with a limited commitment. As the right hon. Gentleman said, it is much easier for the United Nations and its member states to rely on economic sanctions of debatable efficacy which are often broken and unenforceable, and unlikely to address the structural problems of the political systems at which they are directed.

As well as the vast increase in the activities of the United Nations, the concept of peacekeeping is undergoing profound change. That area is under active review not only in the Select Committee's report but in the report entitled "Agenda for Peace" of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. That report is sensible, realistic and challenging.

The Secretary-General proposed that members of the United Nations must provide resources to implement the potential decisions that are given in the report. For example, he suggests that the United Nations should move from peacekeeping to peacemaking, including crisis prevention and the preventive deployment of troops; that peacekeeping should be expanded to include the imposition of sanctions and involve the training of civilian police in politically neutral military forces; and that more effort should be made in post-conflict peacebuilding which is essential to ensure that peace, once established, takes firm hold.

Those proposals would require substantial changes within the United Nations. But whatever changes come about, all the other reforms of the United Nations are irrelevant without financial reform. In September 1992, an international advisory group on United Nations financing observed that the United Nations lived from hand to mouth. The committee, which was chaired by Shijuro Ogata and Paul Volker, made some simple suggestions: all countries should pay their assessed United Nations due on time and in full; interest should be charged on late payments; the working capital fund should be doubled from the present level; and other measures should be introduced to improve the financial efficacy of the organisation. Those issues are highlighted in the Select Committee's report.

Whatever is finally agreed, there is an urgent need for a link between peacekeeping operations and the process of political settlement, and for a strengthening of the mandate of peacekeeping forces to ensure the security of personnel and prevent parties to the conflict from impeding the conduct of operations. If the United Nations is to be more effective, it must develop the intelligence-gathering facility referred to by the right hon. Gentleman. It is grossly unfair to criticise the United Nations for its operations in certain areas of the world, because it simply does not have the facility to gather intelligence so that it can plan its role in any area almost on a day-to-day basis.

The Opposition are absolutely committed to a future role for the United Nations. We firmly believe that the creation of a new world order—indeed, world peace—relies on an effective international organisation. The search for other structures, for example, such as that that we see in Europe at the present time in relation to NATO and the Western European Union, are not incompatible with the function and role of the United Nations, but they cannot and will not be a substitute for the United Nations itself. I believe that the report by the Select Committee is of significant importance and will be used in any future discussions about the role of the United Nations. But it is important that the House gives unequivocal support for the United Nations and for its development as an effective institution for world peace.

5.10 pm

Sir Michael Marshall (Arundel)

I am sure that the whole House is grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor), Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence, for the documents that are before us, which clearly underpin so much of our debate today. The whole House will recognise, as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) said, that, in many ways, the documents can be seen as important reference works when we look at the grave problems of United Nations peacekeeping activities around the world.

As we are under pressure of time, I shall be brief and concentrate my remarks on the challenges facing the United Nations and its direct British support in the peacekeeping role in Bosnia. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out so vividly in his article in the Sunday Times yesterday, there has been a tendency for media attention to drop away, in that rather sad way we see when somehow it becomes yesterday's news.

All the signs are that the problems in Bosnia are worse now than at any time. The estimates which were made last year for the possibility of half a million dead because of starvation—which, thank God, were not realised—have become a real concern and possibility in this much harder winter. This is happening at a time when military activity has been stepped up and when there is a feeling that there is a fight to the finish. Against that background, I strongly support what the estimates imply in terms of additional and increased activity in United Kingdom assistance in peacekeeping and in disaster relief for Bosnia.

I shall concentrate on the degree to which the efforts of the United Nations, our Government and national resources may be backed up by parliamentary endeavour. As I have said, I recognise the important role that is played by the two Select Committees, whose reports we are considering. I recognise, too, the roles that are played by others who are represented here today, including the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and by many of our colleagues involved in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and in the Council of Europe. I do not seek to make any special claim for initiatives to which I and the organisation that I have the honour to lead in the Inter-Parliamentary Union can lay claim.

I returned yesterday from Geneva after a meeting at the weekend of our executive in which we tried to decide how an international parliamentary mission might be of use in this grave situation. Like so many others before us, we have found real difficulty in identifying practical and effective steps to end the tragedy. However, we are conscious of the fact that the mandate which was given to us by 125 Parliaments, which was brought forward at our conference in New Delhi in the spring, clearly called on us to hold consultations on human rights and to support efforts for peace in the region.

As a result, I took the opportunity in June to accept invitations from the Speakers of the Parliaments of the former Yugoslavia, now Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia, to visit them. That was as a direct result of their membership of the IPU. Following our latest discussions over the weekend within the executive of the IPU, it is clear that there is a strong feeling that we should now make an effort to add to that a dialogue, through first-hand experience in Bosnia, particularly in Sarajevo—although we have no formal links as such with Bosnia.

A number of elements have become clear from all the discussions we have had during our meetings over the weekend involving the 13 countries represented on the executive. The problem is by no means confined to the countries in Europe. The concerns, especially for the Muslim peoples of the former Yugoslavia, are widely shared by our membership. Attempts are being made to find practical methods and to achieve co-operation between north and south. At the same time, we do not wish to be seen simply to be going on for "me-tooism" or to get in the way of those involved in the critical task of disaster relief.

In that particular task, it is clear that our country, our military forces and those who support them are playing an outstanding part. We asked ourselves what were realistic objectives for a mission of this kind. It is important to understand the unique nature of our links with the country of Yugoslavia—Serbia Montenegro—which, because of its continued membership, meets us regularly. We have access to it, yet it is in a situation which shows a weakness of the United Nations—it has been effectively ruled out of any activity in the General Assembly.

Such opportunities for activity are virtually nonexistent, and the country's links are confined to technical committees such as the Economic and Social Council. It seemed to many of us that there were opportunities to pursue, for example, the issue of war crimes in discussions in Belgrade, and that, recognising that war crimes were by no means confirmed to one of the three protagonists, those talks should be extended to discussions in Zagreb, with the added interest and support of Slovenia, with the Parliament of Ljubljana, which has been particularly constructive in the dialogue.

Because we recognise many of the anxieties that have been expressed by hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Minister, about the United Nations' difficulty in taking action on war crimes, particularly with respect to access to those identified, it seemed appropriate to try to work out a range of proposals which we hoped would help. We came up with three objectives. The first was to encourage the promotion of domestic prosecution of alleged war criminals who found themselves on the territory of any of the three states under the appropriate Geneva conventions.

The second was to promote mutual assistance between parties in criminal matters involving grave breaches of the Geneva conventions and protocol 1—for example, additional protocol one, article 88—and co-operation with the United Nations under additional protocol 1, article 89. Although I cite those technical details, in the interests of time I will not spell them out. Their deterrent effect will be familiar to many who are in the House tonight.

Thirdly, it seemed to us that there was an obvious opportunity to promote better respect for human rights in all the countries that would be visited by such a mission; but, particularly in Bosnia Hercegovina, we felt that, although in the overall sense we were looking at human rights, we should clearly devote every effort to support peace efforts. That included support for our own military, and others on the ground.

I have therefore written today to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, seeking direct support by Her Majesty's Government in facilitating the mounting of such an expedition. It is envisaged that it will be made up of representatives from Australia, Argentina and Scandinavia. with my own oversight as president and possible involvement in leading the delegation, in whole or part, depending on logistics and the opportunity to fit in with others in the mission.

Although we will also seek the support of the United Nations through our Geneva headquarters, the reason for seeking support from Her Majesty's Government to what essentially is an international expedition stems in part from past experience; we had outstanding support in the visits made last June to Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford said, we have all found that our diplomats and those in the field have had a particularly useful and well-organised approach to providing access not just to the people whom we might normally expect to meet but to the media, opposition parties and others who want to put forward a more critical line than we would simply receive if we met those representing the Government parties.

In all those arrangements, it is proposed that our mission should be staffed by the head of the IPU presidential office in London, whom I shall mention, no doubt much to his embarrassment. Mr. James Radcliffe is well known to many hon. Members as an example of what, through secondment from the Foreign Office, it is possible for an international parliamentary organisation to achieve in a partnership between Government and Parliament.

I am aware of the efforts of others. I make no special claim that our mission can produce something dramatic, but the point must be fairly made that our group, because it mirrors the United Nations, has a broader spread than any other international parliamentary organisation. It has a proud history of foundation by a British and a French parliamentarian more than a century ago. It may be able to demonstrate, as many in the Chamber will agree, that parliamentarians can undertake international tasks.

I hope that it will be seen as an example that gives the lie to those who regard such activities as frivolous or part of the travel club syndrome. The nature of such international representations from countries that have no obvious and direct linkage with the problems of the region shows how such problems can be considered and worked upon in the wider international parliamentary community.

Any mission such as this, which has the opportunity to see and encourage at first hand the staggering efforts of those working for relief in Bosnia, is to be welcomed. Having seen the work of our people as part of UNPROFOR in Zagreb, I am anxious that we should extend that work, especially to support the United Nations command headquarters in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

I hope that such a mission will command the general support of the House and of Her Majesty's Government. I recognise that I am raising a matter of which I have given my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister virtually no notice, but it is a small example of the way in which parliamentary diplomacy can supplement preventive diplomacy, as urged on us by the UN Secretary-General. I hope that our mission will be seen not only as a contribution to the work of the Select Committee and the estimates which are before us but as something on which we may build in years to come.

5.22 pm

Mr. Calum Macdonald (Western Isles)

I agree with what the hon. Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) said about the mission that the IPU is hoping to undertake. I wish it well, and I hope that it gets the co-operation that it needs from the Foreign Office. It is important that we have not just one-way traffic between Parliaments in the west and elsewhere—for example, the Balkans—but two-way traffic. I remind the hon. Gentleman that it is next to impossible for the Members of the Bosnian Parliament in Sarajevo, a city under siege, to respond to invitations to visit other European countries. It is as important to break that aspect of the siege of Sarajevo—the spiritual siege of Sarajevo—as it is to break the material siege.

The right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) spoke of the high hopes at the end of the cold war and of how those hopes have been disappointed. As he stressed, it is important not to overdo the gloom. The opportunity for a more proactive, more interventionist role in regional conflicts, provided by the end of the cold war, is still there. The end of the cold war did not mean the end of those regional conflicts and disputes and they are no less complicated or intractable.

However, one important dimension has been removed from them, and that is the fear that intervention could lead to the wider entanglement of the two rival super-powers. The removal of that dimension provides the international community with an important opportunity, which it has to grasp and of which it must take full advantage. Over the past couple of years, we have run up against various obstacles and difficulties with the mechanisms and procedures to try to deal with regional conflicts, principally the mechanisms of the United Nations.

Before I say anything about those difficulties, let me add that, in trying to be more active in responding with help to resolve regional conflicts, the outstanding principle that we must defend is that of non-aggression. We must maintain respect for internationally recognised frontiers. The words "internationally recognised" are perhaps the most important in that phrase. We must not distinguish between frontiers in terms of whether they are thought to be artificial or of recent establishment, that they might be seen by some to be unfair, that they might divide communities or that they might lead people on one side of a border to wish that they were on the other.

We cannot bring those factors into play when we try to maintain the principle of respect for internationally recognised borders. One of the causes of our failure in the Balkans is that we tried to distinguish between borders and frontiers that we felt were more durable, more just, more correct and more defensible and those that we thought were more artificial. We cannot make those distinctions. If we try to do so, we shall quickly find ourselves on a slippery slope.

Not many borders in Europe, particularly in eastern Europe, would stand up to the kind of scrutiny and examination that some people have tried to use on the new borders in the Balkans. The key has to be that if the borders are recognised by the international community, they must be maintained by the international community. I fear that the fact that we have not maintained that principle in the Balkans has been a great blow to our hopes of the new world order.

Mr. Mike Gapes (Ilford, South)

Is my hon. Friend arguing that the situation in former Yugoslavia would have been resolved if people had taken a different attitude to the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, or is he arguing—this is how I interpret his remarks—that it does not matter what the historic lines on maps are, we can have a process of almost permanent instability so long as some people somewhere think that they should have "self-determination" and that everybody else should recognise that? I was not entirely clear which road my hon. Friend was following.

Mr. Macdonald

It was neither, which shows that I was not getting the point across. I was trying to say that, whatever border is internationally recognised, that is the border which the international community should be defending with every means at its disposal. We should not distinguish between borders that may be internationally recognised but are difficult for us to defend and those that could be argued by some to be an artificial creation or a recent creation.

Some of those attributes may attach to all borders, but if we are to maintain international order the international community must be prepared to rigorously defend any borders that it has recognised as a legal border, no matter how recently brought into being. If the line has been recognised by the international community, the international community must defend it. If we fail to do that we will be on a slippery slope. We will end up making excuses about certain conflicts and certain kinds of aggression by putting forward the argument that the aggression does not matter so much because the border is recent, controversial or open to dispute.

Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport)

Is it not more complicated than that? I accept the main thrust of the hon. Member's argument, but is there not another case? In Cyprus, for instance, the two sides fought themselves to a standstill, and the United Nations is quite properly monitoring the line along which they did so. That was not an internationally recognised border until the war caused it to be one.

Mr. Macdonald

The key point is that the international community still does not recognise that border. That is a line between two communities which was determined by aggression. The international community has rightly refused to recognise the line that has been created, and continues to insist that the original border of Cyprus, the original integrity of Cyprus—as recognised by the international community before the fighting—must continue to be the base point.

Mr. Rogers

I agree with the general thrust of my hon. Friend's argument, but I am not sure how we would put it into operation, for example, in the former Yugoslavia. When do we stop the clock? In 1945, one of the subscribers to the United Nations was the country called Yugoslavia. Is my hon. Friend now arguing that the function of the United Nations should have been to support the Government of Yugoslavia in maintaining their sovereign territory, or do we move the argument forward two or three years, or 20 or 30 years, until we get to a time when Yugoslavia is broken up, and say, "Well, those are now the boundaries that have to be defended, and the United Nations should acknowledge and support them"? I accept the general thrust of my hon. Friend's argument, but there are enormous difficulties in following it in such a simplistic way.

Mr. Macdonald

The question of internal borders is very difficult. While we all support the principle of self-determination of nations, communities or minorities within states in its broadest sense, we must be careful not to allow support for the principle of self-determination to become automatic support for the principle of secession. It is important that we try to maintain the integrity of nation states, which are the building blocks of the international community.

The constitutions of some nation states allow for various parts of those states to secede. Similarly, the international community may recognise the constitutions of those states as well as the federal constitutions of various parts of those states and their right to secede. It could be argued that, from 1974 onwards, the republics within Yugoslavia had a constitutional right to secede. I agree that we must be careful not to allow our respect and support for minority rights and for the principle of self-determination of communities to lead to an interminable fracturing of existing states. That is a danger which we must guard against.

My hon. Friend is also right that the principle I am putting forward is, in many ways, a simplifying principle. Unless we try to put forward such a simplifying principle, any hope of maintaining a consistent line and policy when we face the challenges that will come from eastern Europe and elsewhere during the rest of the decade will disappear. It will then be difficult to maintain the kind of stability and order that we seek. If we allow disputes to arise, and the resolution of them by aggression to succeed, many borders in eastern Europe could be disputed. That is unfortunately what we have done in the former Yugoslavia.

As to the United Nations, the problems that we have seen over the past couple of years have diminished our original optimism. Those problems can be divided into three categories: lack of material resources for the United Nations, the problem of its internal organisation when it comes to peacekeeping, and a certain lack of will when faced with various conflicts that we should try to do more about.

As to the material resources of the United Nations, there is no doubt that those available for peacekeeping have to be built up. A recent report of the United Nations revealed the startling statistics that its peacekeeping budget in 1991 was less than the combined budget of the New York fire and police departments. That was in a year when there were already several peackeeping operations in place around the world. There is no doubt that the budget is utterly inadequate for the tasks that the United Nations will be asked to perform during the rest of the decade.

The right hon. Member for Guildford raised the point about the United Nations Organisation. The United Nations lacks an independent intelligence gathering capacity and has difficulties with command and control of United Nations operations. Another great problem is the lack of co-ordination between forces that are unused to working with each other and have different levels of equipment and training.

I visited NATO with a group of colleagues earlier this year, and we were told by General Sir Richard Vincent, the chairman of the military committee, that, in deciding the number of troops he thought necessary for the implementation of the Vance-Owen proposals, he had to take into account all those various deficiencies in the United Nations organisation. Given those deficiencies, in order to do its job the United Nations has to deploy many more troops than would otherwise be necessary.

The important point about standby forces has already been made. We must look more and more to regional organisations to help to carry the load for the United Nations. We should be looking to regional organisations in Africa, Asia and Europe to share some of the burden. We in Europe have to take a very hard look at how we organise our forces, particularly in the European Community.

The European Union now has more than 2 million men under arms, yet it protests its absolute impotence and inability to act to sort out regional conflicts in Europe without massive help from the United States, particularly with ground troops. Such a position is unsustainable and the European Union must look towards integrating its forces, particularly in an era of diminished resources all round.

The third factor that has led to a decline in optimism about the abilities of the UN is the difficulty met in imposing political will, as has been obvious in the Balkans. I do not believe that it has been the failure to impose military will that has held western Governments back from intervening in the Balkans on a grand scale. My conversations with General Vincent and his predecessor, General Eide, have convinced me that a lack of political will has been the key to the failure of the West to intervene more aggressively in the Balkans.

Western Governments had hoped that the conflict in the Balkans could be contained, that the war in Bosnia could be limited to Bosnia and that it would eventually burn itself out. That hope will be dashed in months and years to come. Our failure to intervene at an earlier stage in that conflict, perhaps during the bombardment of Dubrovnik, means that when we do eventually intervene with military forces—I am sure that that will be necessary—the operation will be far more painful than it would have been had we intervened earlier.

Even those who disagree with me about the need for military intervention in the Balkans must agree about the importance of maintaining the flow of humanitarian aid to the region. A couple of colleagues and I visited Sarajevo in October and we saw the privations caused by the siege. The aid that is getting through is nothing like enough to relieve the population.

The figures may sound impressive: 6,000 flights delivering 60,000 tonnes of aid by air to Sarajevo in two years. That should be compared, however, with the 40,000 tonnes of aid that was delivered in one month by air to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf crisis. More tellingly, it should be compared with the 200,000 flights that delivered more than 2 million tonnes of aid to Berlin in 1949—a city which suffered a shorter siege than that of Sarajevo. Such comparisons raise a giant question mark about the serious intent of western Governments' aid efforts in Sarajevo and elsewhere in Bosnia.

I have raised this matter with the Foreign Secretary. The Minister of State has written to me to explain that an attempt will be made to increase the tempo of the airlifts to Sarajevo. He stressed the difficulties that have been encountered because there is only one flight path in to and out of Sarajevo and because no night flying is allowed due to the supposed greater dangers that such an operation poses. He argued that that one flight path meant that planes were given a 30-minute time slot to land and take off from Sarajevo.

Such excuses are inadequate. I do not see why it is not possible to establish more than one flight path and to organise night flights to deliver aid. I do not know why each plane needs a 30-minutes time slot when planes land at Heathrow every couple of minutes and planes landed every minute and a half during the Berlin airlift. Those excuses are not credible and I fear that western Governments' seriousness of intent in delivering humanitarian aid is no greater than their seriousness of intent in maintaining international law and the principles previously enunciated in the Balkans.

5.44 pm

Sir Nicholas Bonsor (Upminster)

As my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) said, the Select Committee on Defence published a report on the United Kingdom's peacekeeping and intervention forces on 9 June and the Government replied on 3 November. I should like to take this opportunity to refer briefly to our report and to draw to the attention of the House a couple of our specific proposals.

It is a pleasure to agree entirely with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) about the need to support the role of the United Nations. It is the only international body that can possibly give legitimacy to the peacekeeping operations which various countries are attempting around the world. If we allow the United Nations to fail, we will go down the route that we followed in the 1930s with the League of Nations and, in the end, the world will once again descend into a massive conflict and an era of instability. The United Nations must be supported and Great Britain has a particularly useful role to play in providing our share of that support.

It also gives me great pleasure to agree with the Ministry of Defence—I do not always find myself able to do that, nor does the Select Committee on Defence—about the wisdom of not attempting to earmark specific forces for use in the United Nations arena. Were we to do so, we would fall into the trap of trying to anticipate the unanticipatable and provide forces for something that might never occur.

It is important to train specifically the forces that will be used in United Nations peacekeeping in certain areas. I welcome what the Government said of that requirement in their reply on 3 November to the Select Committee's report: It may be necessary to refine some skills (for example, environmental hygiene, first aid and mine awareness) and to teach some new skills (such as mediation, conciliation and integration with non-governmental agencies) which would not normally be required for military operations. In this context, it may be helpful to think of peacekeeping as a separate environment (in the same way as jungle, mountain or Arctic operations) for which trained forces need specific familiarisation training in order to be as effective as possible. That is a good analysis of the need to train our forces to enable them to play a full part in peacekeeping. Our experience in Northern Ireland makes us the world leader in providing that kind of training and producing the forces that are capable of fulfilling that role.

I also welcome the fact that the Government affirmed in paragraph 39 of their reply that employment in peacekeeping operations should enjoy a high status and stated: We are keen to deploy high quality personnel to such 36appointments".

I am still concerned, however, about the way in which United Nations operations are funded. We are in great muddle about providing the funding for the forces that we use in various peacekeeping roles. Because of our current deployment in Bosnia, for example, the Ministry of Defence is left with a big bill for enforcing the no-fly zone with the Jaguars and the Ark Royal group in the Adriatic. That bill is met from the defence budget.

I understand that the Ministry of Defence reclaims UNPROFOR costs—"additional" ones only, I believe—from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which, in turn, needs extra money from the Treasury to meet that claim. We all pray that, in due course, the United Nations will reimburse us, but that seems highly unlikely to me. The flow of money takes an extremely circuitous route and the Select Committee recommended: Additional financial provision should be made available to the Ministry of Defence specifically for peacekeeping expenses in the next public expenditure survey. It was not.

The Government reply to the Defence Committee stated: The relevant interdepartmental financial arrangements have existed for some years, and are clear and well-understood by the Departments concerned. They may be understood by the Departments concerned, but I do not think that the logic behind them was understood by anyone else. The Select Committee on Defence, with, I hope, the support of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, would like that to be reviewed. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, will join that request.

I cannot believe that it is in the interests of the Foreign Office occasionally to find sums levied through it by the Ministry of Defence. For example, in Cyprus, some of the money that is claimed from the Foreign Office by the Ministry of Defence errs on the side of over-generosity. The cost of the Ferret squadron that was with the United Nations forces in Cyprus was charged through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at £4.3 million a year. Fond as I am of asking the Ministry of Defence for more money, I find that sum hard to justify in those circumstances. I hope that we shall find a more sensible way to fund our United Nations requirements and to stop the circuitous route by which it is done.

I am conscious of the fact that many of my hon. Friends want to speak, so I shall briefly consider two specific areas where there are United Nations peacekeeping forces at the moment—Cyprus and Bosnia. The Select Committee on Defence visited Cyprus in May and found the Canadian forces on the point of withdrawing, as were the Danes. At that time, Britain was dramatically reducing its contributions and no substitution had been found for the Danes. The thin red line between the Turkish and Greek sectors was looking extraordinarily thin. I am glad to be able to say that an Argentine contingent replaced the Denmark troops. None the less, there is a sad lack of forces between the two communities in Cyprus.

Mr. Lester

Is not one aspect that concerns people on the subject of putting troops into Cyprus the fact that it has taken an inordinately long time to reach any solution? I met Canadian officers who had begun as lieutenants and have now returned as brigadiers because they were there for so long and there is still no further move to settle the problem.

Sir Nicholas Bonsor

I accept my hon. Friend's point. It has taken a long time to find a solution. I am not sure what the solution is or whether my hon. Friend would care to offer one. I am certain that the conclusion that should not be reached is one in which the Greeks and the Turks begin fighting each other in Cyprus.

When we returned, we expressed our concern that the Ferret scout car squadron, which was with the United Nations forces, was being withdrawn and was not replaced at that time by any other armour. The reconnaissance squadron was withdrawn from the sovereign base area and, at the same time, the armour that was hitherto held by the 34 Squadron of the RAF regiment was being replaced by Landrovers.

At that time, the only armour left to any of the British forces in Cyprus were the Ferret scout cars, which the commander had the presence of mind to transfer from the armoured squadron to the infantry regiment and to train some of the infantry to drive. There was at least some armoured cover in the event of trouble. There has been a proposal, although it has not been dated or allocated numbers, to send some Saxons out to the sovereign base areas.

When we made our criticisms, the Ministry of Defence said: The security situation is much more settled and, put simply, UNFICYP has less to do than in the past". That statement must have been drafted, if not published, before the Greek elections, because that is certainly not the case. From all the news that I have received from that part of the world, it seems that the new Greek Administration are likely to be much more aggressive in their support for the militants in the Greek Cypriot community than their predecessors. I am seriously concerned that if the United Nations showed any sign of weakness in its determination to keep those communities apart, we might find ourselves again facing serious problems.

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

Is not the role of the United Nations in Cyprus more than a question of keeping the two communities apart? Is not its equally important function to be able to introduce some confidence-building measures? Is not that what the United Nations is doing at the moment—trying to open up Nicosia airport and use the military zones as a point of contact for the two communities? It is not just a question of keeping the two sides apart; we need to get them together.

Sir Nicholas Bonsor

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I am not trying to deal with the issue in that way. I am concentrating on the military consequences of United Nations participation in the military arena and I am presenting the report of the Defence Select Committee. In the broader sense, we must seek through different negotiations to reach the stage—which we have not yet reached—when United Nations forces become unnecessary. That is a separate and more important facet of the problem in Cyprus.

I am also concerned that the Cyprus problem must not be allowed to become a catalyst, by which the two eastern members of NATO—Turkey and Greece—find themselves in military conflict. That would have an extraordinary wide effect on the whole NATO security position and on the security of the eastern end of the Mediterranean. We must keep sufficient United Nations forces there until diplomatic negotiations succeed, to ensure that there is not a flaring up of military or generally aggressive antagonism between the two Cypriot communities.

There seem to be two clear objectives for the United Nations to follow in Bosnia—to limit the conflict so that it does not spread to Macedonia, Kosovo and through the eastern Mediterranean countries and to find a solution whereby Bosnia can be divided in a way that is equitable, sustainable and acceptable to all three communities in that devastated country.

I visited Bosnia in March and I have never seen such a desolate and inhuman place. All natural human feelings seem to have disappeared. I read a letter from a serving soldier in which he described it as being like the kingdom of Mordor—all sense of justice, humanity or religion seems to have been thrown out the window and all three sides are behaving with unacceptable bestiality towards each other.

In those circumstances, it is extremely hard to see how a solution such as the one that I have outlined as necessary can be found, but I wish Lord Owen and his team every success in their endeavours. Sooner or later, the participants must become war-weary and reach some kind of arrangement so that the conflict can be brought to an end. When that occurs, I have no doubt that the United Nations must move in and enforce the newly agreed areas and divisions so that the position can be stabilised and all three communities learn to live in peace—if not together, at least next to each other.

In the meantime, I believe, as does the Committee, that the humanitarian role that our troops perform magnificently cannot go on indenfinitely. The troops in Vitez are surrounded by forces that are likely to become more directly hostile to the United Nation forces in their midst. There must be a clear time limit within which we shall have to withdraw troops if no solution can be found along the lines that I have suggested. I do not believe that we can keep our humanitarian forces in place in Bosnia for much longer. How long that will be is a matter for Her Majesty's Government, but I should be reluctant to accept a decision to keep our forces there through another winter. However, I would be equally unlikely to wish to remove them now, as they still fulfil a useful humanitarian role this winter.

Those are the two major United Nations commitments in which our troops are involved, and there are few others, which is one reason why I do not especially look forward to the defence review. The defence requirements are clear and unarguable. The requirements are that we look after Northern Ireland, that we look after our interests in Germany and NATO and that we produce troops for the United Nations when we are requested to do so and when it is within our capability and in our interests to comply.

We currently have few other commitments. Our commitments in Cambodia will soon be finished. We pulled out of Sinai a year ago. In their reply to the Defence Select Committee report, the Government announced that they had decided to withdraw our 15 officers from MINURSO, the United Nations mission charged with facilitating a referendum in the western Sahara. I believe that it is right that they have done so. We sent only two Hercules to Somalia. In retrospect, we might have been better advised to play a slightly bigger role. Our advice might have been helpful in obtaining a more precise definition of the targets in that area.

We have no commitments other than those that I have outlined. However, there is no doubt that we shall have others. The way international affairs are going, I am sure that the United Nations will ask us to participate in missions—if nowhere else, certainly in Bosnia once peace is declared. We shall be asked to help enforce the peace agreement. The United Kingdom would be requested to send at least a brigade and probably substantially more. We would find it almost impossible to comply with that request, certainly for any length of time, without seriously disrupting our other defence commitments.

I welcome the Government's statement in paragraph 27 of their reply to our report setting out the terms on which they would be prepared to give further support to the United Nations. They said: Requests to participate will continue to be considered case by case in the light of other commitments, available resources and foreign policy objectives. Specific factors taken into account include the likelihood of the operation achieving its stated aim, whether it can be expected to contribute to a lasting political settlement, and whether it calls for capabilities that British forces are especially well able to provide, and whether the objectives and mandate proposed for the peacekeeping force are clear and precise. I am glad that I did not draft that sentence. Its grammatical weakness speaks for itself. I hope that the requirements for the peacekeeping force will be clearer and more precise. The Government continued: The cost and likely duration of the mission are also important considerations … We can confirm that full consideration is also given to the scarcity of particular assets, and the disproportionate impact of supporting a number of small operations. Those criteria are well expressed. They are the ones that the Government should follow.

My anxiety is that, even in the case of Bosnia, which is fairly predictable, we could not fulfil the requirement that we are likely to be asked to fulfil without impacting badly on our other commitments. I am also worried that the number of small conflicts to which we are asked to send some peacekeeping forces disrupts badly our ability to train our armed forces for their primary role, which is to defend us in time of war. It is almost impossible to get together a brigade, let alone a division or any larger unit, to train artillery, infantry and armour together because of the number of commitments which each of those sectors is called on to fulfil in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

The proposal of the Defence Select Committee, which I endorse, is that there should be an increment in our armed forces sufficient to match the likely overall requirement of United Nations peacekeeping, just as we have an increment for leave, for training abroad and for the times when a soldier is away from his unit for various duties. We should do exactly the same thing on a larger scale for United Nations commitments so that although we do not earmark soldiers, sailors or airmen for United Nations peacekeeping activities, at least we can be confident that we have the number to do so whenever necessary without disrupting all our other military commitments.

6.3 pm

Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Hillhead)

I am not sure on what basis the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) opened the debate, but it is appropriate in any case that I should apologise to him and to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for missing much of his opening speech. I was unavoidably detained.

Although the Minister of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg), has temporarily left his place, I should like to convey through him to the Foreign Office staff, with whom many of us in the House have regular contact, my personal gratitude for the courtesy and efficiency with which they always deal with requests for information and assistance such as I have had cause to make of late. It is worth making the point to the House and to the public that we employ some first-class people in the Foreign Office in embassies around the world and in the offices in Whitehall. I wished to grab a moment to make that clear.

The main burden of my remarks relate to the peacekeeping operation which the United Nations are mounting with British support and British funds in, over and around Iraq. From my personal experience, we are creating devastation in and around that area and calling it peacekeeping. Some aspects of that peacekeeping greatly worry me and, increasingly, civilised opinion around the world.

I had cause at the weekend to call the office of the Minister of State to make inquiries, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), with whom I spoke several times at the weekend. The House will be glad to know that he is recuperating from his operation and hopes to be with us again in February. None the less, he is taking a close interest in parliamentary affairs from his sickbed.

He and I were both concerned at the weekend by reports that appeared in The Guardian on Saturday. On subsequent investigation, it turned out that the reports flowed from an item that was gazetted by the Government in the London Gazette on Friday—that the United Kingdom Government had sequestered £186,000 from funds which belong to Iraq and are frozen in this country. The Government have transferred those funds to the United Nations "in support"—I think that that was the phrase—of UN efforts.

Of course, it depends on the purposes for which the funds are to be earmarked whether I and others like me think that the sequestration is a good thing. I should like to probe the Government as part of a discussion of the general issue. It is strange to many of us that the item should have been gazetted on Friday and therefore presumably sent for publication before then, at the very time when the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) was in Iraq accomplishing the splendid achievement of convincing the Iraqi authorities to free the three British prisoners held in Baghdad who were subject to inordinately long and savage sentences for relatively minor transgressions of Iraqi law.

At the very time when we were throwing hats up for the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, the Government decided to purloin—it will be interesting to hear the Minister's description of the transfer if it was not purloining—£186,000 of Iraqi assets. At the same time, Iraqi citizens are suffering massively from the impact of the economic embargo.

The United Nations Security Council resolutions allow the sequestration of Iraqi frozen assets, but it is my understanding that they must be assets flowing from the proceeds of the sale of Iraqi petroleum or petroleum products paid for by or on behalf of the purchaser on or after 6 August 1990.

My information is that almost none of the funds that are being frozen and are available for sequestration by the Government fall into that category. Some of us are therefore suspicious that the funds were not covered by the UN resolution and we should be grateful for some elaboration. That seems to beg some questions.

First, is the money being transferred from London to New York to assist in the humanitarian relief of ordinary Iraqi citizens who have never voted for Saddam Hussein, have never had a general election or any opportunity to remove his Government from office and yet are suffering enormous deprivation as a result of the United Nations peacekeeping operation or, as I have argued, the UN devastation and continued humiliation of the state of Iraq?

The second question, which flows from the first, is that if money had been transferred for humanitarian purposes, has a deal been done in New York by Her Majesty's Government with the Iraqi Government, whereby the money was transferred to New York in exchange for those British prisoners? If there has been a deal, we should know about it and we should know what other deals may be in the pipeline. It goes without saying that £186,000 is a derisory sum in any case. I am not sure what United Nations efforts can be supported by the transfer of such a small sum; it seems to me that it would not even pay the telephone bills of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in the area.

Mr. Rogers

I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning that important issue. He has prodded my memory. Some time ago, I led the Opposition side on a committee that dealt with compensation for victims of the Iraq war. A couple of days ago, I read that the first category of people who should have received compensation from the fund set up by the United Nations—people who had suffered injury or the loss of a husband or wife—had not yet received any. I hope that before he sits down my hon. Friend will press the Minister on what the Government are doing about compensating those victims. I agree with my hon. Friend about the suffering of the Iraqi people, which he described so cogently.

Mr. Galloway

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I know that the Minister has heard him, is writing down the question and is doubtless formulating an answer.

The question on which I am seeking to press the Government remains: what is the money and has it been transferred for humanitarian purposes in Iraq or, to use the phrase in the London Gazette, has it been transferred to "support" United Nations operations of other kinds? For example, has it been transferred to support the military operations that are taking place around the Iraqi borders and in and over Iraqi territory? If that were the case, it was a needlessly provocative act to have embarked upon on the same day that a former British Prime Minister was in Baghdad pleading for the release of British citizens, quite apart from being wrong in principal because the Iraqi people have suffered more than enough already. Has the money been transferred for humanitarian purposes? That is what we want the Government to tell us.

I must press upon the Government the case that the devastation that we call peacekeeping, against and around Iraq, has already gone far enough. The Government ought to seize the opportunity that undoubtedly exists as the international ice, which has packed in and around Iraq during the four and a half years since the Gulf war, begins to crack.

When the hotels in Baghdad are full of Italian, French, German and Spanish business people; when the oil price has tumbled to about $13 a barrel in anticipation of the flow of Iraqi oil products to the markets; when there is a visibly increased and improved tempo in the United Nations, the Security Council and sanctions committee; and when the meetings between Tariq Aziz and Ralph Exus were apparently so successful that we might at last begin to see a light at the end of the tunnel, in the hostilities between the international community and the Iraqi Government, we ought to be seizing the opportunity to bring some relief to the people of Iraq. That would be a real measure of peacekeeping, rather than the devastation that we are calling peacekeeping.

As the Minister of State knows, my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and I visited Iraq in May. In a couple of weeks, I am going with Ahmed Ben Bella, the former Algerian leader, Mr. Ramsey Clark the former United States Attorney-General, and Members of Parliament from France, Greece and elsewhere on a mission to study further the devastating impact that the war, its aftermath and the economic embargo and blockade are having on the people of Iraq.

It has been said in the House before, but it bears repeating when we are discussing what type of peace is being kept in the Gulf today, that the malnutrition and sickness that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and I witnessed with our own eyes would have moved a person with stone for a heart, so terrible were the conditions. We visited hospitals where there was no medicine and no spare parts for the medical equipment. There was no electricity for operations and women were having caesarian sections without anaesthetic because none was available. The garbage lay uncollected in the streets—tonnes and tonnes of rubbish mounting up on every corner because the spare parts for vehicles to collect it do not exist and nor do incineration facilities.

The great waterways of the Tigris and Euphrates are unprotected and unprotectable by the authorities. They are teeming with water-borne diseases, which make children, old people and others more and more sick when there is no medicine or equipment with which to treat them. The Minister knows about the tremendous increase in marasmus, kwashiorkor and malnutrition of all kinds, as well as in polio and cholera, which is a result of the poisoned water that Iraqis in urban and rural communities have to use.

Iraq is a developed country which is being de-developed by the United Nations with our participation, using our funds to support the United Nations effort. It is being de-developed by the very Governments and countries who used to be so friendly with Iraq and its Government. The Conservative Members in the House this evening are a fairly civilised bunch, but none has sought to argue that case. For the record, I am a founder member of the campaign against oppression and for democratic rights in Iraq. I was marching, petitioning and picketing for democracy and against dictatorship there long before this and other Governments were converted to opposition to the regime in Baghdad. I stand in second place to no one in my opposition to the bestialities of that regime.

My argument is that the peace that we are keeping is not affecting the regime, which is stronger than it was four years ago. The peace that we are keeping is starving the ordinary people of Iraq, who have no means of defending themselves from our peacekeeping and no means of overthrowing their Government. Indeed, in their emaciated, depressed, hungry and sick state, they are much less able to overthrow their Government than they would be if the embargo that we call "peacekeeping" did not exist.

Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point)

Is not the point that, if the evil Iraqi regime were to get its hands on more resources, it would use them not to soften the circumstances of its people but further to oppress its people?

Mr. Galloway

It is perfectly possible for us, within the United Nations, to develop an agreement with Iraq whereby assets could be transferred—as that block of £186,000 was unfrozen and transferred to New York on Friday—with specific agreements about the purpose for which that money should be spent. It is perfectly within our power, and I assure hon. Members that the Iraqi Government would grab such an opportunity with both hands. Iraqi assets held in London could be spent with British firms on baby milk compounds, on medical, X-ray and anaesthetic equipment and on foodstuffs. We could supervise the purchase of those products here in Britain from British firms and transfer them for distribution, which could be checked in association with the Iraqi Government, to those who need it on the ground.

The Minister of State knows that the tempo that I have described is increasing and changing. Something is in the wind vis-a-vis the international community and Iraq. Why do we not unfreeze several million pounds, as we unfroze the £186,000 on Friday, and specify that they can be spent with British companies on those vitally needed peaceful products that will keep alive children, sick people and old people who are currently dying for the want of them?

I have detained the House for long enough. As well as answering my specific points about the £186,000, I implore the Minister, in the light of these new conditions and circumstances, to look at the matter again and encourage the United Nations also to do so.

6.21 pm

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South)

I shall not follow the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) by talking in detail about Iraq, but I am sure that the House has listened with great attention to what he said. May I simply say that, if there is a prime responsibility for the terrible suffering in that country, it lies with Saddam Hussein. It is important that we should all recognise that.

It is also important to recognise that if any of the atrocious conditions which the hon. Gentleman so graphically and movingly described are to be laid at the door of the United Nations, it is because we have not yet perfected—far from it—the art of peacekeeping and peacemaking. In the years ahead, we must consider how far the international community can tolerate the existence of a dictator like Saddam Hussein when it must go to war against him. To my mind, our greatest mistake two years ago, when the troops were about to go on the road to Baghdad, was not to have delivered an ultimatum for that man to get out in 48 hours, failing which we would continue.

I shall not pursue that argument at this stage because I wish to talk briefly about another issue that has been discussed by a number of colleagues on both sides of the House—the issue of Bosnia. That, too, brings into sharp focus the essence of peacemaking and peacekeeping.

It is now nearly two years since the international community recognised the existence of Bosnia as a sovereign state. One can argue about whether that was wise or foolish, but the fact remains that we did it. Bosnia was granted a seat at the United Nations and its Government, which, I remind the House, is multi-ethnic, was recognised, and is still recognised. Within Sarajevo today—difficult as it might be to believe—the Speaker of the Bosnian Parliament is Serb, while within the Bosnian Government there are Serbs, Croats and Muslims who still cling to the ideal of a multi-ethnic state. Theirs is the Government which the international community recognises.

It would be outside the terms and remit of this debate to discuss arms embargoes and armed intervention. We have all discussed those issues in the past months and the House is fairly well aware of my views. However, I shall not pursue those arguments today, save to say that we must always ask how morally defensible it is, on the one hand, not go to to the aid of a beleaguered or attacked state and, on the other, not to give it the means to defend itself. We have not resolved that moral dilemma.

Whatever one may think or say about what could have or should have been done—more than two years ago I wanted tough deterrent action to be taken when Dubrovnik, a world heritage site, was bombarded—we cannot escape the fact that, as an international community in the United Nations, as a European Community and as NATO, we have all failed. The sign of our failure—the 2 million-plus refugees in the centre of Europe; 200,000 or thereabouts killed, most of them civilians; the suffering and carnage; and the raping and pillage— beggars belief. That it should have happened less than 50 years after the end of the second world war to end all wars in our continent of Europe is a lasting disgrace and a shame on us all. That is not to impugn the sincerity or motives of those in the British or any other Government who as roundly condemn and deeply deplore all that as I do.

However, today we are discussing peacekeeping and the United Nations. The credibility of the international community is at stake if that sort of thing can happen within our continent of Europe in 1993. We have only to look for a moment at the result of the Russian election today to realise just how unstable our continent is and how many more Bosnias are just waiting to happen. I could be rebuked for omitting to mention some of those places, such as Georgia and Azerbaijan, where they are already happening. If we cannot, within the next few months —the time scale is that short—create a more credible and effective peacekeeping operation within the United Nations, the portents are dire indeed.

In a different context, hon. Members have referred today to Cyprus and the terrible problem that will remain until the Cyprus question is resolved, which could mean Greeks and Turks—two NATO allies—fighting each other. I remind the House that the same could happen in the Balkans if the shameful situation in Bosnia is not contained and we have war in Macedonia or Kosovo. If the Balkans go up in flames and Bulgaria is drawn in, Albania will be drawn in, and it is almost inevitable that Greece and Turkey will be drawn in on opposite sides. The stakes are as high as any that we have had to play for this century. How can we have a more effective United Nations peacekeeping operation?

In asking that question, I make absolutely no criticism of the leadership, devotion or bravery of United Nations troops in general or of British troops in particular. They have acquitted themselves with outstanding distinction. However, they have been carrying out an operation with their hands tied. Although resolutions have been passed in the United Nations that would have allowed them to take deterrent action against Serbia, and against Serbs within Bosnia, those actions have not been taken.

The hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Macdonald), who is not in his place at present, very bravely led a small group to Sarajevo. He told the House, as he told me privately, about watching the shells fired from Serbian placements into Sarajevo being counted by United Nations monitors, but nothing being done about them. We all know about the aid convoys that have been held up or turned back.

Only the other day a grotesque story was brought to my attention. The South African Muslim community had paid for a 130-bed mobile hospital, which currently is in dock just outside Bosnia. Despite all the forms that have been filled in and all the money that has been paid to provide private transport and so on, for four or five months it has not been allowed through to where it is needed. Only 10 days ago I sent a fax about that to Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and many others have also interceded, but still the hospital is not in Mostar, where it should be.

That sort of incident is an indictment of the effectiveness of the peacekeeping operation and can only be seen as such. The whole credibility of the United Nations is at stake. If we do not take action to ensure that the aid gets through, and if we do not have a massive airlift into Sarajevo this winter, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) said, hundreds of thousands of people could die from starvation and privation. It looks as though the winter will be very severe in a country where it is perfectly normal for temperatures to be below zero for week after week.

I say to my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister that it is desperately important that there is a more effective United Nations peacemaking and peacekeeping operation. Because the stakes are so high and because the things that could go wrong are legion, I suggest that the permanent members of the Security Council, of whom we are one, take the lead. This is far too important a subject merely to be on the agenda, even if it is permanently on the agenda. We need a summit meeting of the five leaders—or certainly four; I accept that China is in a different category.

The Presidents of the United States, France and Russia and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom need to sit down together and talk about peacekeeping and peacemaking within the United Nations context. They are all both contributors and beneficiaries, actual and potential.

Those who say to me that Bosnia is not a British or a European interest are talking dangerous nonsense. Of course it is a British and a European interest that peace should be brought to our continent and that the conflagration should not spread and become totally out of control. Define anything that is more in our interests and I will listen with amazement.

During this period of good will, when parliaments will not be sitting, there is an opportunity—the beginning of a new year—for the big four to get together and to try to hammer out some guidelines for peace and to work out how they can be implemented. There is an opportunity to give a pledge on the standby arrangement for troops—referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) when he opened the debate so splendidly—that can be made available. It is a positive and realistic suggestion that I hope will be heeded because it is in the interests of all that it should be.

The Chairman of the Defence Select Committee is not in his place, but I point out that the Government must pause and think very carefully about our defence expenditure. France has already done that. We have a good record, of which we have every right to be proud, of defending the interests of this country. The Government have no need to feel ashamed. However, we have cut too near the bone, and if we cut into the bone we will inhibit the effectiveness of the very matter that is the subject of our debate today—an effective international peacekeeping and peacemaking operation upon which, without wishing to sound over-dramatic, the very future of this planet depends.

6.36 pm

Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South)

The hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) spoke with feeling. I do not want to join those who make self-fulfilling prophecies, because the test of a prophet is whether his prophecy is fulfilled. However, the hon. Gentleman has underlined some important points and in particular has emphasised the necessity for clear thinking at this time. I wonder whether within two months the United Nations will have a programme in hand to guide us in future. Like the hon. Gentleman, I think that in that programme a clear objective is required on the role of peacekeeping and, above all at this time, the role of peacemaking and intervention.

I must tell the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) that I am not convinced that his illustration of Northern Ireland was good guidance on how the United Nations could intervene. It is not a matter of occasional claims of lapses in human rights or alleged human rights; it is a pattern of procedure where there are clear abuses of human rights. I was interested recently to discover that in the United States, the Irish green lobby said that the Brits were imprisoning Irish men in hell holes of concentration camps—yet when John Joe O'Docherty was extradited to the United Kingdom to serve his sentence and was asked by an American reporter what the prisons in Northern Ireland were like compared with those in the United States, he said that they were better because we care for our prisoners.

Mr. Rogers

I certainly did not use Northern Ireland as an example of when or how the United Nations should intervene. The right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) said that the convention on human rights should be adopted and could be a plan for the United Nations to act on. I said that some people might want to invoke the convention as an argument for United Nations inteference in the affairs of Northern Ireland.

Rev. Martin Smyth

I am glad that I gave the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to clarify the position. However, the record will show that the impression given was somewhat different. I understand his problem with reading financial statements and accounts. I have long since discovered that accountants are in a cabal of mysticism, concealing rather than revealing. We must probe to get answers at that level.

We are all in debt to the right hon. Member for Guildford because of the way in which he guided our thinking with his lucid introduction of the Select Committee's report. I echo his tribute to the work of Britain's permament representatives in New York, including Sir David Hannay and his staff. I was a member of a recent parliamentary delegation to the United Nations that praised Jan Eliason. However, thereafter he resigned. That was a loss to the United Nations and I regret whatever was the cause of that happening. All members of our cross-party delegation were most impressed by the calibre of Mr. Eliason.

Global security has become a problem. In that context, Britain is a medium-sized power with a developed sense of global responsibility. I would not want us to opt out of that responsibility but I believe that we must meet it realistically. The Government say that the United Kingdom recognises that the requirement for varied peacekeeping and intervention forces is likely to grow, yet our forces are being reduced under "Options for Change" and the cost of equipment is rising.

I join the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee in pleading, as others have today, for a re-examination of United Kingdom forces. They are able to do the job required, whereas those of other countries cannot—particularly those relying on conscripted personnel with little experience of serving overseas or of facing danger. Most British service personnel have served abroad and confronted danger, and they expect to do so again.

The hon. Member for Rhondda, I believe, referred to Mogadishu. I share his views, because the reaction of British troops and of the population of Northern Ireland when they saw the despicable treatment of two of our soldiers at Casement park contrasts starkly with the reaction of the American military and American people when they saw such events in Mogadishu. That is why I believe that our forces are the best equipped in the world to deal with that situation. They have 20 years' service there. Despite the pressures on them, the number of allegations against them that merit being pursued can be counted on the 20 digits that the average man has.

Mr. Rogers

If I may correct the record, the reference to pictures of American corpses serving to bring home to the American people the situation in Somalia was made by the right hon. Member for Guildford.

Rev. Martin Smyth

I am grateful. I thought that I had identified the wrong speaker.

The scope for non-military peacekeeping and intervention is considerable. In that context, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Overseas Development Administration need urgently to re-examine their organisation, numbers and priorities. I doubt, however, that non-governmental organisations would be doing a service to the United Nations if they were to take money earmarked for the UN budget. Certainly the UN would not want that to happen.

We may pray that British forces will not be asked soon to take part in any large-scale amphibious peacekeeping or peacemaking operations, because we are still awaiting the new landing platform helicopter, which is not due for delivery until 1998. For the next five years, British amphibious capability will be threadbare—with potentially serious implications for United Kingdom peacekeeping and intervention forces.

As to funding, United Nations member countries seem ready to will the end but not the means. More and more responsibility is placed on countries such as the United Kingdom that have played their part. It is regrettable that while the United States benefits from the seat of the UN being in New York, it has not paid its way. I understand that the UN could be bankrupt by the end of December as it awaits funds from Washington delayed by procedural problems. Member countries must face reality and pay their dues up front instead of being in arrears. I am not speaking specifically of CIS countries, which have many problems—but they are among the laggards, in common with Japan. There is a great need for common agreement on how UN operations will be funded.

Reference was made to intelligencef gathering. Another major problem is operation and control. There is some evidence that UN headquarters in New York are locked at weekends. Is there a system for controlling operations then? We believe in democratic control of our forces. We acknowledge that they must act according to what is happening on the ground, but even then there should always be feedback to political control. In the absence of UN control, is NATO command and control used? Many countries are unhappy about that organisation's possible involvement. There is a problem with command and control, and with the way in which international contingents communicate.

If we are to be involved in peacekeeping and intervention, we must maintain a mix and balance of forces. The United Nations must properly finance its operations, and its interventions must have a clear objective and a set of operating principles. Finally, there must be an effective command, control and communcations system. If we are to participate, we should stress that other nations must be prepared not only to make decisions that involve us but to put their money and forces where their mouths are.

6.47 pm

Sir Jim Spicer (Dorset, West)

We owe a great debt of gratitude to my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and to my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee for their contributions to this debate and for the way in which, over the past two or three years, they have led their Committees with such skill and dedication.

This country has a proud record of working in support of the United Nations—Korea in the 1950s, Cyprus in the 1960s and 1970s, almost anywhere in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, and Kuwait and Bosnia in the 1990. No other country has a record to equal our own.

The remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) were most disturbing, because he clearly pointed to the problems that the United Nations will face in the months and years ahead, in part due to the changing attitude of the United States towards its involvement in peacekeeping world wide. That is the main problem that we have to face. While we cannot say it was an easy ride from 1945 until 1988, it was relatively so. During that period, the superpowers were in a position to keep control of events. Otherwise, a conflagration would have followed, as surely as night follows day.

We now have the collapse of one superpower, and the other seemingly prepared to go back on its natuaraal role and not become too involved. That is due to a sad situation in Somalia, as a result of which the United States has now said it will withdraw from Somalia on 31 March, no matter what happens.

The future is not bright. We shall have to operate again, hopefully in support of the UN. However, does the UN have the will to perform the duties and functions which can only be performed by the UN? If not, we are in desperate trouble. One need look no further than the borders of the old Sovier Union, and to places such as Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan. We can see what might happen in the future if we are not careful and if we are not prepared to intervene as and when it is necessary.

In that context, I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister of State whether those newly emerging states are seen by the UN to be truly independenet. Are they also seen by the Foreign Office to be truly independenet or are they seen to be within the sphere of influence of the old Sovier Union? It seems to me that, while we may say that they are independent states and while we may stand up for them in the UN, what is happening on the ground tells a quite different story.

It is quite right that, because we are talking mainly about Europe, we should discuss Bosnia at length. Most hon. Members have mentioned Bosnia, which has been the focal point of the debate. I will mention the situation in Azerbaijan. There are 7 million Azerbaijanis—1 million of those poor, unfortunate people are now refugees. They are living in squalor in tented camps and in conditions which, I would guess, are at least as bad as those which pertain in Bosnia and throughout other parts of former Yugoslavia.

What do we, or the British public, know of the situation in Azerbaijan? We know little because the media do not focus on events in Azerbaijan. They focus on Bosnia, so the public do not know about Azerbaijan. Twenty per cent. of the territory of Azerbaijan is occupied by Armenia. The United Kingdom is one of the few countries to have made strong representations in the United Nations about that intolerable situation. I understand that the United Nations has passed the conduct of affairs to the conference on security and co-operation in Europe, and the CSCE has visited the area.

There is a United Nations representative in Baku. The poor chap is virtually alone and has minimal back-up. The CSCE goes to Nagorno-Karabakh about once a quarter with a committee, and it then reports to the United Nations that the situation is intolerable. We say that we respect the territory and the rights of the Azerbaijani people to their own territory and that we stand by that, but nothing happens. Those 1 million people will remain in tents in the refugee camps in conditions at least as bad as, if not many times worse than, in Bosnia.

What is happening is the first turn of the screw. The Russians have "switched on" the Armenians during the past few months in pursuit of their own imperial interests. I do not want to labour the point, but Liberal Democrats are now in a strong position in Russia, and they do not in any way conform with the Liberal Democrats in this House. However, they are now a potent force and their declared aim is to re-establish the Russian empire by hook or by crook. They will be in total concert with the military—and Yeltsin owes the military—so where do we go from here?

What are we prepared to do if the Russians make up their minds to go back into Azerbaijan and insist on stationing Russian forces there again, as they are quite likely to do? Those are not just my words, and that is not just what I personally have seen in Azerbaijan. An article in The Economist last week was full of pessimism, making it quite clear that the Russian intention is to draw the border states back into the fold. However, that will not happen without active intervention from other parties.

If there is a risk of a major flare-up, surely it is in that possible conflict area on the borders of Russia, Turkey and Iran. Who knows who could be drawn into that situation? Does the United Nations have the will to intervene there in a way in it is not prepared to intervene elsewhere? If not, do the United States, Britain and France have the will to resume their old role and to act—hopefully under the United Nations umbrella—as and when necessary to keep the peace in the world? It is in our interest and in the interest of many other western countries to do just that.

I will make two final points. First, I am delighted that stand-by forces have been mentioned. However, if we are to have them, the composition and the equipment of those forces must be absolutely right. We still do not have the "mix and match" right within our armed forces for the type of operations in which we are likely to be involved. Naturally, as a Member of Parliament representing a west country constituency, I have to say that it is high time that the EH101 and Apache helicopters were ordered to support those troops.

Secondly, the worst thing that we can do within the UN is to look around and take troops from any country, whatever their quality. My right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) will know only too well from his visits to Bosnia the horrifying stories about the indiscipline and the general state of disarray of some of those contingents. If the UN is to play a part in the world in the future—it will be a tough role to play—for goodness' sake let us make sure that only forces which are disciplined and capable and under a good command structure can take part in operations mounted on behalf of the UN and, most particularly, where our own troops are to be engaged.

6.58 pm

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West)

I thought that the hon. Member for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer) was a little unkind to suggest that there was any similarity between the Liberal Democrats of this country and the Russian Liberal Democrats. I have not seen the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) ordering his troops into tanks and rolling those tanks towards London. I suspect that we will not see that happening, either from Russia or from the west country.

I will share the time available to me with my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes). I am grateful for a few minutes to speak, because I had the opportunity to visit the UN last week as a member of a small delegation from the Council of Europe. We met Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the President of the General Assembly, officials and ambassadors.

I came away with three distinct feelings. I was optimistic to know that the UN played such a central role in the world and that its position was assured in that respect. I was encouraged by the consensual feeling and general acceptance of the fact that the UN needed to be changed and that there was a willingness to achieve change so that it could deal with the greater challenges after the cold war. However, I was also pessimistic, because that requires resources and the complaint was that resources were simply inadequate.

There has been much talk here, as there was in New York, about the role of regional groupings. I suppose that we are fortunate in Europe to have a super-abundance of regional organisations like the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, NATO, the Western European Union, the Council of Europe, the European Union and the European Free Trade Association. However, there is a feeling that some of the activities of the European regional organisations are overlapping and duplicating the activities of the United Nations, and vice versa.

Given that there are finite resources, it is essential to achieve as much agreement as possible between the various organisations in respect of their functions, as that will save money on behalf of all the organisations. I understand that there is to be a Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations. The Council of Europe, with its responsibility for the Court of Human Rights, has great experience, expertise and knowledge of that subject. It would make sense to use the Council of Europe in terms of human rights in Europe.

There may not be a great demand for such expertise in western Europe at the moment — although I can think of one case, in which I do not want to become involved now, in respect of which human rights are undoubtedly being infringed. However, there is a great demand in eastern Europe for the services of those who can bring a greater appreciation of human rights. The Council of Europe could certainly do that.

The Council of Europe also has expertise in building democratic security. It can help to build democratic and political institutions in eastern Europe. It has a great deal of knowledge and it makes a great deal of sense that the United Nations should use that knowledge. It should not be duplicated.

I had an interesting discussion with the organiser of the United Nation's electoral assistance unit. The United Nations is facing a much greater demand for electoral assistance as countries move from totalitarianism to the democratic uplands. They need advice and assistance. Certain parts of eastern Europe require advice and assistance on how to set up political parties. That is not something in which the United Nations can become involved, but national Parliaments and regional organisations can certainly become involved in it.

The need for greater co-ordination in the observance of elections clearly emerged from our discussions. The elections in Russia were almost a farce. It seemed that the voters in Russia would find their way to the ballot box impeded by large numbers of observers from a range of international organisations, national Parliaments and Churches.

It is essential that there should be co-ordination. People should know why they are going to observe elections and their efforts should be co-ordinated by umbrella organisations. We can obviously provide such assistance through regional organisations such as the CSCE and the Council of Europe. If I had turned up to cast my vote in Moscow and had found the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker) blocking my way and acting as an undertaker, that would have caused me wry amusement. I am jolly glad that it was exceedingly cold for him.

With regard to peacekeeping, clearly the United Nations has too many problems to deal with at the moment. It is involved in 23 situations. Many hon. Members have said that we hear a lot about Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia because of media attention. However, there are many areas about which we are receiving no information. Thousands of people are being killed in Angola. The whole of the south, including large parts of Africa, is largely being ignored in this post-cold war situation. That must be regretted.

Media attention also places pressure on the United Nations to solve problems immediately. That cannot be done, as we have seen in Cyprus, where United Nations peacekeeping forces have been located for some 26 or 28 years.

All the peacekeeping operations we become involved in—no matter how many—will cost money. It is obscene that the world was prepared to spend $1 billion a day during the cold war in preparation for war, but is not prepared to spend a tiny fraction of that amount now to try to clear up the mess caused by the cold war and to provide the United Nations with the resources to do just that.

In his "Agenda for Peace", the Secretary-General suggested that there should be rapid response forces which he described as specific units. Such units are provided for under article 43 of chapter VII of the charter. As we have included powers for such provision in the United Nations, and as only now can the United Nations fulfil its proper functions as they were designed in respect of the Security Council, it seems rather short sighted for the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, endorsed by the Government, to say that it is not prepared to support the Secretary-General's call for specific units.

Such units would give the United Nations the ability to respond rapidly to situations before they develop into the kind of tragedy that we have seen in Bosnia. It is short-sighted of the Government and the Foreign Affairs Committee to have dismissed the idea—if not out of hand—and not to have gone along with it. I hope that there will be an opportunity for second thoughts. I believe that that is the way to make the United Nations peacekeeping and peace enforcing machinery far more effective. I will finish now and give my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South some extra time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris)

Order. The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) gives time to no one. I call Mr. Gapes.

7.6 pm

Mr. Mike Gapes (Ilford, South)

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) for allowing me to make an edited version of my speech, and I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me.

Reference has been made to the change from the optimistic prognosis of a few years ago to the current gloomy view about the UN and the problems that it faces today. I am by nature an optimist, but I have become very pessimistic over recent weeks about the future of the UN and the great demands that it faces.

The Secretary-General's report, "Agenda for Peace", refers to those demands and states: nations and peoples increasingly are looking to the United Nations for assistance for keeping the peace—and holding it responsible when this cannot be so". However, it is not fair to hold the UN, as an institution, responsible. The nation states refuse to give the financial, organisational, political and military means to the UN to enable it to do the job. It is not the UN's fault if it cannot do the job. It is not being allowed to do that job.

I spoke at a school in my constituency this morning. A young Muslim boy told me that we were practising double standards in Bosnia. He said that we were quite happy to intervene in Kuwait, but we were not prepared to do that in Bosnia. I believe that he is wrong. I argued forcefully that the two situations are very different. However, it is clear that there is a substantial body of opinion, both outside and inside this country, that holds that boy's view very strongly.

If there is a peace agreement in Bosnia—we know that the prospects for that are not good—and if the meeting on 22 December leads to a breakthrough, 50,000 troops will be required to enforce that agreement. From my conversations last week with leading people in the United States Congress and leading Democratic Senators, I am extremely doubtful whether the American Congress will agree to give President Clinton the 25,000 troops necessary for a United States contribution, which I was told a month ago in NATO, would be required in respect of the 50,000 troops.

The United States, Britain, France and perhaps the Benelux countries will provide those troops. If we do not receive the 25,000 American troops, there will be no way that European Union countries alone will ever find the necessary number. Even if we have a peace agreement, national Governments, for national reasons, will not provide the forces to make such an agreement stick.

The Foreign Affairs Committee's report contains 70 recommendations. Regrettably, I do not have time to mention even seven of them. The Foreign Office's response is woefully inadequate. It does not even refer to several recommendations. It is time that the House had a proper response from the Government. When we produce detailed reports which entail months of work and lots of travel and cost the House and the British taxpayer thousands of pounds, the Government peremptorily dismiss or cursorily answer the points that are made. We need far better than that.

It is time that all of us recognised the importance of the international dimension in our affairs. It is not adequate to have a three-hour debate on an issue of such importance. We need a much longer debate so that we can examine the proposals in detail and make an informed decision.

7.10 pm

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg)

The fact that we found it necessary to lay the supplementary estimates and, indeed, the important speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) emphasise the great importance that we all now attach to peacekeeping within the United Nations. Indeed, the number of troops deployed and the increase in costs that we have seen are powerful evidence of the expansion in peacekeeping. I shall provide a few figures to demonstrate that point.

In 1991, there were 10,000 troops deployed in peacekeeping; in 1992, the figure increased to 44,000 and at present the number stands at 75,000. As for costs, which are another measure of the increase, in 1991, they were $482 million, in 1992, they were $1.5 billion, and in 1993, they were an estimated $3 billion. The United Kingdom now has 2,800 troops deployed in peacekeeping operations. As the House will know, our contribution to United Nations peacekeeping, exclusive of our own troop costs, is more than 6 per cent. of the assessed cost. In 1992, our assessed contribution to United Nations peacekeeping costs was $93.5 million. Those are extremely substantial sums.

The Committee's report, which has been spoken to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford, is a very important contribution to the debate. Notwithstanding the changes that have undoubtedly taken place during drafting, many of the report's conclusions remain highly relevant and correct. I share, incidentally, the feeling of my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford that there is increasing unwillingness within the United States, for the reasons that he mentioned, to become involved in peacekeeping operations, and that causes me at least very grave concern.

There are a number of comments and conclusions within the report with which I strongly agree. To start with, I do not think that one should or can expect the United Nations to act wherever there is a crisis. Most certainly, there have to be criteria. I agree with the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) on the need for criteria, and that was spelt out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State when he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Indeed, there is also a need for us to determine our own criteria when trying to determine in which operations we wish to become involved. That will certainly take account of national interest and whether we have the right mix of forces for any particular task, and how the particular peacekeeping ranks in priority terms with other national defence commitments to be judged at the time.

Mr. Rogers

The right hon. and learned Gentleman raises a very important point if he is saying that Her Majesty's Government will pick and choose where they will participate in United Nations peacekeeping operations. In their reply to the report, the Government said: a United Nations peacekeeping operation should not be mandated unless there is a reasonable chance of success. It is a rather crude way of putting it, but is the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying that we should opt for easy operations and leave messy ones to others?

Mr. Hogg

I did not say that; nor does it stand up to analysis. We have about 2,400 troops in Bosnia. Although that is not a peacekeeping operation in the conventional sense, it is an extremely difficult one. Inevitably, one must pick and choose between operations. About 18 operations are being conducted by United Nations peacekeeping forces at the moment, and we are a party to three or four of them. I do not think that it would be right to participate substantially in more than that number. One has to allocate one's own priorities.

Another point that one needs to make is that a number of other organisations can be involved in peacekeeping. There was a very interesting debate in Rome, in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, about the circumstances in which the Commonwealth of Independent States, in particular Russian forces, can operate in the CIS under the authority and with the consent of the CSCE.

I agree strongly with the points that were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer) and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford about the need for improved control and command mechanisms. That point was made by the hon. Member for Belfast, South, as well. I agree, too, with the overall conclusion that it would be an error to allocate or to earmark forces on a permanent standby basis to the United Nations. That point received endorsement from my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor), the Chairman of the Select Committee.

We should also keep well in mind the importance, where appropriate, of trying to intervene early in developing crises by pre-emptive measures. That is the importance, perhaps, of the missions that have been sent by the CSCE to various countries within the former Soviet Union. It is also the importance of, for example, the appointment of the CSCE high commissioner on minorities or, to take the point of the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), the United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights. By pre-emptive action of various kinds it is possible to reduce the risk of conflict.

Mr. Tony Banks

It is very difficult, is it not, to respond rapidly when the Secretary-General has to ask Security Council countries or other countries to provide troops? The whole point of having units on standby and allocated was that the Secretary-General would not have to do that and that the troops could move in very quickly.

Mr. Hogg

That is right up to a point, but the problem that was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster is that it is jolly difficult to know exactly the nature of the requirement on the ground that one will encounter in a rapid deployment. One could have an awful lot of people hanging around doing awfully little and with skills which are not wholly appropriate if one opted for that earmarking or standby approach. I would not commend it, and it would involve substantial control and command arrangements which we simply have not yet come to terms with.

I now refer to some specific points. My right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford expressed grave concern—I understand why—about why our expert was not elected to the advisory committee for administration and budgetary questions. That was a disappointment to us. It is not, however, in any sense fatal to our capacity to influence decisions in that respect, not least because that committee advises the fifth committee. As my right hon. Friend knows, we have our people on the fifth committee to which the advisory committee is but an advisory committee.

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) did not like our presentation of the accounts— he was supported by the hon. Member for Belfast, South. He has a point, and I will see whether we can do something to improve the accounts. The hon. Member for Rhondda went on to say that the United Nations should intervene more readily in circumstances where national governments are not currently meeting a need in the country involved. That is an important point.

To some extent, we have already been pushing the frontiers forward in, for example, north Iraq and south Iraq. However, one must stand back and say that the actions of the United Nations will always represent and reflect to some degree an assessment of strategic interest on the part of countries in the Security Council. There must be genuine interests at stake which engage their concern sufficiently to enable one to rally a consensus around an interventionist policy. Many countries have grave doubts of principle—most notably China and India —about the intervention by the United Nations in the internal affairs of other countries.

Mr. Rogers

I do not understand what the right hon. and learned Gentleman means. Is he saying that, unless there is a specific national interest, Britain will not contribute to peacekeeping activities?

Mr. Hogg

I did not say that. Hon. Members must realise that the Security Council of the United Nations is in a sense an aggregate of independent states which will certainly determine where their national interests lie when deciding how they will vote in the Security Council. That is inevitable and right.

There are many countries where there are grave issues and discords, and serious civil wars, which would justify intervention, if we judged them exclusively on moral terms. However, we will not intervene and there is no pressure to do so. One only has to say "Tadjikistan" to oneself to realise the force of what I am saying. The majority of countries on the Security Council will not wish to deploy troops in Tadjikistan, notwithstanding the fact that the crisis area is a grave one.

The hon. Member for Rhondda—he was supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster —said that there is no real alternative to the United Nations and it is an error to look at alternative institutions. I go a long way with him, but not quite all the way because there are regional organisations that have an important role to play. We should not underestimate that role. The most important organisation in this context is the CSCE in the field of pre-emptive action—I mentioned the appointment of the CSCE High Commissioner of Minorities—and in missions designed to ascertain facts or promote settlements, for example, in Nagorno Karabakh, the Baltic states or Moldova.

Earlier, I referred to the Rome conference. There may be a possibility that the CSCE will be an instrument for approving peacekeeping operations by CIS forces in CIS countries. That matter must still be examined.

I shall answer the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West about the status of all CIS countries. Those countries are all sovereign independent states and we regard them as such. We do not in any sense regard them as part of Russia or as countries over which Russia has some right of intervention. They are absolutely independent states.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) spoke about Bosnia—and he was right to do so. I agree that the position in Bosnia is likely to get much worse this winter unless there is an early peace agreement. That emphasises the importance of the Geneva talks, the need for Serbs to make greater concessions on land and, above all—having regard to my rather bleak assessment of probabilities—the need to keep humanitarian routes open.

My hon. Friend raised a specific point about war crimes. He said that the republics in the former Yugoslavia should use their own law to try people for war crimes. I agree with that, but one does not need to invoke the Geneva convention; most people can be tried under the domestic legislation of the individual republic.

My hon. Friend has written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State with a proposal that we should start a mission. I have noted what my hon. Friend said—it is an interesting idea. We will certainly look at the suggestion, but I can give no commitments at this stage.

I agree with the proposition of the hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Macdonald) that the end of the cold war has made intervention easier and I understand the reasons that caused him to say that. I also agree with his broad proposition that we should stick to existing frontiers, notwithstanding the fact that many of them have been drawn in a fairly arbitrary and brutal manner. If we do not stick with those frontiers, what else do we have? To be honest, the principle of self-determination would lead to the fragmentation of the former Soviet Union and much of central and eastern Europe.

We must stick to the frontiers, subject to two provisos. First, where there is a genuine agreement of the respective parties to change the frontiers, so be it. It is not for us to stand in the way of genuine agreement. Secondly, I want to pick up one word used by the hon. Gentleman, because I do not know whether he meant it in the sense that it is usually meant. He said that we should "defend" existing frontiers. I start from the proposition that we should stick with existing frontiers, but I do not believe that the international community should go to fight on every occasion.

For example, one only has to consider the case of Azerbaijan and Armenia, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West, to see the truth of this. How many hon. Members think that the international community should go to war with Armenia? Yet so far as we can judge, Armenia has invaded Azerbaijan and expanded the Lutchin corridor substantially. I have that major reservation, although I agree with the hon. Gentleman's broad proposition.

The hon. Member for Western Isles and two of his colleagues came to see me about Sarajevo airport. I wish to ensure that we have the maximum use of Sarajevo airport, for all the reasons given by the hon. Gentleman. Following that meeting, I made an inquiry and an RAF officer went to Sarajevo to make a further inspection. We believe that all that can be done is being done to increase the use of the airport. A lot of work is being done on the runway and that is being expedited, but it is a small, ill-equipped airport and the problem is one of handling. To tell the truth, it is much better to rely on road transport when it can be managed, although we will try to maximise the use of Sarajevo airport. I disagree with the proposition that we are not doing our best now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster made an important speech. I am grateful for his support and I agree with much of what he said. He said that we should not earmark forces for peacekeeping, we need to change the training of forces and we should give a high status to peacekeeping operations.

I felt that the hon. Member was a bit unfair about Cyprus. It is true that we have been running down our forces in Cyprus—we still have a considerable number there; I think the number is 475 troops—but the running down reflected our assessment of diminishing risk. The operation has been continuing for a long time and we must accept that other countries have a burden to carry in this matter and it is not right to look to a continuous United Kingdom presence. To be honest, I do not feel embarrassed about the matter.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) made a number of points. I thank him for his kind words about the Foreign Office staff. They are much appreciated and will be passed on to the staff, even though they come from the hon. Gentleman.

A more important point relates to assets and prisons. Absolutely no deals were made, none whatever. That is not something that we would want to do and we did not do it. On the sequestration of assets, the position is that the United Nations Security Council resolution 778 permits member states to sequestrate Iraqi frozen assets related to proceeds of sale of Iraqi petroleum or petroleum products, paid for by or on behalf of a purchaser on or after 6 August 1990. The Treasury considers that approximately £186,000 of Central Bank of Iraq frozen assets held by the Bank of England related to such proceeds of sale, and the Bank considered, too, that there were no third-party claims against them.

Notice has been given of our intention to transfer—not yet done—to the escrow account, which will be used for a variety of purposes. Thirty per cent. goes to the compensation commission and the remainder goes to a variety of purposes, some humanitarian—some probably do not fall strictly under that heading—including food, medicines, the United Nations Special Commission, United Nations guards for convoys and the like. The Iraqi interest section now in the United Kingdom is aware of that intention and has been asked to make its comments.

Mention was made of the plight of Iraqis—perfectly true, their plight is awful. It is also perfectly true that, under Security Council resolutions 706 and 712, Saddam Hussein has a capacity to solve that problem. Those resolutions enable him to sell oil to a very substantial value, the proceeds of which will go to a variety of purposes, including the relief of humanitarian suffering in his own country. He has chosen not to do that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) was entirely right when he said that it is Saddam Hussein who must take the responsibility for what is happening.

Mr. Galloway

rose—

Mr. Hogg

I am afraid that I shall not give way, as I have only one more minute. I apologise.

I shall now comment on what my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South said about Bosnia. His position is well known and he has held to it consistently. he will forgive me if I say that, broadly speaking, I disagree with him. I particularly disagree when he says that we are all to blame and that it is a disgrace to which we all are party. It is not. It is a disgrace to which the active warring parties are party, not the rest of us. What is more, if one dilutes that proposition, one relieves the warring parties of responsibility. I can see that Mr. Deputy Speaker is about to call me to a stop, so I must finish.

The debate was concluded, and the Question necessary to dispose of the proceedings was deferred, pursuant to paragraph (4) of Standing Order No. 52 (Consideration of estimates).