§ 4. Jackie Ballard (Taunton)If he will make a statement on the situation in Kosovo. [54288]
§ The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Robin Cook)Since my statement to the House last week, Britain has remained fully engaged in efforts to implement the Holbrooke package. At the weekend, after hours of intensive negotiation, President Milosevic gave a detailed commitment to reduce the levels of army, police and heavy weapons in Kosovo to their levels before the conflict. Diplomatic observers in Kosovo report that several thousand security troops have left over the past 24 hours.
There has been a significant return of refugees to settlements in the valleys, and the UN estimates that numbers on the hillsides have fallen from 50,000 to around 10,000.
President Milosevic has shown some progress towards meeting the demands of the Security Council, but there is a long way still to go before we secure a self-governing Kosovo with its own elected leadership and free from repression from Belgrade.
§ Jackie BallardI thank the Foreign Secretary for that reply. I am sure that everyone hopes that President Milosevic will continue to pull back from the brink. I am also pleased to hear that thousands of refugees are returning to the valleys. However, anxiety remains about what the international community intends to do to ensure safe and unrestricted access to Kosovo throughout the winter months in order to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees and prevent thousands of deaths from illness and starvation.
§ Mr. CookThe hon. Lady is absolutely right to express concern about the position of the refugees. So many of their homes have been destroyed by the actions of the Serb security forces that, although returning from the hillsides may take them nearer to where they once lived, it will not necessarily provide them with shelter. The refugees are still at risk from cold, hunger and disease.
That is why we attach the highest importance to ensuring that humanitarian relief gets through to the refugees and why Britain, in particular, in the past week has provided grants to Care International for winter goods, to Oxfam for winter shelter and to Médecin sans Frontiéres for mobile clinics. We shall continue to play a leading role in the international effort.
§ Mr. Michael Trend (Windsor)Is the Foreign Secretary aware, that over the weekend, Alastair Campbell briefed the press in Austria? I have a transcript of that briefing, which said that the Prime Minister would tell the informal summit that
Kosovo showed us far too often to be dithering and disunited".To ensure that the Government can no longer be accused of prolonging that dithering, will the Foreign Secretary inform the House for how long NATO forces will be maintained at their current and commendable state of readiness?
§ Mr. CookI assure the hon. Gentleman that Britain played a leading part in building unity both in NATO and 140 in the contact group. If this country had not shown that leadership in securing agreement for the diplomatic track in the contact group—backed by a credible threat from NATO—we would not have made the progress that I have just reported to the House.
The North Atlantic Council is meeting to hear reports about progress on compliance, and I think that it is likely to conclude that Milosevic has made progress but has a long way to go yet. Therefore, I think that it is quite likely that we will resolve that we must keep our guard up. It is not yet the time to let that guard down.
§ Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife)If, as appears possible, it may not now be necessary to use the attack aircraft of NATO's air forces, would it not make sense to use NATO's transport aircraft to help to meet the priorities already established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees? Is it not the case that, in communities that were first razed to the ground and then looted, it is not only food and blankets that are required but medicines, equipment to restore essential services such as electricity and water, agricultural implements and building materials? If necessary, should we not have a Kosovo airlift to prevent the humanitarian disaster which we all dread?
§ Mr. CookI can certainly assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that, if the United Nations should approach us for support in the transport of goods to Kosovo, we would be very willing to consider that sympathetically because we would not want essential goods not to get through because of the lack of logistics. One of the reasons that we are anxious to get the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe verification mission up and running on the ground is precisely so that we can have those members of that team in every village and town, not merely to stand by and observe but robustly to intervene and make sure that they broker access to humanitarian goods and that the people of Kosovo are given the chance to come through this winter.