Sitting of 25 September 1992

Preamble
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRAYERS
  BILLS PRESENTED
    TREATY OF MAASTRICHT (REFERENDUM)
    Mr. Tony Benn, supported by Mr. Peter Shore, Mr. Dennis Skinner, Mrs. Alice Mahon, Mr. Austin Mitchell, Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, Mr. Bernie Grant, Mr. Ken Livingstone, Dr. Lynne Jones and Mr. Malcolm Chisholm, presented a Bill to provide for the holding of a national referendum, and for the procedure for the subsequent decision of the House of Commons, on the question of British ratification of the Treaty of Maastricht before Her Majesty's Government may lawfully adhere to that Treaty on behalf of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; and for purposes connected therewith: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 23 October and to be printed.—Bill 63.]
    RECALL OF PARLIAMENT BY MEMBERS OF ARLIAMENT
    Mr. Graham Allen presented a Bill to give a majority of Members of Parliament so requesting to the Speaker the right to require the recall of the House of Commons to discuss a named topic: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 23 October and to be printed.—Bill 64.]

    United Nations Operations
    Motions made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lightbown]
    [Relevant documents: Minutes of Evidence before the Defence Committee on 22nd September 1992 relating to recent and proposed deployments in the Gulf Region and in Yugoslavia, HC 188.]
    9.34 am
    Madam Speaker: Order. Before we come to the debate on the Adjournment, I must tell the House that I have imposed a 10-minute limit on speeches between 11.30 am and 1 pm. I hope that I shall receive the same co-operation that I had yesterday regarding speeches outside that time. for which I thank hon. Members very much.
    Mr. Max Madden: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. The large number of hon. Members in the Chamber today shows the support in all parts of the House for a debate on foreign affairs. There is considerable concern that we do not have more time available. I suggested yesterday that we should continue today until 4 pm.
    The terms of the motion are rather narrow and do not allow any debate on the middle east crisis, the position in South Africa or British aid to Pakistan following the flood disaster. We now understand that the debate is to be punctuated by a personal statement by the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor).
    Bearing all that in mind, will you, Madam Speaker, display your customary tolerance and understanding if in any interventions—I stress the word "interventions"—the Foreign Secretary is asked for some explanation on the matters that I have raised?
    Madam Speaker: Order. This is an Adjournment debate. Although I would not wish hon. Members to stray too far from the words on the Order Paper, I think that I might agree to a limited question or two on the matters raised by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that hon. Members will understand that and will keep to the procedures that we always uphold in the House.
    9.37 am
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Douglas Hurd): I congratulate the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) on his arrival, if that is the word, to the position of shadow Foreign Secretary. I very much look forward to working opposite him—I am not sure whether with him or against him; only time will tell—for a long time to come.
    I apologise to the House for the fact that I cannot stay until the end of the debate. I have two meetings at the United Nations with the Foreign Ministers of China and Iran and neither meeting is routine, as hon. Members may guess. I have already rescheduled them to a later time today, but I fear that I cannot shed them altogether. Indeed, it would be a pity to do so.
    Two years ago, the end of the cold war appeared to promise a better world—and for some months all the news appeared to be miraculously good. Matters appeared to have taken a change for the better almost overnight. Now, we see matters differently. The world post-cold war is in many ways a better place, but in others it is more unstable.

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    International order is threatened by problems left as a result of the cold war—older problems and challenges to the rule of law.
    The three subjects identified for debate today—Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia—are, perhaps, the three most tragic examples of that. I want to take stock of developments in all three areas during the summer and to look forward to where we go from here.
    Yugoslavia is a crisis in Europe and for Europe. There are few—we have heard a voice or two in the House in the past—who feel that, on the whole, we should pass by on the other side, because our essential interests are not at stake and because our chances of doing anything useful arc slim. I understand that point of view, but I do not agree with it. Many more people inside and outside the House, faced daily with the horror of Yugoslavia as presented in the press and on television, say that something must be done but are not specific about it. We must be specific in government and in the House. The killing and the suffering are on our doorstep and I do not think that we can detach ourselves from a sensible, realistic effort to bring that killing and suffering to an end.
    Let us step back for a minute and examine the background. Yugoslavia was created in 1919 to cope with a particular problem—the fact that 12 million people with very different histories were mingled inextricably in the north-west of the Balkans.
    Mr. Dennis Skinner: It was the common market of its day.
    Mr. Hurd: Oh, it was the common market, was it? I look forward to the hon. Gentleman's speech about the common market in 1919, and the creation of Yugoslavia.
    For 70 years the problem was not solved, but it was at least dormant—first under the monarchy, then under the communist regime of Marshal Tito. People were not free, but at least during those 70 years—except during the second world war—they were not killing each other. As the communist regime disintegrated, an effort—a worthwhile effort—was made to preserve Yugoslavia by consent. Sadly, that effort failed disastrously. Then the EC was persuaded by others, and by its own instincts, to try to help prevent total civil war and total collapse. The EC, however, is not a military power and it is still not fully equipped for joint action in foreign policy.
    How far have we got with that effort? Clearly, not far enough. We have kept at bay the old rivalries between the great powers of western Europe: the rivalries that helped to produce Balkan wars in the first decade of the century and culminated in the bloodiest war in all history—the great war. Now, at least, different European powers are not backing different clients in the Balkans. That is a negative achievement, but nevertheless we have avoided what might have been worse—more killings and more refugees. We have managed so far to prevent the conflict from engaging a wider area than the former Yugoslavia and setting back the clock of history.
    As I have said, however, that is a negative achievement. How are we positively helping to achieve peace? I feel that I must put in a realistic word at this point. We cannot dictate peace in Yugoslavia; none of us—Britain, France, Germany, the Community or the United Nations—has been in a position to sweep into the different republics, tell
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    them what their frontiers are, tell them who should govern them and instruct them in how they should behave to each other. We cannot act as a colonial power in eastern Europe. Bosnia will not be a protectorate of the Community.
    After the collapse of Yugoslavia, what remained were the six republics. They were the only surviving political entities. Their boundaries were not perfect, but anyone who looks at the map and sees the way in which people live together in that part of the world will know that there cannot be perfect boundaries. That is why the EC, followed by the UN and the London conference, quickly laid down two principles: no alteration of boundaries by force, and established rights for minorities within boundaries.
    It was on that basis that Lord Carrington began, on behalf of the Community, his thankless task as a peacemaker. That task was thankless because he and his team constructed ceasefires, and obtained signatures to ceasefires, that were never honoured. Nevertheless, they carried out a good deal of detailed groundwork, which will certainly be the basis for an eventual settlement. Their work is being continued today and I am sure that in the end it will provide the foundations for peace. During that period a fragile peace was established in Croatia, with the deployment of a UN force—UNPROFOR—containing 14,000 men, of which the British component is a field ambulance of 300.
    We cannot be assured about the position in Croatia. Some of my hon. Friends have visited the country recently and they will know that it may become increasingly shaky —particularly as the mandate of UNPROFOR nears its term in the early part of next year. That is why we must press ahead in Croatia with local arrangements and confidence-building measures.
    When I was in Zagreb in July, President Tudjman of Croatia mentioned to me the importance of securing an agreement that would demilitarise the Prevlaka peninsula and raise the siege of Dubrovnik. I pursued the matter in Belgrade and we arranged discussions and negotiations between the local commanders on board HMS Avenger in the Adriatic. There have been setbacks, but it now looks as if that local arrangement may actually take shape. I cite that as an example of what can be done.
    We now have 150 EC monitors throughout Croatia, under a British leader. I have seen for myself, as have other Members of Parliament, how effective those unarmed monitors—mostly young ex-army officers—can be in, for example, establishing confidence between village and village so that people can get back to rebuilding their houses and their lives.
    I do not need to tell the House how the storm then shifted to Bosnia. I shall not go into it, because we and our constituents have seen, night by night, that storm blow up into tragedy throughout the summer.
    Mr. Donald Anderson: Bosnia was predictable and predicted; Kosovo is still predictable. What is the international community now doing to prevent the tragedy in Bosnia from proceeding into Kosovo?
    Mr. Hurd: I am going to mention Kosovo later in my speech. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear with me until then.
    Once again, in the summer, ceasefires were called in Bosnia and once again they broke down or were never

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    implemented. The UN and EC therefore decided, with wide international support, to bind their efforts more closely together. That is why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Secretary-General of the United Nations marshalled the support and the machinery of the wider international community in support of the effort.
    This was not a once-and-for-all conference. It did not aim at a ceasefire-with immediate effect, because such ceasefires had proved in the past to be illusions. What it did was establish certain agreements and a framework for carrying them into effect. That new process—the international conference on the former Yugoslavia—continues its work, mostly in Geneva, under the co-chairmanship of Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen. I am sure that the House will join me in expressing thanks to those two particularly energetic gentlemen for assuming what is undoubtedly a frustrating but indispensable task.
    The conference is not about something abstract or bureaucratic; it is trying to do something humanitarian —to alleviate the suffering of victims of the conflict—and something political—to bring the conflict permanently to an end. Contrary to some predictions by the cynical press, it was agreed by all at the London conference that Bosnia Hercegovina should not be partitioned between neigh-bouring states. It is a country with recognised frontiers and it is entitled to work out within those frontiers how the different communities in Bosnia—Serb, Croat and Muslim —can in future live peaceably together.
    A wide range of undertakings were given and published in London, covering such matters as speeding up the delivery of aid, corraling heavy weapons, the cessation of military aggression and the holding of constitutional discussions. There has been some progress in carrying out those undertakings, but it is not adequate.
    In such circumstances, diplomacy obviously does not work without pressures. We believe that the main pressures still need to be applied against Serbia and Montenegro. That is not because other participants in the fighting—either the Croats or the Bosnian Muslims—are free from blame for some of the suffering, but, according to both our analysis and that of the international community, it was the Serbs, with encouragement from Belgrade, who started the fighting in Bosnia. It is they who carry the largest responsibility for the continuation of that fighting. That is why, whereas there is an arms embargo against all the republics, the United Nations mandatory trade embargo is directed against Serbia and Montenegro.
    The sanctions are having an effect. We believe that industrial production in Serbia has been roughly halved, overall trade is down by 50 to 75 per cent. and oil imports are down by more than 80 per cent. Those sanctions must be comprehensively applied. That is why we have ships in the Adriatic, including HMS Gloucester, which deter sanctions-breaking by sea.
    There has been a specific problem along the Danube. The Governments involved have asked for monitors to be stationed along their borders to help them to apply sanctions, which they say that they are determined to do. During the next fortnight, the European Community and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe will send three teams of experts, including customs officers, to Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania to advise local customs officers, pass on information about any breaches of sanctions to the sanctions committee of the Security Council and, by their presence in key positions, help to deter individuals who might cheat.
    Mr. David Howell: As my right hon. Friend said, it has been agreed that the Bosnian state should be upheld and it has been recognised that its existence should be maintained. Is it also right to uphold the rights of the so-called Bosnian Government—predominantly, BosnianMuslim—in their claim to rule the whole of the district?
    Mr. Hurd: They are the legitimate Government of the whole region. We urge them to enter discussions with the groups that are not fully represented in the Government, so that out of the discussions taking place in Geneva may come an agreement on how Bosnia can be governed and how the three communities can live together in peace. The Bosnian Government have replied that they can do that only if efforts are made to bring about a cessation of hostilities. Those two issues must be tackled together, as neither will work without the other.
    A powerful political debate is under way in Belgrade. I pay tribute to the courage and persistence of Prime Minister Panic in arguing for and taking steps towards a saner policy. I had a long talk with him two evenings ago. I do not doubt his courage and sincerity, but he has an uphill task. I am convinced that we need to maintain and increase the pressures on Serbia and Montenegro until that change of policy is an established fact.
    We are also anxious about the position of Kosovo. We accept that it is part of Serbia, but it contains a heavy preponderance of people of Albanian origin whose rights are not properly recognised. We are trying to get people into that part of former Yugoslavia. As the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) knows, the CSCE is in the lead on that and has managed to get some people in. However, I am not at all happy or sanguine about the position.
    We have emphasised in Belgrade that the denial of the sort of rights that the Kosovons enjoyed before 1988 creates the danger of another explosion that could set back all the efforts and the progress that is being falteringly made in other parts of former Yugoslavia such as Croatia.
    Mr. Mike Gapes: Has the Foreign Secretary seen the Financial Times today? It contains a report that the Croations are seizing territory in the south-west of Bosnia and preparing its partition. The Foreign Secretary has not mentioned that issue—will he comment on it?
    Mr. Hurd: I have mentioned the principle, which President Tudjman accepted—at Zagreb when I saw him in July, and in London—that Bosnia Hercegovina is a state with established frontiers. There is Croatian military activity in Hercegovina, just as there is Serbian military activity in other parts of Bosnia. There have been previous stories in the press about partition, but both the Governments involved have ruled that out—it is important that that should be so or we face the prospect of endless civil war in Bosnia.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer the question."] I have answered the question twice. I answered it before the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) asked it and I have now answered it again.
    Mr. Andrew Faulds: The right hon. Gentleman has made no comment on the malign influence of Greece on the non-recognition of Macedonia. Will he comment on that, as it is another extremely dangerous spot?
    Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I cannot cover every aspect of the issue, but he is right about the problem of Macedonia. We came to a conclusion at the Lisbon Council, which was obviously welcomed by Greece, but unacceptable to the Government in Skopje, as I found when I went there in July. I have asked one of our former ambassadors, Mr. Robin O'Neill, to try to work out an agreement that is acceptable to everyone by shuttling between Athens and Skopje. That is what is required, and we have not forgotten the problem.
    Suggestions have been made for military intervention on a bigger scale and for a different purpose than is now proposed. It is natural that people watching the atrocities on television, seeing the bombardment of Sarajevo and the emaciated figures emerging from the camps, should urge military action by air or land against those responsible.
    Personally, I felt and said that such action would have been morally justified if it could have been effective in bringing those atrocities to an end. Air strikes were the option most often put forward, and we and others considered that suggestion more than once. However, given the terrain, the weapons being used for most of the killing—which were not heavy weapons—the way in which civilians and military—Croats, Muslims and Serbs—live side by side and the likelihood that such military action would immediately bring to an end the humanitarian activities of the Red Cross and United Nations agencies, we and our allies and partners have come down against that option each time it has been considered. It would be easy to increase the casualty list without stopping the conflict—something which we must avoid.
    Mr. Paddy Ashdown: I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary and I am sorry to interrupt him in the middle of his speech. However, in view of the continuing use of aircraft by the Serbs for attacks on Sarajevo and other defenceless civilian targets, are the Government at least prepared to support the recommendation put forward, I believe, by the Americans that there should be an enforced no-fly zone over the contested territory of Bosnia?
    Mr. Hurd: There should be a no-fly zone. One of the undertakings given in London was that there should not be military flights, but there are. We are considering what sort of no-fly zone would make sense. I believe that Lord Owen and Mr. Vance hope to be in Banja Luka today. I certainly agree that the concept of a no-fly zone must be carried forward. It may be—this is Lord Owen's present view—that the best way of ensuring that is to have monitors on the ground, which is a suggestion that we are pursuing.
    Mr. Michael Colvin: I do not think that the objective of those who advocated additional military action was to escalate military war in Bosnia. The objective was to hit lines of communications and munitions factories in Serbia, to leave the Serbs in no doubt that any escalation or extension of their activities into neighbouring Kosovo or Montenegro would bring about an instant and harsh reaction from western powers.
    Mr. Hurd: That was the specific proposal made by my hon. Friend, with whom I have been in touch on the subject and to whom I am grateful. At present, we are not seeing huge movements of troops or tanks from Serbia to
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    Bosnia. We are seeing in the possession of Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia aircraft and artillery that has been left behind —a different position from that earlier in the year.
    In recent weeks there has been some occasional slackening of the level of fighting in Bosnia and Hercegovina. We cannot take much comfort from that, because it has simply allowed the humanitarian problem to emerge in all its bleakness.
    The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has registered more than 1.9 million refugees of the former Yugoslavia. Of those, 1.2 million come from Bosnia Hercegovina. She estimates that there are 700,000 refugees in Bosnia, 600,000 in Croatia and 400,000 in Serbia. Those are merely figures and they do not portray the physical suffering and misery which is being endured and which will worsen rapidly as winter descends.
    There has been a discussion and the international community is broadly agreed that refugees should be looked after as close to their homes as possible. That is not a do-nothing policy and it is certainly not a cost-free policy. It is a policy which the agencies, as well as most Governments, consider has the best chance to get people back into their homes to lead normal lives. It is not the absolute and, of course, there are exceptions, as we saw last week with the 68 seriously ill people who were brought to Britain from the camps in Bosnia. In those cases we have to act as swiftly as we can, but in the main we try to help people to stay as close to their homes as possible.
    In the past 12 months, Britain has given more than £14 million in bilateral humanitarian help to the former Yugoslavia. Again, that is merely a figure, but the vast majority of medicines being used in Sarajevo hospitals come from supplies sent by Britain. If we add to that figure our help through the European Community, the total figure for British aid to the former Yugoslavia comes to more than £35 million.
    However, it is not merely a matter of money and supplies. The main problem has been getting aid through and that is why, after much thought, we have endorsed the extension of the UN forces mandate under Security Council resolution 776. The force now has a mandate to get aid to all the people in Bosnia who need it, and not merely to those in Sarajevo, as in the original mandate. The decision to offer up to 1,800 British troops to help with that task was clearly not an easy decision to take. The British Government should never deploy British troops without careful preparation and assessment of what their role and objectives should be.
    That is a humanitarian task to help cope with a humanitarian disaster which will get worse. No one can have seen the pictures from Bosnia of the sieges of Gorazde, Bihac and Tuzla without realising the extent of the suffering and the need, and without realising that some military assistance is needed. For example, while UNHCR was distributing the first consignment of aid to Gorazde the convoy's route back to Sarajevo was mined. French soldiers with blue helmets cleared the path to allow the convoy to complete its mission. It is a sad and a bad thing, but the relief agencies have concluded that they need military help or they will not be able to relieve the disaster. The British contribution will be up to 1,800 strong and that includes about 800 support people.
    The Select Committee on Defence has naturally asked questions and received answers this week on the details of

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    the deployment. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will say more when he winds up the debate.
    Command and control and the rules of engagement must be got right. That is why we have a military team in Zagreb sorting out those details. The discussions are rightly in the hands of people who understand what soldiers need. Adequate arrangements have to be in place in advance of the arrival of the main party of British troops in early November.
    As we have made clear to the UN, the offer is for convoy protection only. We would not allow our forces to be used for other duties not covered by the present mandate without a pause for further reflection, and on the basis of a clear and effective concept of operations.
    As my right hon. and learned Friend will elaborate, our forces have to be able to defend themselves. Their guidelines will be clear. The Secretary-General and the Security Council have agreed that, in providing protective support to UN HCR organised convoys, the UNF'ROFOR troops concerned would follow normal peacekeeping rules of engagement. They would thus be authorised to use force in self defence. In this context, self defence is deemed to include situations in which our personnel are attacked by force to prevent UN troops from carrying out their mandate.
    Again after much discussion, NATO is providing many of the necessary assets in personnel and logistics to support the operation. Both NATO and the Western European Union have been involved in contingency planning for those operations, and they have co-operated well.
    I would not pretend to the House that we have seen the end of trouble in Yugoslavia or even a sure beginning of the end. Once old hatreds have been aroused, they are hard to put to sleep again. Stories of atrocities—some true, many false—enter deep into the consciousness of all concerned and influence actions.
    In the European Community we have recently learnt to reconcile differences in western Europe.
    Mr. Michael Lord: Is not the most important thing at this time somehow to stop the shelling of towns and villages? My right hon. Friend is right to say that the people of this country are appalled at watching that night after night, with UN observers doing nothing other than count the shells as they are fired. Are we really saying that no matter what happens in European countries quite close to our own, no matter what atrocities occur, there is no military action that we, the Community or the UN can take to stop the daily carnage taking place under our noses?
    Mr. Hurd: I have tried to analyse the military options. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that they have been considered often, not merely by us but by the Americans, by our European partners and by the UN. There are several options and I have not been through them all. I mentioned the possibility of air strikes against the hillsides around Sarajevo or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside (Mr. Colvin) suggested, in Serbia. The difficulty with all the military options, as opposed to the relentless and increasing pressure of sanctions against a country which is not equipped to endure them, is that in such terrain, with the intermingling of military personnel and civilians and of Serbs, Bosnians and Croats, it is hard to work out a practical scheme which would not merely
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    add to the number of people killed without ending the fighting. There is an added difficulty, which has been emphasised to us again and again; if we began to take that course of action, the humanitarian aid, which is now getting through, would stop and could not be continued. That is a damning factor against all those ideas.
    I am not saying that those ideas should not be considered from time to time. The position is so bleak that I do not believe that such ideas should be excluded indefinitely, but I have tried to set out the analysis until now. Neither we nor the CSCE nor the UN yet have the aptitude or the powers to sort out problems within central or eastern European countries or the countries of the former Soviet Union, and we must remember that what is happening in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia is being repeated in two or three countries of the former Soviet Union to the east of Europe, where there are no television cameras and only occasional visitors.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Hurd: No, I must get on. The tragedy of Yugoslavia came upon the international community just as it was beginning to realise that the end of the cold war did not mean the end of the problems of eastern Europe; it was simply the beginning of a new chapter. As I have tried to say, that does not excuse us from the effort to help, and I have sketched out how our country is responding.
    Other, older crises are still with us, and show no signs of final settlement. Two years ago the House was recalled from recess to debate our involvement in the Gulf. There the problem was simpler in many ways. Iraq had occupied Kuwait by force. It was a case of one sovereign state obliterating another and its aggression had to be reversed, which of course was done. Other problems remained and recently have escalated.
    Saddam Hussein continues to defy the resolution of the UN. He has obligations under Security Council resolutions; I am thinking of resolution 687, which deals with the inspection and destruction of his weapons. The UN special commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have made significant progress in finding and destroying Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons programmes, but there is much work still to be done and we believe that significant ballistic missile capabilities remain to be discovered. Therefore, we shall press ahead with those inspections under resolution 687.
    Saddam Hussein continues to repress his own population. Here again, there is a Security Council resolution—No. 688. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed concern and been effective in helping with the humanitarian problems in both north and south Iraq. If I single out one hon. Member I do not mean to be invidious, but I should like to pay tribute to the tireless efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson), especially in the south.
    I shall return to that subject soon, but I do not wish to leave out the personal tragedies which have befallen two British citizens—Paul Ride and Michael Wainwright—who have been given grotesquely severe prison sentences for minor immigration offences. As far as I know, there was no suggestion at either trial that the men were being accused of anything more than immigration offences—entering Iraq irregularly by mistake. The sentences imposed are out of proportion.
    Mrs. Alice Mahon: I thank the Foreign Secretary for his remarks about the prisoner Michael Wainwright who, in my opinion, is being held disgracefully. My colleague the MEP Dr. Barry Seal met the EC ambassador and I raised the matter with the Foreign Secretary when I met him with Michael Wainwright's family. Apparently, nothing will be done about the two men unless we release some assets. Is it possible that funds for the purchase of medicines could be released to the Iraqis so as to allow some form of negotiation for the release of the two men and end the torment of their families?
    Mr. Hurd: The hon. Lady made that point when she came to see me with Michael Wainwright's family. There is no problem about sending food and medicines to Iraq. As the House knows those are outside the UN sanctions. However, the problem about releasing assets is that there are many claims on those assets, and we might get into severe trouble if we started authorising the release of assets on which there are British claims. That is a difficult road to tread.
    Regardless of that, I believe that the House will condemn the way in which the Iraqis have behaved. They will not shift our policy by such action against individuals. That was ascertained and established during the Gulf war. None the less, we are doing everything possible to secure the men's release in different ways. I explained some of those ways to the hon. Lady, but there have been others since I saw her. We are especially grateful to the Russians who, through their embassy in Baghdad, have visited Paul Ride and Michael Wainwright in prison during the past few days and have established that, although the men are unhappy, they are not in poor physical shape.
    Mr. Peter Luff: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the extraordinary humanitarian gesture made by my constituent Phil Ride, the brother of Paul Ride, who has offered to change places with his brother, because of his medical condition? Is he also aware of the family's deep gratitude to Her Majesty's Government and to the Russians, for the access visits, which have considerably reassured them about the conditions in which the men are being held?
    Mr. Hurd: I am grateful to my hon. Friend; I know of his keen interest in the matter. Those concerned will have no great cause to be grateful either to us or to the Russians until the men are out of prison. That is our aim, and we shall seek to achieve it.
    The British have not been singled out for such treatment. Similar grotesque sentences have been imposed on three Swedish citizens who should also be released.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Hurd: No, I am sorry. I must press on.
    We continue, with our coalition partners, to keep up the pressure on Iraq to carry out in full the resolutions of the Security Council. Where it seems sensible we back up pressure with action. That is why on 27 August, with our American and French partners, we set up a no-fly zone in southern Iraq. That was clearly necessary because of the risk of a serious humanitarian emergency among the civilian people there. Although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West has said on the radio, the no-fly zone is not a complete answer, we shall continue to operate it as long as it is required. At least it
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    inhibits the air attacks on the Shias in the south which have done so much harm in the past. Six RAF Tornados are operating over southern Iraq as part of the no-fly zone exercise. Our business is to monitor what is happening there. We shall not take further action to build on that without returning to the Security Council, but we shall return there if it becomes clear that Iraq has not stopped its campaign of repression. So far, Iraq has not challenged the imposition of the no-fly zone, and so far there have been no incidents. So far, firm action seems to be achieving results. The underlying message that I am sure the House would want to leave is that Iraq, like every other country, must comply with all the Security Council resolutions which bite.
    Last but not least, I shall speak about Somalia. All right hon. and hon. Members who have visited that country in recent weeks have come back feeling strongly that what they have seen there is unique, even among all the horrors of a disorderly world. Although I was in Somalia for only a short time, I am glad that I, with the other two EC Foreign Ministers, went there.
    The city of Mogadishu shows that it has lived through a war, with rubbish and rubble on most streets, no electricity or other power, no water and no police. Makeshift graves are being dug in open spaces far too close to the wells; people are digging graves all the time. We were in Mogadishu where the conditions are the best, not the worst. Large numbers of children have been fed there for many weeks now. The city is the centre of heroic efforts by many agencies. We were told everywhere that what was happening in the interior, further up land, was far worse. My right hon. and noble Friend the Minister for Overseas Development and many other right hon. and hon. Members have been up land and seen worse.
    In Somalia we see the collapse of a state and of a society —a collapse of all the services that we take for granted. In that situation the UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross and all the myriad other non-governmental organisations are doing an herioc job. They are very hard pressed. We spoke to the representatives of those organisations, who talked about the situation elsewhere in Somalia. For example, they told us of the situation in the north, with which Britain has particular historical links. We have already provided help to Somalia's second city, Hargeisa, in the north, which was systematically destroyed and mined by Siad Barre's forces in 1988.
    What is happening in Somalia is to some extent a natural disaster shared throughout the Horn of Africa and all the areas of sub-Saharan Africa affected by the drought. However, what makes the plight of the Somali people so tragic is the behaviour of their so-called political leaders, who connive at the murder of their fellow citizens and the looting of their food and property.
    Mr. Barry Sheerman: The Foreign Secretary seems to be sleep-walking the House through three ghastly crises. Time and again I am reminded of a senior civil servant giving a report, not a world statesman who has the power to do something about the situation. When will the Foreign Secretary show some leadership and do something about ethnic cleansing and about the tragedy in the Horn of Africa?
    Mr. Hurd: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has just come in, but he cannot have listened to what I

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    have said. I have explained to the House what is being done in terms of money and men. I have been talking about hundreds and thousands of British people who, with our encouragement, are in all three of the countries which I have mentioned. Volunteers, Army officers and humanitarian workers are implementing the help provided by this country with money supplied by the House. In all three countries that represents a very substantial effort, undertaken with others. I have set out in full the details of what we are doing.
    Of course the tragedies persist. If the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) believes that suddenly, by voting extra money or sending extra men, we shall solve all those problems in all those territories, it is he who is sleep walking. I set out at some length—and I hope that I have not wearied the House—what we are actually doing in terms not of declarations, words or speeches but by people on the ground, on our behalf. The hon. Gentleman's intervention is not worthy of the Opposition Benches.
    Faced with the collapse of a society, it was right for the Security Council to set aside all the traditional arguments against intervening in the internal affairs of a country and to authorise the dispatch of UN forces to protect the distribution of relief supplies. We make it clear that the warlords who impede those efforts cannot be regarded any of them—as representing the legitimate authority in Somalia.
    We have been providing emergency help for Somalia ever since the fall of its former president—long before tjhe situation came to the attention of the media. Since January 1991, British aid has been worth more than £31 million, including our contributions to EC activities and the additional £7.5 million announced by my noble Friend Lady Chalker on 14 September. We were among the first to provide aid. Others have been equally forthcoming. The EC collectively is much the biggest supplier of food, and has made available more than 200,000 tonnes and 15 million ecu in non-food aid this year.
    Mr. Alun Michael: The right hon. Gentleman gave the clearest indication of the recognition by the British Government of our special relationship with the north-west, and that is welcome. Earlier, the right hon. Gentleman referred to other parts of the world, where lack of television coverage means that things remain hidden. Will he give the reassurance that is hoped for by Somalis in Britain and throughout the world that the British Government will give special recognition to our special relationship with the north, and that the right hon. Gentleman will take a personal interest in ensuring that the Republic of Somaliland is not allowed to decline into the situation that exists in the south?
    Mr. Hurd: I am conscious of the force of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. I do not want to give the people who live in the north of Somalia—in what used to be the colony of British Somaliland—the idea that we favour the country's partition. That is a different point, and not an easy one. As to ensuring that the help given by the international community, including our own, does not forget the people in the north simply because television coverage is centred on Mogadishu, I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I undertake to keep a personal eye on that aspect.
    I was speaking about the arrival of UN security forces. I welcome the arrival in Somalia of the first detachment of
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    UN troops—Pakistanis—to secure the port and the airport. Securing the port is crucial, because the volume of supplies that can be taken in by air, however well publicised, is small compared to that which can be taken in by sea if the port is functioning properly, when it is all in harbour. The trouble is that the goods are looted on the dockside, and to some extent the port has been in the hands of protection gangs. I hope that the arrival of the UN's Pakistani forces will bring that situation to an end.
    To those who say that it is simply a matter of bringing in a lot of UN forces as soon as possible—the Security Council has voted for an extra 3,000 troops to go—and of their fighting their way in, I point out that that would completely interrupt the humanitarian effort. That is why it is necessary to introduce more forces into other parts of the country than Mogadishu. I do not doubt that, but it must be done in a way that enables humanitarian efforts to continue rather than disrupt them. That point was strongly made to me by Ambassador Sahnoun, who is the Secretary-General's representative in Mogadishu. In my view, he is a wholly remarkable man—brave and wise. His judgment of what is happening in the country is one to which we must always pay close attention.
    I do not doubt, not just because of the collapse of the state but of the whole system and society in Somalia, that the task of rebuilding the country—not just of feeding the children—after the crisis has passed will rest with the international community for some years to come.
    I have spoken too long, and I apologise to the House. I have tried to deal with interventions, but I will now cut short my remaining remarks, except to say this. In all such situations, people look to the UN and occasionally to regional agencies and to others that can help, such as the European Community. The UN is seriously at risk of overloading. Its Secretary-General made that clear, and it is obvious from much that has been going on in New York this week. That is because of the impulse that everyone feels that something must be done. The implications are huge.
    The best way of preventing demands on the UN from getting out of hand—whether one is talking of peacekeeping forces, demands on member states, or money—is to practise preventive diplomacy. I hope that one day the CSCE will be effective in the prevention of conflict throughout Europe, but the UN will still be crucial. Preventive diplomacy is quicker, and brings more help to people about to be embroiled in conflict than the most successful peacekeeping or peacemaking operation that follows the outbreak of violence. That is why I encourage the UN Secretary-General to make more use of the powers given to him in article 99 of the charter.
    The international community must get involved earlier as crises develop. We must make more far-sighted efforts to avert crises—and if that fails, to prevent a crisis from escalating and spreading. The international community must learn to be more coherent and serious. That is why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister called a summit meeting of the Security Council in January. The solving of problems that have their roots in centuries past is a slow, frustrating and dangerous business. We do not have all that time when crises arise. We must learn fast and absorb new lessons quickly. As the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) said in his point of order, this subject, in all its aspects, is one to which the House will return from time to time. I know of no subject more important.
    10.26 am
    Dr. John Cunningham: I thank the Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for his kind remarks about my appointment. I hope that he does not find himself this afternoon appointed as Secretary of State for National Heritage.
    There is an old adage about diplomats, in which they are described as honest men who are sent abroad to lie for their countries. That description cannot be applied to the Secretary of State—though I might apply the first half of it to him, if not the second. I would describe the right hon. Gentleman as a man who can effectively and comprehensively tell one to go to hell and make one look forward to the journey. That was reflected in the right hon. Gentleman's speech to the House today.
    It is a privilege for me to hold my present responsibilities and to speak for Labour on foreign and commonwealth affairs. My present role takes me back to where I began in the early 1970s, when I worked in a modest capacity for James Callaghan—first in opposition and then in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. When he became Prime Minister in 1976, I was fortunate to work for him at 10 Downing street, before joining my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) at the Department of Energy, which also involved many European and wider international issues.
    I value all that experience. Although much has changed since those days, I was surprised that many of the younger people around at that time are now in senior positions in Britain and in other countries. I was surprised also to receive many letters containing good wishes from them, following my appointment to the shadow Cabinet by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition. It is clearly somewhat easier to make progress to the top in the diplomatic world than it is in the world of politics.
    My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) also gave me some advice in a tour d'horizon, courtesy of The Independent, for which I thank him. I realise that my appointment is a great challenge and that I have much to learn. In my work during the 1970s with the United Nations on Cyprus and in central and southern Africa—Zimbabwe and Namibia—I found that there are no easy solutions to complex and endemic international difficulties of the kind that the Secretary of State described this morning. There are no easy ends to conflicts or brutal civil wars. I believe profoundly—I know my view is shared by my right hon. and hon. Friends—that we live in an ever more interdependent world in which not just continental but intercontinental, indeed global, co-operation is essential for peace, security and more effective and more equitable relations between north and south.
    Events being debated in the House today illustrate graphically the need for improved policies and arrangements, particularly, as the Foreign Secretary said, in respect of the United Nations. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has had some interesting and rather surprising things to say about the UN recently. I shall return to them later. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I shall deal first with events in the territories of the former Yugoslavia. I understand that, for good reasons, the Prime Minister is anxious to leave the Chamber. He was kind enough to write to me to tell me that he would have to leave and I take no offence at his departure.
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    The appalling series of human conflicts, human degradation, deceit—there has been much deceit—and racial and religious hatred in the republics of the former Yugoslavia continue to shock Europe and the rest of the world. I acknowledge that there are difficulties, but I have to observe that events have not always been handled well by the EC or, indeed, by the Foreign Secretary in his role as president during the past few months.
    We support the aims and conclusions of the London peace conference, although the appointment of Lord Owen was regarded as somewhat eccentric by my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself—he is known for many qualities, but not as a mediator. Indeed, he has balkanised a few political parties himself, but of course we wish him well. We realise that, in his work with Cyrus Vance, he has an important role to play.
    We support the deployment of British troops under UN auspices. They have our good wishes in the difficult and dangerous tasks before them and our good wishes for a safe eventual return home.
    We support the excellent work of Mrs. Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in tackling the largest refugee crisis in Europe for decades. We support wholeheartedly the mandatory United Nations sanctions against Serbia. Those commitments do not mean, however, that we endorse the Government's record or that we are uncritical of the Government.
    The EC has not been evenhanded in its response to requests for recognition by the republics. The premature recognition of Croatia, in which Britain acquiesced following pressure from Germany, was and remains in marked contrast to the refusal to recognise Macedonia. That was despite the fact that the Badinter commission found that, while Macedonia and Slovenia met the requirements for recognition, Croatia did not. The repercussions of these confused decisions also led to uncertainty about the security of Bosnia, of which the Serbs and Croatians took ruthless advantage. They continue to do so. We have learnt from the press today that President Tudjman's forces have consolidated their hold over parts of independent Bosnia. We condemn that without reservation. We condemn the continuing violence in Bosnia and the appalling practice of ethnic cleansing.
    The joint United Nations and EC London peace conference in August agreed a framework for a negotiated peaceful settlement, which is more urgent now than ever. We support the objectives of that agreement. The Foreign Secretary rightly ruled out military solutions to these complex problems, at least for the moment, but he and his European colleagues have got us into the worst of all possible worlds. The only realistic alternative to military intervention is effective implementation of the United Nations mandatory sanctions, particularly against Serbia and, perhaps, in the developing circumstances, against Croatia. We all know that the Community has been lax when giving effect to United Nations decisions about sanctions. It is weeks since the Romanian ambassador told us on the BBC of the Danube being an open waterway to Serbia. We know that convoys cross the Greek frontier carrying supplies into Serbia. It was with sadness that we learnt recently—I do not know whether it is verifiable, but it was widely reported—that the Iranians, under the guise of humanitarian aid, are flying armaments into Bosnia.
    If we are to resolve such problems or to have some significant effect on them without resorting to military intervention, sanctions have to be made to work. We need

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    much more effort from the Foreign Secretary in his role as president in the Community and from the Community as a whole to give effect to UN decisions. We support the call for a cessation of armed conflict in Bosnia, the immediate lifting of the sieges of towns and cities, the international supervision of heavy weapons, a ban on all military flights and the identification of all armed units. We want a massive increase in humanitarian aid and more effective delivery of it. We want all detention camps to be closed at the earliest practical opportunity.
    Mr. Keith Vaz: My hon. Friend will recall that, during the recess, he met my constituent Mr. Abdul Malida and a delegation of community represen-tatives from the midlands who gave him a copy of a video recording Mr. Malida had taken of horrific scenes in Bosnia. My hon. Friend knows that Mr. Malida took £30,000-worth of goods to Bosnia to distribute to people in real need. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should put much greater emphasis on how humanitarian aid is being co-ordinated to save constituents such as Mr. Malida the risk to their lives of flying to the area to disperse aid themselves?
    Dr. Cunningham: I accept my hon. Friend's point, but I am sure that humanitarian aid is welcome from wherever it comes. My hon. Friend's constituent has made an effective and practical contribution. I, too, was horrified by the scenes on the video tape made during his stay in Bosnia.
    We want the mandatory sanctions against Serbia to be enforced rigorously by more effective monitoring of river traffic on the Danube and by more effective monitoring of the states bordering Serbia. The Government and the Community have failed properly to implement those decisions and they have just to work harder at it.
    It is clear that fighting has continued on all sides. The UN peace conference must assert its aims more strongly. An enduring and peaceful solution must ensure that internationally recognised borders are fully respected and that no gain can be achieved by force. Any solution must be based on human rights and ethnic and religious pluralism, not some division of Bosnia which is a state in its own right, recognised and a member of the UN. Its integrity must be upheld.
    It is vital that peace be established before the belligerents extend their war into Kosovo and perhaps even into Macedonia which, as some of my hon. Friends have said, might happen. Europe again—the British presidency, the Foreign Secretary acting through the United Nations and with the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and NATO—must do all in its power to end the potentially explosive circumstances that prevail in Kosovo and Macedonia.
    Macedonia is surely entitled to recognition by, and guarantees of its integrity from, the international community. I know that there is a dispute and that Greece is, apparently, blocking this in the European Community because of a dispute about the name, but we are surely not going to let an argument about the name of a territory lead to our allowing the situation to descend into conflict and war, which could spread throughout the Balkans. It would be outrageous if that were allowed to happen. Therefore, I urge the right hon. Gentleman to act in his role as president to resolve the problems about the recognition of Macedonia.
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    I share the concern about the situation in Kosovo. The United Nations and the European Community should get monitors into Kosovo now. As the late John F. Kennedy once said:
    "Lofty words cannot construct alliances or maintain them. Only concrete deeds can do that."
    If we are to resolve the dangerous circumstances that exist in Kosovo and Macedonia, we need action now. I urge that upon the Secretary of State. Mr. Panic should be committeed to guarantees for the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo now. The record shows, sadly, that President Milosevic is unlikely to give such guarantees. The majority Albanian population, for example, has not been able to attend schools and universities for more than a year. Autonomy for Kosovo has been severely eroded. The United Nations and the European Community should intervene now to prevent conflict, which would inevitably send refugees into Albania and Macedonia, countries which could not remotely cope with an influx of people. Further serious unrest could easily involve Greece.
    In May, the United Nations voted for mandatory economic sanctions. I emphasise yet again, before I move on to other matters, that the Secretary of State and the British Government, in the role of presidency, have a major responsibility in the European context to see that that United Nations resolution is given real effect. I understand that some people are calling for a relaxation of sanctions against Serbia. I say that there should be no such relaxation until the Serbians use their undoubted influence in Bosnia to help to bring about a ceasefire.
    Mr. Michael Stephen: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that in all three of the tragic cases that we are discussing this morning, there are individuals—the so-called political and military leaders—who have committed grave crimes against humanity in the name of state policy? Is it not time that the United Nations conferred criminal jurisdiction on the International Court of Justice so that these individuals will know that if and when they are caught they will be brought to justice and personally punished for their crimes?
    Dr. Cunningham: We certainly support moves through the United Nations to establish war crimes procedures so that people acting in the barbaric and inhman ways to which the hon. Gentleman refers are held to account when they are brought to book.
    Will the Secretary of State persuade his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in the coming round of inevitable cuts following the crisis in our economy not to cut our aid programme or to reduce support, in particular for the aid work that is going on not only in Bosnia but in Iraq, which I shall come to later, and certainly not in Somalia? Will he ensure that the programme that Mrs. Ogata is developing to deal with the huge refugee crisis will have the full support of Her Majesty's Government? And will the Government respond generously to any further requests for cash and material aid that Mrs. Ogata may make? I understand that she is likely to do just that. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will respond effectively and generously on behalf of Britain. Again I say that we have a particular responsibility in these matters during the term of our presidency of the European Community.
    I believe that Parliament should have been recalled some weeks ago to discuss these issues. In particular we wanted to discuss the decision to deploy British troops. Some important questions need clarification. It is

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    interesting that there have been, I believe, 17 occasions since 1939 when the House has been recalled to discuss emergencies or crises of one kind or another and that eight of those occasions have involved foreign affairs. It was remiss of the Government to postpone or, at first, to reject the request of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition for the recall of Parliament before now.
    What are the objectives of the United Nations in the deployment of our troops? The right hon. Gentleman had something to say about that. I hope that his right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence does indeed keep to the commitment that he will expand upon it when he replies to the debate. Will the operation, in effect, be under NATO control? Who will be in command? Who will take overall charge? There certainly appears to have been considerable confusion so far about the current deployment, under United Nations auspices, in Bosnia. Are the rules of engagement absolutely clear to our commanders? My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) will wish to go into more detail about these matters before the Secretary of State for Defence replies to the debate. Nevertheless, I hope that we shall have very clear replies to these important questions.
    Dr. Norman A. Godman: My hon. Friend mentioned the use of NATO forces. The Foreign Secretary also mentioned the use of certain NATO forces. Does my hon. Friend agree that the deployment of NATO forces outwith the territories defined in the North Atlantic treaty would be a grave violation of articles 4 and 5 of that treaty and that such a radically rearranged role would require the sanction, the support, of all the member state Parliaments?
    Dr. Cunningham: It is for clarification of these questions that I am asking the Secretary of State to reply. I do not know the answer to my hon. Friend's question and I am not going to pretend that I do, but I know that it is an important question to ask. That is why I have asked it. I understand that although these forces will be from NATO, they will be under the command of the United Nations, but we need to have that question clearly answered in the course of this debate.
    I emphasise again our absolute support for all British personnel involved, and our hopes and good wishes for peace and a safe return home, but the reality is—again I quote the late President John F. Kennedy—that
    "Peace does not rest in charters or covenants. It lies in the hearts and minds of people."
    Sadly, it does not yet lie in the hearts and minds of many people in war-torn Bosnia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia. Nor, indeed, does peace lie in the hearts and minds of the people of Somalia, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said. We have historic links, particularly with the north of that country.
    I support the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) in seeking an assurance, which I was pleased to see the Secretary of State give, that people in the north of Somalia will not be ignored as the humanitarian aid programme develops. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) has just returned from Somalia. An earlier visit was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington). Their graphic reports of a lawless, broken country make
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    desperate reading. Their praise for the heroic work of the non-governmental organisations is unstinting and their condemnation of the failure of the international community to act much earlier in the case of Somalia is, frankly, damning.
    There is considerable feeling in Britain and beyond that the European Community and the United Nations have been far too slow to respond to the developing tragedy in Somalia. Even now, their efforts are insufficient to make a significant or early impact on the nature and scale of the problems. Hundreds of people die daily while food that is already in Mogadishu cannot be more effectively distributed because of armed clans and the complete absence of government at any level. The United Nations must deploy more troops in Somalia and more aid and support for non-governmental organisations, especially for the International Red Cross, should be urgently provided.
    In the Horn of Africa, including Somalia, 23 million people face severe food shortages and starvation. In southern Africa the worst drought in living memory has devastated crops, affecting a further 18 million people. Given the huge need, it is a matter of grave concern that the European Community, of which Britain holds the presidency, and the Government are threatening cuts in next year's aid budget. As Oxfam and others have said, while African nations continue to be drained to pay off their debts, the G7, the IMF and the World bank again recently failed to agree measures to help write off some or all of that debt. For years, Europe's leaders have been promising to do something to tackle the problems of the third world and poverty, but somehow there always seems to be something more important to do. There is a widespread fear that if action is not taken soon to relieve debt and increase aid many more lives will be at risk and Africa will face decades of instability.
    We should have a quite separate debate in Government time as soon as possible after the House resumes to discuss more fully aid and development, poverty, drought and famine, especially in Africa but elsewhere in the world. While the world must continue to bend its efforts to end the local wars which cause mass starvation in Somalia and elsewhere in Africa, we must look to South Africa's progress because that will eventually provide the key to progress and development throughout that continent. While the undoubted energy and resources of South Africa's people and its land remain locked in internal political struggle, they cannot be unleashed to thrust the economy forward. In that comparatively rich region of the continent, economic prospects are plummeting as the welcome political developments of two years ago regress into ever-greater violence.
    The Government of South Africa were internationally applauded, too quickly by this Government, for their modest early conciliation, but they now simply demand too much from the still disenfranchised majority of black Africans. There is good news today about talks between the state president and Nelson Mandela. Those welcome talks are crucial to the multi-party Convention for a Democratic South Africa. For the ANC, Nelson Mandela is asking for movement on three key points. They are the release of people who are still in prison for alleged political offences, the fencing and securing of the hostels from which single migrant workers from the cities emerged to wreak violence on their neighbours, and the early banning of the carrying of dangerous weapons. He seeks that

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    movement, and especially on the latter two matters, to prevent any repetition of what happened in Boipatong and Ciskei.
    Mr. Hurd: The hon. Gentleman has strayed on to South Africa. I do not criticise him for that, but I did not do it because I thought that it would be out of order. However, as he is in that territory I can tell him that I share his pleasure about today's news. Yesterday, I spoke on the telephone to Nelson Mandela and the South African Foreign Minister. Each explained the narrow difference between them at that stage on the issue of political prisoners. I am delighted that it has been resolved. We are backing the peace accords and the work of Mr. Goldstone, with whom I had a long talk in South Africa a few weeks ago, by sending people from this country and other European countries as monitors to support the peace accords and the new peace structures on the ground in the townships.
    Dr. Cunningham: I am grateful for that intervention. It is clear that the right hon. Gentleman is actively involved and we appreciate that and applaud it. The Government have many channels through which to urge President de Klerk to move more swiftly on these crucial matters and I am pleased to learn that the channels are being used.
    I shall now deal with the situation in the Gulf. I thank the Foreign Secretary for his letter about Paul Ride and Michael Wainwright and for his quick response to the representations by my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) about those two unfortunate gentlemen. I urge the Foreign Secretary to continue to do all in his power to seek their early release.
    When I wrote to the Foreign Secretary in August, I expressed Labour's support for an air exclusion zone over southern Iraq with the object of giving some protection to the Shia Muslim communities of the marshes. I reiterate that support. The air exclusion zone introduced last year to protect the Kurds in northern Iraq was justified and successful. It had the authority of UN Security Council resolution 688 as well as the justification of general humanitarian protection. The zone was rightly given wide all-party support and, as the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner recently stated in his report that a major further series of threats to the Shias was imminent, the same action is clearly in order.
    I also make clear our position about any proposed military attacks on ground targets in Iraq. Such attacks cannot be justified and should not be made unless and until
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    the United Nations Security Council has considered and approved them in advance—if they are necessary at all. We certainly make it clear to the House and to the United States of America that we will not support any adventurism in Iraq by President Bush in aid of his re-election.
    Finally, I shall deal briefly with what the Foreign Secretary said about the United Nations. It is clear that the UN is overloaded and that Britain is nowhere near meeting the United Nations target for aid programmes. It is also clear that the Conservative Government's contributions to many multilateral agencies of the United Nations are lower in real terms now than they were in 1979. Hopes of a new world order have not been fulfilled and many people, including the Opposition, place more and more demands on the United Nations.
    The Foreign Secretary said that the UN should have an imperial role. No phrase could be more calculated to offend the non-aligned countries of the third world. He quickly changed the phrase and spoke instead about good old-fashioned diplomacy when he spoke at the UN. He should have used such diplomacy much earlier this summer in his relations with Dr. Boutros-Ghali, and if he had perhaps an unseemly and unhelpful row could have been avoided. The United Nations needs restructuring, but, above all, it needs more finance and more personnel. Many millions of dollars are outstanding in contributions, principally, I regret to say, from the United States. If the Foreign Secretary wants the UN to work more effectively, as we do, he should ensure that it has adequate resources and should give it more support and help so that it can more effectively tackle the important tasks that we are discussing.
    Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Long after the circumstances that give rise to the personal statement that is to be made are forgotten, people will surely ask how, on Monday, Pitchford hall, an almost unique 16th century timber-framed house, was allowed to come under Christies' hammer. During this personal statement, may we have a personal explanation of why—
    Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should wait until we have heard the statement. I have taken his point.
    It being 11 o'clock, MADAM SPEAKER interrupted the proceedings, pursuant to Standing Order No. 11 (Friday sittings).

    Personal Statement
    Mr. Dalyell: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I have attended many personal statements; explanations are in order. Why was the advice of Lord Rothschild and of the National Trust—
    Madam Speaker: Order. I respect the hon. Gentleman as a longstanding Member of the House, but he must respect the views of the House, too. He is not putting a point of order to me; he is simply making a statement, and I cannot hear it. The House and I are ready to hear the personal statement.
    Mr. Dalyell rose—
    Madam Speaker: Order. I am asking the hon. Gentleman to let the House proceed and to hear the personal statement.
    Mr. Dalyell rose—
    Madam Speaker: Order. I am on my feet. I ask the hon. Gentleman to respect the Chair and the views of the House.
    11.1 am
    Mr. David Mellor: I should like to thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for your courtesy in permitting me to make a personal statement. I apologise to those who are engaged in a serious debate on real tragedies in the world for interposing my altogether rather smaller matter, but I thought it right, having resigned, to give an account of myself to the House, rather than doing a round of press conferences.
    I want to make it clear to my colleagues and Members of the House that, while I have my regrets, this is not a sad moment for me. After what my family and I have been through over the past two months, it is with almost a sense of relief that I make this statement. There were times during that period when one wondered whether one was living in Ceausescu's Romania rather than John Major's Britain, with bugged telephone calls and the other things that came out.
    I want to make it clear to the House that I resigned for what I hope the House will agree was the best of reasons. I could not expect my colleagues in government or Parliament to put up with more of the ceaseless flow of stories about me in the tabloid press. Having grown heartily sick of my private life myself. I could hardly expect others to take a more charitable view.
    When the first of this stuff started to appear in July, I made it clear that I was willing to resign from the Government. The Prime Minister, who has been a constant friend and has shown his personal qualities to the full throughout, decided not to accept my resignation, and that was the view of my colleagues. That offered me the opportunity to do two further months in my Department —an opportunity which I shall never regret having—in which we were able to do some important work on the Green Paper on the BBC, preparation for the national lottery Bill and so on. From then on, I regarded myself as, in effect, the servant of the Government and of the party and believed that if the time came when my presence was an embarrassment, that was the time to go, and the time to go was yesterday.
    To those who think that I could have resigned sooner, I say that it was legitimate for the Prime Minister and
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    other senior colleagues to take the view that in this day and age—sorry and distressed though I was at the revelations of this affair, and despite how cheap and sordid it must have looked—this was not a reason for a Cabinet Minister to resign.
    Inevitably, there were other stories as it became clear that this matter would not be allowed to rest. I am glad to be able to leave office with its having been made clear that there has been no breach of ministerial rules. That is not to say that people are not entitled to challenge my judgment on the other issues that have been raised. I have to accept that, in the jobs that we do, one has to take a view and I do not resent the fact that some say that they would have taken a different view, just as others, in the same situation, would have done the same as me. It is clear that there is no question of impropriety, and I hope that I can leave office with that fact clearly established.
    It will be for others to decide the rights and wrongs of this business. I certainly was the author of my own misfortune, which permits me to make this statement today. Perhaps of all the many good, bad and indifferent things that have been said to me, the one comment that I prefer was from the friend who said to me, "There is no self-pity". We make our decisions and must accept responsibility for what we do, and I can assure colleagues that there is no more heavy responsibility than laying down a burden of office that one enjoys in order to take responsibility for one's actions.
    It will be for others to decide the role of the media. I have always been very relaxed about the media and have never taken the view that statutory interventions would be the answer. To be fair, most journalists and newspapers have behaved in the professional manner that one would expect in the circumstances in which they found themselves. Some hon. Members have been through the experiences that I and my family—who have been a tower of strength throughout all this, particularly my wife—have been through, but it has been an illuminating episode for me. Endless hordes of people appeared not only outside my home but outside the homes of relatives, friends and acquaintances. Extraordinarily offensive things were said in the context of those visits, and a lack of respect was shown for age and infirmity when pressing the point home. Legions of cameramen took 10 or 12 pictures knowing that none would appear and rushed around as if they were in a Rambo film, banging against the side of the car, and even stayed outside our house last night until the wee small hours, long after it was obvious that all we were trying to do was get a good night's sleep.
    Perhaps that is the way in which an alternative criminal justice system, run by the media, should work, but when the criminal justice system, which we have all played our part in creating, was established, it had checks and balances and principles of fairness. Some will want to reflect on chequebooks being waved for stories, however lurid, on people being offered at the beginning of a conversation, "We would like to talk to you; we will make it worth your while", and on bugged telephone calls, which we now have to accept. That does not apply only to me. I should not play any part in that because I would be parti pris. I was determined on leaving office, just as when I held it, never to allow my own experiences to interpose themselves, but I think that they are relevant and interesting.

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    It is a paradox that, as the BBC said today, some tabloids—and it is only some—have expressed unre-strained glee at what has happened because of the sense that they have exercised power, but the issue is whether they exercise power with responsibility. The paradox is that the only basis on which this could be justified is that a greater public good is thereby being served. But can anyone explain the paradox that in serving a greater public good one is entitled to bug and buy and abuse and use methods that are, therefore, themselves amoral or at best morally neutral? At some point the House will have to consider that issue.
    I do not want to detain the House much longer, but I have two or three further points. The first is that I have had 11 years as a Minister. I have thoroughly enjoyed them. I have been fortunate in that I have served in many interesting Departments, some of them in the cockpit of party-political debate and some of the more interesting ones giving me the opportunity to work with colleagues in all parts of the House on legislation that was important, relevant and non-partisan. I think of the Broadcasting Act 1990, the Children Act 1989 and the work on the misuse of drugs. I shall treasure these 11 years. My great sadness is that having had the opportunity to establish the Department of National Heritage, I will not now have the chance to carry on with that task, but I blame no one but myself for that.
    Amidst the welter of charge and counter-charge, the one thing this morning that is of great comfort to me is the extraordinarily nice things that have been said by the people who have worked with me in my Department and by the interest groups that I have tried to serve. There is no doubt that I have had a genuine passion for what we have been trying to do in the Department, and, although it is entirely my own fault, I deeply regret that I shall not be able to carry on that work. In one of his last songs John Lennon wrote the following line which is always relevant to all of us:
    "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".
    As to the future, I hope and intend to be an active Member of the House. I intend to continue to serve the interests of my constituents. The people of Putney have been kind enough to increase my majority at each of the past four elections. They have stuck by me through this sorry mess, and I owe it to them at least to redouble my efforts on their behalf. That is what I shall endeavour to do as I try to fit in with the life and work of the House as best I can.
    I should like to tell colleagues and friends here that last night, coming into the Division Lobbies to vote, I was offered tremendous acts of friendship by Members on both sides of the House. The House is at its best on these occasions, and that certainly made me feel a lot better about myself after what has happened.
    Finally, as I leave the warmth of Government for the icy wastes of the Back Benches I want everyone to know that there is precedent for this: Captain Oates was born and raised in my constituency.

    United Nations Operations
    11.11 am
    (Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.
    Madam Speaker: I call Mr. King—[Interruption.] Order. I ask hon. Members who are leaving to be kind enough to do so more quietly so that we can hear the next speaker.
    11.12 am
    Mr. Tom King: I rise to speak for the first time in 17 years from the Back Benches in these rather extraordinary circumstances. It is traditional not to intervene in personal statements, but I should like to add, as a former colleague of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), that it was with the greatest sadness that I heard the news of the past 24 hours. I entirely endorse his comments on the exceptional tributes that have been paid to him by many in the arts world for the work he was seeking to do. These may be icy wastes, but there are some friendly faces here on the Back Benches and I assure him that the journey that he is about to make is not an entirely disastrous one.
    The motion on the Adjournment concerns British support for the United Nations in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia. I am surely not the only hon. Member who believes that that list is capable of significant extension in the months and years ahead. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said in his important review, we have arrived at the end of the cold war, a period in which the super-powers imposed discipline on their client states using both acceptable and unacceptable means. Those client states made up a considerable sector of the world. All that has now gone. The Soviet Union has imploded into separate republics, and the whole system of client states that it supported has disappeared. It is no coincidence that we are debating some of its former client states today. All of them depended to some extent on Soviet support in the past.
    As this system of client states has collapsed, the United States has understandably imposed a limit on its willingness to become involved—it has no desire to become the world's policeman. That, in turn, has introduced a role for the United Nations—a role formerly inhibited by veto throughout our life times but now, since Iraq and due to subsequent developments, full of new responsibilities.
    What should the UN's role be in future? What should our contribution to it be? The United Nations can authorise and support internal intervention in the affairs of disorderly countries, but when it does so, how should it be done and who will carry it out?
    I was involved to some degree in discussions of the possible military intervention in Iraq and subsequently in Yugoslavia. Such military intervention, if contemplated, must always be seen as the last resort. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is always the first to emphasise the essential and demanding role of diplomacy, since such conflicts must if possible be solved without military intervention. One of the less welcome by-products of the superb professionalism displayed by the military in the Gulf war was that the skill, speed and success of the liberation of Kuwait and the ending of Iraqi aggression encouraged in some minds too ready a feeling that we can

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    always call on the military to solve our problems. The Ministry of Defence is just across Whitehall—it can deal with the problem. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was always sympathetic to my warnings against such a view.
    Today we again face the difficult decision whether to put young men and women, to use President Bush's phrase from the Gulf war, in harm's way. About 30,000 of our fellow citizens, men and women, are in Northern Ireland helping to protect the community, to keep the peace and to prevent the success of terrorism.
    Two years ago we sent 45,000 of our young men and women into Iraq as our contribution to the United Nations effort there. Subsequently I had the opportunity, with my hon. Friend the Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay), to see at first hand the remarkable humanitarian effort carried out by 1,000 Royal Marines, providing air cover and helicopter support in Operation Haven. I am proud that that effort saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kurds who would not be alive today had we not been prepared to take the difficult decision to do something against which many arguments could have been advanced. It stands to the eternal credit of our country that we played such a positive part in that operation.
    We all take pride in the success of Operation Haven. It is a sombring and interesting thought that our Jaguar aircraft have now flown for more than a year from the Incirlik air base in Turkey. They are continuing to provide that air cover and to impose a no-fly zone in northern Iraq, as undoubtedly they should. Although the situation is far from perfect, we have, in a real sense, created, through the removal of Saddam Hussein's additional asset, a more level playing field in northern Iraq from which the Peshmerga can more readily defend their Kurdish countrymen. I welcome also what is, for obvious reasons, no longer called Operation Southern Comfort but Operation Jural—the sending of the Tornados to the south similar to Operation Provide Comfort in the north. This is helping with the problems of the Shias in the marshes and I welcome the Opposition's support for that.
    Those have been welcome interventions. They continue and they have no fixed time limit. I could not advise the House with such knowledge as I have when those efforts may be withdrawn. The great difficulty in such peacekeeping activities is whether one can ever get out; all peacekeeping activities involve such a warning.
    By any military standards, the situation in the former Yugoslavia is a textbook example of what Britain should not become involved in. It is difficult to imagine a more appallingly difficult situation. There are no clear objectives. There is every prospect of getting sucked into an open-ended commitment, starting with humanitarian aid and the escorting of convoys and released prisoners from the detention camps—all the most worthy and desirable objectives. Yet there is the greatest risk of a spread of the conflict.
    In 1964 we went into Cyprus and we are still there. The history of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in different corners of the world, whether still on the peaceline in Korea, whether the UN interim force in Lebanon or in Sinai and across its other activities, shows the great difficulty of withdrawal. An understandable
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    intervention in this debate has been the warning that after Bosnia, what next? Reference was made to the predictable and the predicted Bosnian conflict and now Kosovo, then the real risk of an implosion in Macedonia involving Serbia, Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. We know that the potential risk is great.
    We also run the real risk, as we know sadly all too well, not just from Northern Ireland, of being accused of taking sides, of going in for one purpose and then finding that our purposes are disbelieved—
    Mr. David Trimble: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. King: I would rather not. I understand why the hon. Gentleman seeks to intervene, but I want to be brief and not to abuse my situation.
    There is also the clearest possible risk of casualties. To use another analogy with Northern Ireland—the House has been horrified at the suffering and the real tragedy of Northern Ireland—it is a sobering thought that already in what was Yugoslavia within six months three times more people have died that in 25 years of trouble in Northern Ireland. The scale of the viciousness and fanatical hatred has been there on our television sets for all of us to see. The sad news today of four more injuries to the UNPROFOR is a clear warning of the dangers that are run. As the Opposition spokesman said, we see in United Nations activity the risk of potential confusion of command, the difficulty of establishing clear rules of engagement and, as casualties happen, as sadly I fear they will, the difficulty of presenting them to the country to explain what national interest there is in our involvement.
    There is also the difficulty in explaining why there are so many abstainers from the initiative. Germany's situation is understood. The problem of its constitution and its past involvement in the territories make this a particularly difficult matter. The United States, we know, does not feel that this is an area in which to make a contribution of the same significance at this time.
    Those were my views, which I sought to ensure were represented clear in government. I was clear, on the advice that I received, of the great dangers that we faced. Yet I always said that there could come a time when we could no longer walk by on the other side. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary used precisely that phrase in his speech.
    The scale of man's inhumanity to man that we have witnessed in the appalling incidents introduces an element in which it is no longer acceptable for us as a leading member of the European Community, holding the presidency at the present time, as a permanent member of the Security Council and with our role in the United Nations to say that we shall simply stand back and do nothing.
    It can be argued, perhaps some of my right hon. and hon. Friends will do so, that all the disadvantages that I have clearly rehearsed, of which I am not unaware—I know that my right hon. Friends are acutely aware of them —should not be overlooked. But government is about taking difficult decisions and taking responsibility, no matter how difficult and awkward that may be.
    I believe that there is a national interest. Obviously there is a clear national interest by virtue of the role of the United Nations and the importance of the United Nations making a contribution and our being a willing and strong supporter of the United Nations in its work. But there

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    must come a time when the conflicts spread, when we see the risk of the brush fire that has spread already from the initial problems of Serbia and Croatia, then involving Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, and the problems in the ex-Soviet republics, when we see the risks of this involving Slav and Muslim, Turk and Greek, when our past history shows that we will inevitably at some stage be sucked in, that we still have a national interest in trying to intervene in any way that we can, first, because there is a moral case for humanitarian aid, but, above all, to do everything that we can to try to prevent further conflict.
    Mr. Trimble rose—
    Mr. King: Will the hon. Gentleman excuse me? I want to make progress.
    If we ask our young men and women to stand in harm's way, we must insist on certain conditions. The first is that it must be right that we work under United Nations auspices and authority. We have a duty to see that we have the clearest possible rules of engagement that are fair to our forces. They must have the authority and the opportunity, without qualification, for self-defence, and self-defence interpreted not in the most immediate and narrow way of whether a weapon is being fired at them, but a sensible and flexible approach to the problem. We must ensure that they have the right scope. My right hon. Friend's decision, put to Cabinet, was to send a self-contained unit of some 1,800 men, with the Cheshires, the Warrior armoured personnel carriers and their own logistics. They would be self-contained with the very real intention that if the worst came to the worst they could look after themselves and would not be dependent on other, perhaps less adequate, elements of what may be a United Nations force.
    There must be in that force the maximum contribution from the maximum number of nations. I have already referred to the abstainers—the no-shows in this situation. I note that we are proposing to send 1,800 men and I support the reasons for deciding on that figure. I note that the Canadians form the next largest force with 1,200, then the French with 1,100. The Benelux countries are sending smaller contributions. There must be maximum contribu-tions from the maximum number of countries. There must also be some rules about, or some opportunity to set, a time limit on the contributions of individual countries, and certainly of individual units.
    I welcome the announcement in today's newspapers of the proposal to use, wherever possible, NATO structures and logistic systems that are already in place and operational. We owe it to our forces to ensure that they have the best possible support that we can give them. Above all, we owe it to them to accept that in no sense can we pretend that this is the solution. In asking them to undertake such a very dangerous task, we owe it to them to ensure that they go there in the knowledge that every possible effort is being made in the political and diplomatic areas to find a solution. I warmly support what the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said about sanctions. We must make those levers that are not military work in support of our forces.
    It is as difficult a decision as Ministers could ever be asked to make. It is a sombre position. I do not think that any hon. Member is under any illusion about the dangers and the difficulties. We have all seen television pictures of the terrible horrors. In my judgment that we cannot simply
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    stand by, I am also influenced by the fact that no one could fail to have been impressed by the fortitude of the people of Sarajevo and the many suffering such appalling hardships. This debate is taking place at the end of September and we know that, in the months ahead, those people face the prospect of falling temperatures, no water, probably no power and no heat. The risks to life, the possibility of death, the casualties and the suffering could be enormous.
    Against that background, and within Europe, we have a responsibility to play our part. We must do what we can, but we must do it with the world. As we take this decision we pray for our forces as they undertake a challenging and vital task.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order. I remind hon. Members that there is a 10-minute limit on speeches between now and 1 pm.
    11.32 am
    Sir Russell Johnston: Like the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), I find this a timely debate. Like the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on his courtesy, although I cannot commend him on his brevity.
    The debate is basically about the future role of the United Nations and the extent to which, in the new position, post-cold war, it can enable the international community to set standards of human rights and to move from peacekeeping to peacemaking by direct intervention in regional and national conflicts throughout the world. The Liberal Democrats are quite clear that we want the United Nations to develop such an interventionist role. As I have said a number of times in the House, we are also clear that the old precepts of non-interference in domestic affairs and the inviolability of borders must, in certain cases, be overridden in the interests of justice.
    I shall begin with Somalia. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel), the former Liberal leader, was yesterday at a refugee camp on the northern Kenyan border with Somalia. It held about 45,000 people—about the population of Inverness, to put it in context. He was full of praise for the activities of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, which had gained control over a position which, until June, was horrific and involved countless deaths. Even in June they ran at about 60 a week, but now the figure is down to about 10. A corrugated iron hospital has been constructed to replace the tents.
    My right hon. Friend reiterated our view that earlier intervention, post-President Barre, would have prevented a large-scale tragedy. It is impossible enough to handle the drought; it is even more difficult to handle the drought and the civil war. My right hon. Friend stressed the need to organise the purchase of arms from bandit groups in return for food and/or money, an approach which I commend to the Foreign Secretary. He even found a man with a British passport issued in 1957 in British Somaliland, which highlights the historical responsibility for the area that we share with the Italians.
    It is tragic, but the appalling position in Somalia is only the beginning. The hon. Member for Copeland mentioned

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    that. Civil war, drought and ecological disaster are resulting in famine not just in Somalia but in the whole of south-eastern Africa. In the Horn of Africa alone, 23 million people face severe food shortages. In addition to famine, drought and an enormous debt crisis, almost the whole of central and southern Africa faces a devastating AIDS epidemic, which will reach such a level that hardly a family will be unaffected by the end of the century.
    Again, we agree with the hon. Member for Copeland that it is both wrong and shocking that, in the midst of all those crises, the Government are reportedly threatening to cut overseas aid still further. At a time when the United Kingdom holds the presidency of the European Community, there is a proposal to cut the Community's aid budget by £200 million. That would destroy the possibility of creating a much-needed emergency aid reserve to cope with disasters. Quite frankly, it is a scandal that during the 1980s the United Kingdom's aid disbursements have declined both absolutely and relatively. Our overseas aid should be approaching—or at least should be committed to reaching—0.7 per cent. of gross national product, rather than standing at just 0.27 per cent. More than anything, Somalia needs food and the European Community stores should be opened to it, together with active intervention to ensure distribution.
    As the winter approaches in Iraq, the suffering of the Kurds and of the Shia Muslims in the south will become intolerable if there is not United Nations intervention. Again, for any aid programme to be successful a considerable increase in funding will be required. The Foreign Secretary may say that there are limits, and that is true—but it is a problem that we must all face. If we expect the United Nations to do more, the advanced countries must pay it more.
    The international community's approach to events in what was Yugoslavia has been in marked contrast with its action in Iraq. As we heard from the right hon. Member for Bridgwater, attitudes are different. The House is aware that my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) and I went to the Serbian-controlled area of Bosnia last month at the invitation of the Bosnian Serbian leader, Dr. Radovan Karadzic. He invited us because he felt that we had been unfair in criticising the Serbs as the principal aggressors—although not the only aggressors —in the bloody war in Bosnia. We had said that they had used heavy weapons such as guns, tanks and rockets, which the Yugoslav national army had left them, to kill people indiscriminately in the great city of Sarajevo and also in Gorazde and Bihac. Our visit coincided with the revelations of the existence of appalling prison camps. We also saw a ghastly refugee collection point—it could not be called a camp—where men and women thrown out, or perhaps I should say cleansed out, of their homes gathered in the open without cover, sanitation or effective medical arrangements. I do not think that we have been unfair. We were on the heights above Sarajevo and we saw the guns.
    We have been making those points for some time, as the Foreign Secretary knows. I shall quote again from a letter that I wrote to The Times in November 1991:
    "At different times over the past months I have asked Douglas Hurd to consider urging the countries of the Western European Union. if they were unwilling, which I understand, to commit land forces"—
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    —the same problem was touched on today by the right hon. Member for Bridgwater—
    "to consider a naval and aerial blockade. In the time scale, economic sanctions are both useless and as harmful to the attacked as to the attacker. He has refused. I think the time has come to think again…If I were in a decision-making position, I would say to the Serbs, 'We want a cease fire by midday tomorrow and if it doesn't happen aircraft will attack your positions round Osijek.'"
    I think that action should have been taken then. It was certainly possible; indeed, it is still possible, although I accept that it would now be much more difficult. If action has been taken, Milosevic and the Serbs would have been compelled to comply. They rightly felt that no one had the will to stand up to them. We continually said that we would not use force, and anyone who tells a bully, "I shall never use force" allows him to let rip.
    I was astonished to hear the hon. Member for Copeland refer to the over-early recognition of Croatia. I do not think that there was any alternative to the recognition of Croatia at the time.
    Mr. Peter Hardy: Of course there was.
    Sir Russell Johnston: I do not agree.
    Mr. Hardy: The hon. Gentleman voted for it.
    Sir Russell Johnston: Yes, I did. As I have just said, I did not think that there was any alternative.
    Dr. Cunningham: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Sir Russell Johnston: I only have three minutes left. Normally I would give way to the hon. Gentleman.
    When my right hon. Friend and I returned from Bosnia and Serbia, we both wrote to Dr. Karadzic. He replied:
    "We have undersigned the agreement with the UNPROFOR on the supervision of our heavy artillery. We have been taking many other steps to establish and reinforce the cease-fire and end this war."
    We all know what has happened since: the war has not ended.
    I have not much time left. Let me ask four quick questions. First, how safe is the UNPROFOR mandate? I am told that Tudjman is against extending it beyond the timetable. Secondly, Serb aircraft were flying this week. The Foreign Secretary said that no-fly zones were being considered, although only five or six weeks ago the Prime Minister said that the idea was impractical. What is going to happen?
    Thirdly, little has been said about refugees. Will Britain reconsider its rejection of the quota arrangements, which are not fair to the countries nearest to the former Yugoslavia? Fourthly, like the hon. Member for Copeland and others, we are most concerned about the rules governing the involvement of our troops. I hope that the Secretary of State for Defence will make it clear what the rules of engagement are.
    If we are to develop a global emergency system to anticipate and prevent conflicts such as those that we are now witnessing in Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia, we must develop the institutions within the United Nations to organise rapid negotiations and take rapid action. We need a global enforcement arrangement setting out clear rules for sanctions and, if necessary, military enforcement. We need the reinstatement of the United Nations military staff committee, which will require a good deal of money.

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    Those are large, difficult and costly objectives, but if we are to have a realistic new world order—which I am sure is the aim of hon. Members on both sides of the House—they are the objectives which we must pursue.
    11.42 am
    Sir Michael Marshall: I accept immediately what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said in his peroration. He suggested that a common theme could be found in the tragic circumstances affecting Iraq, Somalia and Yugoslavia: the role of the United Nations in facing the challenges involved.
    What are those challenges? I believe that they can be summed up in three areas of the work to which the UN is dedicated—preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and disaster relief. I feel that, in the countries we are discussing, preventive diplomacy must inevitably be seen as something which has been sadly missed in the past and to which we must now turn in seeking to prevent future tragedies on a similarly appalling scale elsewhere.
    My concern is that the UN has been hampered, and is still being hampered, in its work in these countries, especially in peacekeeping and—above all—disaster relief. I believe that, in the past, there has been a failure to recognise the convergence of those two challenges. The evidence is clear. In Somalia we have 3,500 armed troops to protect essential supplies. The no-fly zone in Iraq is there to protect the Kurds, in implementing UN resolutions and in response to the report of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In Yugoslavia, the convoys of food and medical supplies and the work of the UN protection force in Bosnia show again the interrelationship between the military presence and disaster relief.
    What can Parliaments do in such circumstances? I use the plural advisedly, and I refer to the work of Parliaments as well as to that of Governments. I know that the House will understand if I draw on consultations undertaken by Parliaments this month on a wide scale. Earlier this month, the IPU conference in Stockholm was dominated by the debate on the role of Parliaments in enhancing the work of the UN. I am also able to draw on the deliberations of the AIPO regional conference of ASEAN Parliaments, which was skilfully hosted by Indonesia and involved fellow-members from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand—as well as many other observer countries. The conference continues this week, and I returned from it yesterday, thanks to advice that I received from the pairing Whip.
    At these conferences, important opportunities have been provided for many parliamentarians to take part in appropriate debate. It was interesting in this regard to note that 33 members of the European Parliament were active on this subject during the conference that is still proceeding in Indonesia.
    I do not claim that I can speak for more than 100 Parliaments, but I can claim to have heard from their representatives, and I believe that there is widespread agreement on common themes. They can be summarised as follows. The first is the necessity for the United Nations to adapt and change in a new world situation. Those who have met the UN Secretary-General in recent months recognise the remarkable efforts that he has made to make the structure more effective. That has led to some difficult decisions, which have had a painful effect on, in many
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    cases, long-serving members of the United Nations staff. However, it has also provided an opportunity to move away from some of the worst aspects of the bad old days, when, for example, communist trusties were appointed to the UN as part of the "Buggins' turn" principle. The new Secretary-General is clearly in the business of appointing those who are best qualified to carry out the work. In that regard, he deserves—and, I believe, is receiving—the support of the House and the Government.
    Let me also say, on a personal level, that I much appreciate the Secretary-General's clear commitment to a strengthened relationship with parliamentarians. He is a former parliamentarian, and he understands the advantage of bringing a wider constituency to the work of the UN. Many of those who have spoken recognise that, in the matter of financial resources, Parliaments around the world have a key role to play.
    It follows, therefore, that I strongly support what the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said about direct support for the UN, in the form of both finance and other resources. I want to add my voice to those that urge the debtors to pay their $1.8 billion dues, and I welcome the sharing of the load in regard to resources on the ground as evidenced recently by Japanese military support and by President Bush's commitment in his speech to the UN earlier this week to increase the UN peacekeeping role in consultation with NATO.
    I also strongly support the general thrust of the Secretary-General's proposals in the new agenda for the UN—an agenda which covers preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and disaster relief. It follows the initiative taken by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in the Security Council summit in January. We should now consider how we can seek to implement the agenda. It is in that area of implementation that I must express some of my final anxieties. I am glad to see my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence in his place, because some of my chief concerns lie in his area of responsibility.
    It is no secret that UN resources are stretched almost to breaking point. If I concentrate on disaster relief and mention it in a military context, it will not be news to my right hon. and learned Friend, who knows of the concern felt by many of us about how we can bring resources to bear earlier in the process. The history of recent events shows time and again that, in addition to its peacekeeping role, the military is inevitably drawn into disaster relief. I am anxious to trigger that process much earlier in the piece.
    The United Nations has decreed that the 1990s should be the international decade for national disaster reduction. Recent events have shown that there is a convergence in which distinctions between natural and man-made disasters, and between peacekeeping and disaster relief are meaningless in the face of massive cries for help. The United Nations Secretary-General has invoked chapter 8 of the charter in urging geopolitical groups to provide military resources for peacekeeping and, by extension, for disaster relief on a regional basis. It is clear that much remains to be done if there is to be international agreement on the large-scale earmarking required to take full advantage of not only the military command structures, but the key infrastructure that they can provide, involving transport, telecommunications and medical resources—nobody does it better.

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    Surely, the time has come to set aside the old parrot cries about internal intervention and the presence of foreign troops. The presence of UN forces in blue berets, supported by Parliaments and Governments such as ours, should be universally welcomed in the fight for human survival. There has been a reluctance to do so in the past. Those who have tried to encourage that process have found a structural problem in terms of NATO, national resources and the UN command structures. I recognise some of the work that has been done to break down such problems, but there are still difficulties and a time lag. In addition, many people who already serve in our armed forces have written to me to say that they thirst to be involved in the new peacekeeping oppportunity and disaster relief work which is there for all to share. Outside, in a changing world there are many ex-military personnel, such as those who in their former communist role gave service to their state, who can be deployed to work to the world's mutual advantage.
    I hope that we can seek further support for the breaking down of the various demarcations that make it difficult for us to respond, as I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary would wish. It is not always easy. When resources are to be committed, budgetary considerations apply. But the scale of the human tragedy that we are discussing today—which is not confined merely to three areas—is huge. There is a potential threat in Angola and Cambodia, where the electoral process and the electoral observation required of United Nations are trembling on the brink of events that require the support and protection of the United Nations, and the support and resources from the House and the country. Therefore, I urge my right hon. Friend to throw his weight behind the process in which we can play a vital part.
    11.52 am
    Mr. Ted Rowlands: The hon. Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) identified, as does the Order Paper, one of the common factors in the otherwise disparate societies of Bosnia, Iraq and Somalia —the vital new role expected of the United Nations. There is another common factor to all three completely different societies: guns and weapons. The level of arms has become part and parcel of the problems in each of the three territories. The other factor common to all three is the huge number of arms and weapons available to promote the conflict, alongside the terrible natural droughts and disasters facing societies such as Somalia.
    I hope that the House will not mind if I take a trip down memory lane to when I was a Foreign Office Minister directly involved in the re-establishment and restoration of our diplomatic relations with Somalia after a breach of more than a decade in the 1960s and 1970s. Somalia does not fit into the concept of a nation state; it is a society of nomads who cross boundaries and whose views on life and society have not been traditionally confined by territorial lines. I do not know whether this is still true, but the Somali Government laid claim to territory in almost every one of its neighbours as a result of the historic, nomadic movements of its people.
    In the 1960s and 1970s, some of the Somali leaders such as Siad Barre were caught up in the east-west rivalries. There was a scramble for Africa in the 19th century, and
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    in the 20th century a new one emerged. It was a scramble for influence played out by the super-powers and east-west rivalries, of which Siad Barre and Somalia were part and parcel.
    Somalia had become a client state of the Soviet Union, which built naval bases at Berbera and enthusiastically embraced the internal security system. Unfortunately for Siad Barre, the Soviet Union found another client next door, Mengistu in Ethiopia. The tragic consequence of that was that the most hated rivals of the Somalis became the neighbouring Ethiopians. Any society that neglects the hatreds of history does so at its peril. Such hatreds form the third factor common to all three territories under discussion today.
    Siad Barre turned and sought to release himself from the power of the Soviet Union. He turned west and, in a variety of ways, sought to replace his relationship with the Soviet Union by his relationship with the west. He came to Britain and other countries but, sadly, he did not ask us for aid to replace the comprehensive aid programmes of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s—which were almost Cuban-style in the way that they helped to provide goods and then bought them. Instead, when the Soviet Union was thrown out, the production lines were stopped in their tracks. I visited a factory where the cans were still on the production lines, such was the speed and ruthlessness of the change. Siad Barre did not ask us for aid or support, but for more and more arms. We flirted with the policy as part and parcel of the drama and horrible excitement of re-establishing western influence in a territory formerly dominated by Soviet influence.
    We are now wringing our hands in the House about the tragedy of a mixture of drought, war, bitterness and violence in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Somalia. However, those are the harvests reaped by indiscriminate arms sales through the international community. The western world sold arms to the Shah in the 1970s and to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. I understand that the Bosnian conflict is capable of being sustained irrespective of arms embargoes, due to the supply of huge quantities of arms to Yugoslavia before it fell apart.
    The sale of arms is the oldest trade in the world, and nations and companies are inevitably part of it. We all know that it creates jobs and money, and provides influence. No one pretends that we can wave a magic wand and solve the problem. However, we should try to learn a couple of lessons from such a horrifying experience. The indiscriminate selling of arms by successive eastern and western Governments in the post-war world, leads to disasters as drastic as those that we are discussing today. We should work out how to apply the lesson that we have learnt.
    One exciting factor of the way that the United Nations has been involved in Iraq is that it has sought, through the power and support of the international community, to dismantle the nuclear capacity of Saddam Hussein. It was one of the most vital breakthroughs in the concept of a United Nations role.
    Again, we are struggling in Bosnia to try to corral the arms, which is how I think that the Secretary of State described it. Like everyone else, I find it difficult to watch helpless as people bombard the UN headquarters in Sarajevo. Something has to happen, something more has to be done and we could try to make this debate mean something more.

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    Earlier this week, I had the privilege of meeting Bishop Dinis of Mozambique. He is an Anglican bishop who has played a significant part in brokering what might be a ceasefire—as the churches in Mozambique have done—in another country which faces the terrible problems of drought and the most violent and evil of civil wars. I asked him what would happen if a ceasefire occurred and expected him to say that they would want more aid, seeds and so forth. He said, "Help us to get the guns in." He asked why we could not offer incentives for people to bring guns to be destroyed on the spot and to be given money and seeds in return. I told him that I could think of a thousand good ministerial reasons why that was not possible. I can well imagine the Overseas Development Administration funding the purchase of guns in Mozambique and can envisage the minutes flying back and forth. I thought that it was a hopeless concept.
    However, if there were a ceasefire perhaps one could give incentives to people to stop carrying guns as a means of getting food—as the Secretary of State said—and to offer them an incentive to grow food in return for their guns and thus restore the natural activities of the countryside and villages. Perhaps a dramatic gesture—turning guns into ploughshares—is a meaningful solution in Somalia or Mozambique. That policy will only work if we can stem the flow of arms. That is the great lesson which we all must learn from the three territories that we are debating. All three have been the subject of some form of arms race during the past 20 years. We must try to establish a new international order, and part of that should surely include some control on the arms race and arms sales, which the world has so flagrantly abused with the result that we are reaping such a terrible harvest.
    12.1 pm
    Sir Nicholas Bonsor: The House is considering three of the major catastrophe areas of the world, areas to which we shall have to pay great attention if disaster is not to occur. Each merits a speech, each merits a debate, but I am mindful of the 10-minutes rule and therefore propose to focus my few, brief remarks on Bosnia and on what is happening in the ex-Yugoslav republics. They probably present the greatest dangers of the three areas that we are considering and I welcome the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, when he said that this is a crisis for Europe and in Europe.
    There has been a temptation for us to sit back and wash our hands of what is happening in Yugoslavia. Because it was a communist state for about 40 years and because it was different from the rest of Europe, there was a temptation for us to ignore it and to feel that we were sufficiently apart not to have to take an active role in events there. That would be abject folly. Yugoslavia is close to the heart of Europe, both geographically and historically. There is no question of our being able to ignore it, or being able to allow the appalling suffering being inflicted on its peoples without taking some part in bringing matters to a satisfactory and peaceful conclusion.
    We have to do everything in our power to alleviate the suffering in Yugoslavia. We must ensure that United Nations relief aid supplies get through to the people who are besieged in so many parts of Bosnia Hercegovina. I agree with everything said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King). We must avoid the
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    temptation to be dragged into a military peacekeeping role, which would lead to our troops becoming a target for the Croats, Serbs and Muslims. There is no question of our being able to take any party role for any one of those groups within Bosnia.
    As hon. Members will recall, Bosnia consists of about 43 per cent. Serbs, 34 per cent. Croats and about 17 per cent. Muslims. All those people have an equal right to live in Bosnia, and many have been there for generations. The ethnic rivalry between the groups is hundreds of years old and no attempt at creating a unified country has yet succeeded or could succeed—except under Marshal Tito, who imposed it by force for about 40 years. It would be a grave error if the United Kingdom, the European Community or even the United Nations were to send a military force of such size or intent that we were also attempting to impose a military solution on the problems in Yugoslavia.
    However, the crimes being committed against humanity in that country by all groups, not overwhelmingly by any one group—crimes against the hapless civilian population —cannot be allowed to pass without comment and censure by the international community. Nor do I believe that they can go unpunished in the long term. It will be difficult to bring those responsible to justice, but it must be a prime purpose for the Government and for the UN to ensure that at some time those responsible for perpetrating the outrages that we have seen on our televisions and in the video sent to hon. Members are brought to justice.
    Many hon. Members may not have watched the video. It is a painful experience. To pick out one of the nastier scenes, a woman and her unborn baby, which has been ripped from her womb, have been left lying in the street and have bled to death. The story that goes with it is that a group of Serbian soldiers had had a bet on the sex of the baby, had ripped the mother open to find out and left the mother and child to die when the bet had been solved satisfactorily. The picture showed a mother and baby recently dead and having bled to death; I have no reason to disbelieve the story that went with it. It is one of countless horror stories coming from that part of the world. No pretence by the European Community to be able to impose and continue a civilised society can stand silent and aside in the face of such horror.
    I welcome the military support being given to the aid convoys in Yugoslavia, without which I have no doubt that they would be unable to proceed. How much military aid can be given is a matter of balance. It is a question of how much can be given without running the risk that I mentioned of again turning the Balkans into a catalyst of European conflict and international involvement on a wider scale. My hon. Friends in the Government have got that balance about right. It will be a matter for constant review.
    The Select Committee on Defence, which I have the honour to chair, met on Tuesday and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces and a team of advisers gave us answers to our questions. I am glad to be able to tell the House that that resolved many of the anxieties that I and my colleagues felt about what is happening in Yugoslavia. There remain problems to be solved, and I know that my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench are as conscious of the dangers that those problems present as I am.
    The main problem that concerned us was over the terms of engagement and we received a good answer from my

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    right hon. Friend the Minister. He assured the Committee that our troops would be able to defend themselves and that they would not be contained to returning like with like in so doing. If someone snipes at them they can use heavier return fire, if necessary, to secure their safety and that of their convoys. That is essential. It is not usual United Nations procedure and it is of vital importance that that freedom of action is given to the troops that we have sent.
    I am keeping an eye on the clock, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I must share with the House several other outstanding problems to which I hope my right hon. Friend will turn his attention. The first is the great difficulties that we shall face because of the area that we have been given to cover —an area which contains two towns, Tuzla and Doboj, which are among the most dangerous parts of Bosnia being covered by United Nations aid. Last week United Nations representatives had still not made contact with the guerrilla leaders in that area. Doboj is Serb-held and Muslim attacked; Tuzla is Muslim-held and Serbian and Croatian attacked. For our troops to get the convoys through they will have to pass through not one but two war zones and will have to deal with a complex network of leaders both of Serbian forces and guerrilla forces at work. That will be a major diplomatic problem for the United Nations observers assisting us and for our military leaders there. I hope that we shall make certain that all necessary advance work is done before we commit any convoys into that area.
    Secondly, the roads into that area are used by all the warring forces, and are likely to come under attack and be mined—not as a deliberate attack on United Nations representatives but as part of the internal struggle. Our people are bound to become involved in the differences of opinion between the warring factions. I fear that we shall find ourselves increasingly unpopular with all those involved in the fight.
    I am worried, too, that the artillery available to the warring factions could be turned on our troops, and that we may not be adequately armed. We have mortars, Milan, and 30mm. cannon on the Scimitar. The fact remains that under heavy artillery attack we have no back-up or additional means of response. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will keep closely in mind the need for adequate reserve forces to bring our people out if they get trapped under such an attack. I should like him to consider the possibility of sending to somewhere in the region a detachment of RAF or Royal Navy air command fighter planes, so that we could at least put in some kind of air cover if our people were pinned down and unable to get out.
    We have been assured in evidence given to the Committee that the training given to the Cheshires and to the 9th/12th Lancers has been adequate—and I have no doubt that it was, but it was short and rushed, and I doubt whether it will bring them up to the level of ability that I should like to see in an ideal world. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will make certain—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
    12.11 pm
    Mr. Ernie Ross: It is all too clear that post-cold war talk of a new world order was premature, to say the least. Indeed, this debate, brought about by events in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia, and by the world's continuing difficulties in dealing effectively and promptly with them, is a fair measure of the precarious and complex nature of any such operation.
    Yet at the Rio Earth summit and the new world order seminar in Tunisia, which I attended, it was clear that many in the third world see the opportunity for positive change. They look to the developed world for commitments to advance peace and security, development, respect for international law and human rights. The question remains: are we living up to their, and our own, expectations?
    Let there be no misunderstanding. If the United Nations is to take an enhanced role in world affairs—an even-handed role sensitive to the needs of both the rich and poor nations and one which commands genuine respect and support, both political and financial—the part that the UN and its member states play in events in Iraq, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia will be a major factor in achieving that.
    Throughout the crisis in Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina and Croatia, the Government have shown incompetence and prevarication. Holding the presidency of the EC, they could and should have been leading efforts to tackle the problems. Furthermore, the initial efforts of the EC and the UN at sanctions against Serbia were accorded insufficient importance. At no time has there been adequate monitoring of their implementation. Allegation after allegation has come to light regarding sanctions busting. Supplies, including oil, have been regularly transported by the Danube to Serbia; the former Soviet Union has been a source of supply throughout the conflict. According to The Guardian's investigations, over $10 million worth of trade has entered Serbia through Cyprus, including food, lorries and machinery.
    Where are the results of the monitoring announced by the Foreign Secretary this afternoon? Perhaps he will tell us how effective the monitoring has been on the Danube. How many times has there been intervention which has stopped supplies getting through to Serbia?
    It is widely acknowledged that the UN relief agencies are buckling under the strain of responding to the Balkan tragedy. The costs of this and any UN operation must be met in full by UN member states. The Foreign Secretary claims that British medicines are supplying hospitals in Sarajevo, but nightly television pictures show a gross lack of provision of medical care. That is something else that the Government have to tell us; they must explain the gap between what is claimed to have been provided and what we see on our television screens each night.
    If the developed world ever needed a chance to prove to its poor and suffering neighbours that its commitment to the new world order is real and deep-seated, Somalia should be the proving ground. It has become literally impossible to deliver aid to the millions facing starvation and death without the permission of the warlords and the paid protection of their henchmen.
    The super-powers' failure with Somalia is shown not only by the masses of dumped weaponry which feeds the clan feuds, but by the manipulation of tyrannical leaders for short-term political aims. Most importantly, it is

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    shown by the failure to realise some time ago that the situation in Somalia was deeply wrong and was destined to bring about civil war and massive famine.
    It would be pointless to delve now into the corrupt political mess in Somalia to seek solutions. Independent international action is desperately required. The Somalis cannot solve their problems alone. However, all the aid agencies working there are constrained by the lack of an overall plan for relief action. The United Nations humanitarian operation remains at the level of general statements and pious plans.
    The reason is simple enough. In an area of such deprivation, food and medicine have become strategic weapons. Until the UN and non-governmental organisations have sorted out proper attitudes to humanitarian aid they will struggle against impossible odds. It is clear that there is a greater role to be played by the UN. Indeed, if the new world order is to be effective it must be interventionist.
    The crisis offers the United Nations an opportunity to develop new ways of bringing decency and security to all parts of the world. The present limited mandate for UN forces is insufficient. If the UN could put large numbers of forces into the former Yugoslavia to aid the suffering population there is no moral argument for refraining from similar action in Somalia. A United Nations military presence, with the same rules of engagement as in the Balkans, will deprive the warring factions of the opportunity to steal relief food and medicines. At the same time, all parties could be encouraged to the negotiating table and pressured into seeking a peaceful solution to their arguments.
    The Foreign Secretary spoke recently of an "imperial" role for the United Nations. Indeed, there is a possible problem of UN military intervention seeming like an invasion, but therein lies the true acid test of the new world order. Nations such as Britain, the United States and Russia, which espouse humanitarian ideals and have the financial means to pay for their extension to poor and afflicted nations, should take the lead and ensure that that freedom is extended. Instead of reneging on aid payments and United Nations debts, they should carry their fair share of financial burden.
    As was said recently in The Independent, with insight and will it may be possible to develop a new pattern of intervention in the humanitarian nightmares of the world, with the aim of bringing relief to people who are victims of their Government's neglect or oppression.
    The debate allows us to speak in favour of such a commitment as we had when it was decided to deal with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It was decided that with the end of the cold war there could be a new world order, and that the UN could begin to play the role which those who brought it into being sought, and agreed that it should have. However, that will come only if we accept that the structure of the UN itself has to change. We must re-examine the make-up of the Security Council and those who hold millions of pounds who seek financial short cuts to compensate for deficits owed to them. The United Nations has a chance, particularly in Somalia, to play a major role in ensuring that we are not seen to be attempting to impose some form of colonial intervention on the affairs of other countries. In fact, we are responding to the real needs of real people.
    Anyone who has watched the television coverage of Somalia must be concerned that now that the rains have
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    started, the aid effort will naturally be slowed and even more young children are likely to die in the days ahead. The situation demands more than just hot air from this Chamber. We must start to play the role that we have described—of wanting to be part of a new world order. We must start to make that a reality. I hope that what has been said today will be the beginning of genuine concern and a determination to make the United Nations perform the role that it should have played from the very start.
    12.20 pm
    Mr. Patrick Cormack: As I was a chairman of the advisory committee of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), perhaps the House will permit me to express good wishes for the future, following his moving address to the House just over one hour ago.
    I will concentrate my remarks on the former Yugoslavia. I begin by expressing genuine respect and admiration for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and his ministerial colleagues for all that they have sought to do. At the same time, I make it plain that I have for months been haunted by the words of Edmund Burke, who said that nothing was necessary for the triumph of evil but that good men do nothing.
    I am not suggesting that good men have done nothing —far from it—but we are certainly seeing the triumph of evil because good men have not done enough. Anyone who doubts that should view the video to which reference has already been made. Tabloid newspapers are not exactly the flavour of the month at the moment, and I confess that I have never read the Daily Sport. However, I watched the video that the editor sent to every Member of Parliament. Any right hon. or hon. Member who has not watched that video should do so as soon as possible. It makes dreadfully tragic viewing, but it brings home just what is being done to snuff out all humanity and humane values in that part of the world.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor) referred to one appalling incident. In another, one sees someone carrying a tray of young men's genitals that were hacked off by Serbian soldiers. I will not go on, but I urge right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House to watch that video and to ponder it.
    Day after day, week after week, and month after month for the past year or so we have seen some of the most unspeakable atrocities committed—first in Croatia and then in Bosnia—since the end of the second world war. In fact, they are among the most unspeakable atrocities ever committed in Europe. Let no one doubt that. I do not for a minute believe that all the atrocities have been committed by one group against another, but it is plain —as the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) emphasised in his speech—that the aggressor for the most part is the Serbian, and Serbia is responsible for the majority of the carnage.
    When Dubrovnik was being shelled and Vukovar was raised to the ground, I was one of those who urged that we should take some action—air strikes into Serbia. We seem to be perfectly willing to wound by sanctions but reluctant to strike. I understand why, but this is not a civil war, because we in the west decreed that the countries involved are nation states. One can argue about the wisdom of whether that status should have been recognised. I believe

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    that it was right to recognise Croatia, although I was not so persuaded about Bosnia. The fact remains that they are now recognised as independent states, yet they have been denied the means of effective self-defence and the benefit of a defensive alliance.
    We are all involved because what is being torn apart are the values and decencies on which European civilisation and democracy are based. At risk is the credibility of the United Nations and of the European Community, and if that is not maintained, we will become even more aware of the two spectres that haunt the region. There is the spectre of an all-out Balkan war. Kosovo has been mentioned several times. One has only to reflect on the scenes on television this week, showing children being barred from school and teachers locked out, and on the consistent repression of the Albanian majority within Kosovo.
    Macedonia was also mentioned. Whatever the Greeks may say about names and titles, a guarantee should be given. What would happen if Albania, Bulgaria, and Greece and Turkey—two NATO members—were drawn in on opposing sides? The other spectre is that of Muslim fundamentalism. Last month, I addressed a rally in Trafalgar square, and it was a shattering experience. The hon. Members for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clywd) and for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) also spoke. We were loudly abused by a group of Muslim fundamentalists merely because we made some acknowledgement of what the British Government are seeking to do in trying to recognise some of the difficulties. It is a sobering thought that Muslim fundamentalism might soon be on the march in the heart of Europe.
    I do not doubt the good intentions and good will of the Government, the European Community, or the leaders of the United Nations and I do not underestimate the difficulties. I certainly do not want to see British troops drawn into a ground war. That, however, is a real danger. I wish Lord Owen every possible success in taking on the labours of my noble Friend Lord Carrington, to whom I also pay tribute. There is no point in bemoaning lost opportunities.
    If action had been taken last November or December we might not be having this debate, but it is still not too late for ultimatums to be issued to Serbia and to give the decent people in Serbia, of whom there are many, an opportunity to get away from their appalling communist dictator. We are prepared to take further action in Iraq, and we are right to do so. Why the double standards? I regret that we did not finish the job in Iraq, but that is another story.
    On trial are the point and purpose of the United Nations and the EC's effectiveness in maintaining the first objective of its founders, which was to ensure that war would never again tear Europe apart. Part of Europe is tearing apart and we must contain the conflict. If what is now being done by Lord Owen and Cyrus Vance does not lead to a fairly early and proper ceasefire, I urge my right hon. Friends—once again—to consider an air strike into Serbia itself.
    I know that my right hon. Friend will forgive me if I end on a slightly parochial point. It has been said that the Cheshires are going to the region. I am delighted about that because they are a fine regiment but I hope that my
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    right hon. Friend will note that this is yet another example of the need to have infantry which is well trained, easily deployed and of adequate size.
    Because I am deeply worried about the proposed merger of the Cheshires and the Staffords and because I believe that merger could undermine the effectiveness of the British Army, in which we all take such pride, I urge my right hon. Friend to think again about numbers and deployments.
    12.30 pm
    Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Less than three weeks ago, I was in Yugoslavia and managed to have two hours of talks with Slobodan Milosevic and one hour of talks with the president of the new federal Government of Serbia and Montenegro—the rump Yugoslavia as we might call it. I was able also to meet some of the Hungarian minority leaders in Vojvodina and to see the refugee camp in Palic, which houses 540 inmates, most of whom are Bosnian Muslims.
    The hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) described what has happened during the past year. Some of the horrendous things that have happened have made me despair of any solution, but I now believe that I can see a glimmer of hope. I made the same journey last year. At that time, the federal Government seemed impotent, although interesting to talk to. They seemed to be on the fade and President Milosevic of Serbia and Tudjman—whom I also met last year—of Croatia were on the up and up. I now feel that there is buoyancy in the leadership in Belgrade. The Foreign Secretary said that Prime Minister Panic should be encouraged. We should give every possible assistance to Mr. Panic—he is the Prime Minister of the new state of Serbia and Montenegro and seems to have overwhelming popular support.
    I travelled to Yugoslavia on my own. I notified the Foreign Office, but I did not receive any assistance and I was not contacted by the embassy in Belgrade although I appeared on television. I was able to wander the streets and talk to ordinary people. I know that Mr. Panic has the support of people in Belgrade and there is no reason to believe that that support does not extend beyond the capital. We need to support him, but how? I challenge the idea that increasing sanctions on Serbia will help him in his combat with the more extreme nationalists in Serbia. One must bear in mind that Mr. Panic recently survived a vote of confidence in the Assembly in Belgrade when he was under attack from the Šešel radicals, the group that is sometimes referred to as the Chetniks, who are the extremists. They may still be a danger because they could come to power in the rump Yugoslavia, if we do not establish and assist Mr. Panic in the next few months.
    Mr. Panic has done a number of things that we should all admire him for. He has abandoned the policy of all Serbs being in one state, which was undoubtedly Milosvic's policy last year, but even Milosevic seems now to have abandoned it. In the talks that I had with Mr. Panic I noticed one change. Whereas last year he talked about the Serbs in Krajina expressing their self-determination by being able to remain in the old Yugoslavia, he is now talking about the Krajina Serbs being part of Croatia, provided that human rights are extended to them on the same basis as they are extended to every other citizen in Croatia. That is important.

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    Moreover, at the London conference Mr. Panic recognised the boundaries of Croatia—that they should be inviolable and could be changed only by peaceful negotiation, not by military means. It was Mr. Panic who called for early elections in November. That is why many of the deputies, who stand to lose their seats in the Yugoslav Parliament in November, oppose him. That is the reason for the motion of no confidence in him. In addition, Mr. Panic is the man who dismissed Mihalj Kertes, the hardline deputy security service Minister and deputy interior Minister, from the Government. A close colleague of the Serbian President was dismissed by Panic. We do not help Panic by increasing the sanctions on Serbia.
    If, indeed, the arms were coming from Serbia into Bosnia and an army were invading across the border, that might be a different matter. However, in his speech, the Foreign Secretary intimated that the attacks were coming from inside Bosnia—that it was Bosnian Serbs who were involved in these attacks. It would be an odd way of rewarding Mr. Panic for his efforts, particularly for his efforts at the recent London conference, if we attempted to undermine him. That is the warning that I gave this year. I gave a warning last year: that we should not have recognised Croatia. Despite what the hon. Members for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) and for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) said, those people who looked into what had happened in Croatia last year, on behalf of Lord Carrington, came to the conclusion that Croatia was not ready for recognition. Why? Because human rights were still not being recognised there.
    Mr. Hardy: And they have still not been recognised there.
    Mr. Wareing: That is right. Serbs, who had lived as Yugoslav citizens for 40 years in parts of Croatia, are now foreigners in their own country. It is as though we were to say that all Scotsmen who live in England should no longer be given the same rights as English people. If that happened, we should say that that was totally wrong. Not enough pressure is being put on Croatia. The Croats are not innocent. People, I acknowledge, have said that it is not all one-sided. I deplore the actions of the Serbs, particularly the irregulars who are involved in Bosnia, and I deplore the atrocities. Likewise, I deplore the atrocities that have been committed by the other side.
    Until last January the Government adopted an even-handed approach, but I reproach them for the fact that that approach has ceased, simply because, in my view, they needed German support over Maastricht. Be that as it may, it was wrong; it was an error. The hon. Member for Staffordshire, South is wrong in believing that military attacks on bases in Serbia would have anything other than a counterproductive effect—that of undermining the very people in Belgrade whom we want to continue in power and whom, to use a phrase that the previous Prime Minister used about Mr. Gorbachev, we can do business with. We must be careful about the policies that we adopt and ask ourselves a few questions about them.
    The Foreign Secretary said he regretted that the old Yugoslavia fell apart. But we played our part in that because when Yugoslavia appealed more than two years ago for membership of the Council of Europe, it was ignored. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) and I tabled an early-day motion and wrote to the Foreign
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    Secretary asking for the know-how fund to be extended to the old Yugoslavia, but we were told that it was not democratic enough.
    Mr. Hardy: Three years ago Yugoslavia was given guest membership of the Council of Europe.
    Mr. Wareing: But that was a belated approach and more should have been done to uphold the integrity of the old Yugoslavia. The Foreign Secretary said that he would not go into how the storm in Bosnia began. The EC played its part in that by its early recognition of —
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Lofthouse): Order. I call Mr. Churchill.
    12.40 pm
    Mr. Winston Churchill: About 24 years ago British troops were deployed in Northern Ireland. Tragically, they are still there. The Yugoslav conflict is on an even greater scale. The terrain is infinitely more difficult and the viciousness of the conflict far surpasses the one in Northern Ireland. I hope that we are not blundering into a situation that will prove to be a costly can of worms.
    British troops respond admirably when they have a clear-cut objective. Examples of that are retaking the Falkland Islands in 1982 and, along with our coalition partners, driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait last year. Bosnia is different, but the mountains there are not unknown to the British Army. While serving as the Member for Preston my late father fought in the Bosnian fastnesses alongside our erstwhile colleague Sir Fitzroy Maclean. The objective in Bosnia now is much less clear cut and our forces will be under instructions to escort convoys of humanitarian aid.
    In giving evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, the Minister for the Armed Forces said earlier this week that it was hoped to negotiate safe passage for the British protected convoys. But we have seen with what alacrity both sides have broken previous agreements, and it would be a dereliction of duty not to be prepared for the worst. The Select Committee on Defence was reassured by the positive statement of the Minister for the Armed Forces that British forces would be authorised to return fire "with all they have got." But will what they have got be enough?
    We are told that if a British escorted convoy comes under attack from heavy weapons the commander is under instructions somewhat ingloriously to adopt the time-honoured tactics of British Sunday journalists—to make an excuse and leave. It is plain that 1,800 British troops cannot possibly hope to fight their way through an area which 30 Nazi divisions failed to control in the second world war.
    The desperate plight of the civilian population has been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack). The atrocities in the conflict are unspeakable, but apart from those atrocities civilians are in a desperate plight and suffer from a lack of food, water, shelter and fuel, and the problems will intensify in the coming winter.
    I do not dispute the Government's decision to try to get food and medicines through, but our overriding concern must be to ensure that British casualties—there will inevitably be British casualties—are kept to an absolute

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    minimum. Only this morning, four further United Nations casualties were recorded when their armoured personnel carrier was blown up by Serbian forces.
    I have three concerns about the deployment of the Cheshire regiment, of which I can say as a Member representing part of Cheshire, we are very proud indeed. I should be grateful for the Secretary of State's assurance that it will be considered. First and foremost, is there a chain of command in which Ministers and our soldiers can have confidence? Grave concerns have been expressed about that. Secondly, is it prudent to rely on the good faith of the warring factions rather than providing any airborne reconnaissance capability that would warn our forces of an ambush? I understand the decision not to use helicopters because, as my right hon. Friend the Minister made clear, it would place our pilots at unnecessary risk from shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, but what about unmanned airborne vehicles, which are known as drones? There is a proposal before the Ministry to make such equipment available within a short time on a short lease. I hope that that will at least be considered.
    Thirdly, what if our forces come under heavy weapons fire? They will have no means of pinpointing the source of the fire, let alone of retaliation. Would not it at least be sensible to deploy an Invincible class carrier to the Adriatic as a precautionary measure so that if one of our convoys gets into trouble, is ambushed or has its withdrawal blocked it knows that, within 30 minutes, it can summon an air strike? Alternatively, that could be achieved by deploying fixed-wing aircraft in Italy. I favour the air exclusion zone over Bosnia that the United States has proposed.
    If this debate were being held next year, the Government would be unable to send the Cheshire regiment. I call on the Secretary of State urgently to review the "Options for Change" cuts proposed for the infantry. Our armed forces are experiencing severe overstretch, with the gap between tours in Northern Ireland being reduced from 24 months to only 15 months. By general consent, that is an unacceptably short respite between tours. Surely it is clear to all but the most blinkered friend of the Treasury that we need at least five more infantry battalions than are envisaged in the present plans. The cost would be a mere £75 million, which, in the sum total of Government expenditure, is but a drop in the bucket. That could, however, give a great deal of flexibility to the Army. It would relieve much of the overstretch and many of the human problems that go with it for our forces and their families. Perhaps my right hon. and learned Friend would care to make a start by reprieving the Cheshires.
    12.50 pm
    Mr. Bruce George: I am the third member of the Defence Select Committee to speak this morning. Defence Ministers will be appearing before us so frequently in the next few months talking about this very subject that they may come to think of themselves as members of that Committee, too.
    It was right to recall the House to debate these serious issues, but one wonders whether, if the Mr. Panics of the Conservative party had not messed up the economy, we would have been able to hitch a ride on the back of the economic debate to discuss foreign affairs. Whatever the
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    rationale for this debate, however, it is right to discuss the crucial issues involved in foreign affairs and defence, and I am pleased that the Defence Select Committee has already met to try to elicit more information than has hitherto been made public.
    It might seem perverse to view the cold war as anything other than a negative phenomenon, but in many ways it was simple. Not only did soldiers know who the enemy was; they knew which dug-out they would be fighting in, and they probably knew the name of the tank commander who would come against them. In those days policy makers did not need to think much. The world was a simpler and stable place. All those conditions have changed, not always for the better.
    The turbulent, volatile and conflict-ridden world in which we now live surely requires much more thinking —fresh ideas are needed. One thing is certain: anyone who believes that we are entering a wonderful new era without war, in which armed forces can be reduced to negligible levels, is deluding himself. Such aspirations will be thwarted.
    History offers us little comfort for the idea that war can be banished. There have been major defining treaties in the past. The 1990 charter of Paris was intended to create an orderly Europe, and it failed. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) has spoken of armaments being passed around the world. We read in the press only today that Russia is selling diesel submarines to Iran. Then there is the problem of the haemorrhaging of nuclear capability. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in a recent publication identified 30 conflicts around the world today. So we need forces commensurate with our national interests, alliances, and obligations, such as our obligation to the United Nations.
    For Bosnia this has been a period of tragedy beyond words. For us it has been a case study of the sort of a war that we shall see more of. It has consumed Croatians and Bosnians and it threatens to escalate dramatically to engulf the wider Balkan region. We can now assess the effect of the international community's mediation and intervention in the conflict so far. I regret to say that the roles of the UN, the EC, the Western European Union, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, NATO and various national Governments have been far from encouraging; indeed, usually they have been dispiriting. I hope that that experience will serve to quash the idea that Europe is capable of looking after its own security, let alone anyone else's.
    Yugoslavia is a test bed for the international community's ability to formulate policy to deal with such conflicts. So far the international community has responded with a paralysing lack of adaptability and co-ordination. The conflict has proceeded almost unchecked. The Secretary of State spoke of "occasional slackening" in the fighting. That leads to the depressing conclusion that unless we react diplomatically, politically and economically, war will spread. There has been a lack of political objectives and the insertion of military forces in the absence of clear political objectives is a recipe for political and military catastrophe. The decision to send British forces, although worthy and limited, seems to have been designed more to placate domestic opinion than to achieve any real solution to the problem.
    There is a recognisable lack of enthusiasm on the part of many military analysts on matters such as the nature of

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    the problems facing our forces. To me it appears rather humiliating when forces are inserted and they have to argue their way through warlords' domains. If the warlords say that they cannot go through, they cannot. If the warloads decide that they have had enough of the British presence, all they need do is to kill some British soldiers and, according to information that we have been given, we shall depart.
    The force that we have sent is, to use the words of the last Sir Winston Churchill in describing the name of a colleague of his, Bossom, neither one thing nor the other. I suspect that our forces are similarly designed. According to a good friend of mine, Paul Beaver of "Jane's", three main alliance patterns are emerging in the Balkans. The first includes Croatia and Hungary, the second Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Romania and the third Albania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Those regional alliances being postulated could have obvious repercussions for the EC and NATO. Unless we are exceedingly careful and show greater imagination than in the past, the third Balkan war may well erupt.
    There is a reasonable possibility of preventing that course of action. There is nothing automatic about a third Balkan war, but much will depend on the outcome of the current war in Bosnia. If Serbia is weakened by war and UN sanctions, and if Serbia concedes the principles of a united Bosnia, underpinned by international guarantees and a UN presence, possibly a trusteeship, as Christopher Cviic of Chatham House has argued, the way could be clear for an eventual non-violent settlement of the Kosovo and Macedonia issues.
    A few years ago we were subjected to the Government's rethinking in what was called "Options for Change". As earlier speakers have argued, the concept of "Options for Change" was designed during the euphoric period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, in the two years subsequently, the Gulf war and many other wars should have led to some degree of reappraisal. To reduce our infantry battalions from 55 to 37 is dangerous. We have an enormous commitment in Northern Ireland, to home defence, the ACE rapid reaction corps, the Falklands and the residue of empire. Now we have superimposed on that the problems of committing resources to the former Yugoslavia and the possibility of conflict increasing and escalating in the Persian Gulf again. That will overstretch our resources to such a level that options available to a Secretary of State will diminish.
    As was said earlier, the 24-month interval between tours of duty in Northern Ireland has been breached. I understand that the battalion put on standby to replace the Cheshires was in Northern Ireland as recently as May. That makes even the 15-month interval that the Select Committee on Defence was told about seem absurdly long.
    We are experiencing overstretch in our Army. We are reaching the stage where the Government should be reconsidering the mergers. I shall not repeat the arguments that I have used a number of times in the past, simply arguing for my local regiment to survive.
    Perhaps during the Gulf war it was believed that high-tech warfare was the model of warfare for the future and therefore the poor infantry, the unspectacular guard that does the bread-and-butter job, was less important. Surely subsequent to the Gulf war, the increase in the activity of the United Nations and the likelihood of an increase in low-intensity conflict mean that the case for the
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    retention of the infantry is overwhelming. I hope that the Government will reconsider the decision that they made two years ago.
    12.58 pm
    Miss Emma Nicholson: Following the end of the Gulf war, the Kurds rose up in the north of Iraq and the Shi'ites in the south. On our television screens, we saw the tragedy of the Kurds spilling over the mountains, and the west reacted. We sent in humanitarian aid. We did not see the southern tragedy but we heard the stories.
    In April 1991, a month after the uprising, the UN Security Council passed resolution 688, to insist
    "that Iraq allow immediate access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq and to make available all necessary facilities for their operations".
    Nothing has happened in the south of Iraq to implement that resolution.
    Towards the end of July, this year, spurred by continuing stories of unhappiness and misery, the House formed the all-party parliamentary group for Iraqi Shias of which I am the chairman. Our task is to bring the plight of the suffering Iraqi Shias to the notice of the world. I believe that the Chamber needs no videos and no television stories; it has the imagination, the knowledge and perception to understand what is going on in the south of Iraq without the visual aids that others need.
    The Secretary of State reacted at once. We tabled parliamentary questions and an early-day motion. The Secretary of State knows well that resolution 688 has not been implemented. I pay tribute here to the excellence and thoughtfulness of the help provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, particularly the middle east desk and its staff, including David Reddaway, our chargé d'affaires in Tehran, Iran. They have worked wonders, as has the Secretary of State himself. Helped by our knowledge and the efforts of the British Prime Minister, he persuaded our American allies and the French to introduce the no-fly zone.
    This week I visited Iraq and Iran for the sixth or seventh time. Let me make a brief report on the situation in southern Iraq since the implementation of the no-fly zone. I have to tell the House that the situation is now critical. The skies above the marshes are clear, which is wonderful: I pay tribute to the bravery of the pilots who are keeping them clear. The leaflets are there and the people can see what is happening. They have been dropped with a short message in Arabic, with a picture on the other side of our aircraft and of Saddam Hussein's airships, both fixed-wing and helicopters. How could the allies have allowed him to keep those helicopters? I believe that it was a mistaken decision by the United States, which believed that they would be used for humanitarian purposes. Did they not know the beast with whom they were dealing?
    The skies are clear; but on the ground, in revenge for our actions in trying to monitor the non-implementation of resolution 688, Saddam Hussein has now put half his entire military forces into the marshes. The dangers are considerably heightened. The results can be seen even just inside the Iraqi border. There are great black, smoking areas, stretching into the water where one or more missiles landed perhaps an hour earlier. The black zones are 300

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    metres long: if the missiles had landed in the town they would have demolished about 20,000 houses. They would have gone up in flames.
    Food stocks have been removed and taken north of the 32nd parallel. That is the first thing that Saddam did when he invaded Kuwait: he took out all the food. The farms have been burnt, including the small rice farms in the marshes. The villagers are no longer self-sufficient in food, yet they are blockaded, so that they cannot get out to the towns to try to find food on the black market. The towns are filled with soldiers.
    Tank divisions, each containing 45 tanks, are based in different towns in the marshes. I have the names of those towns. missiles and missile launchers make nonsense of the claim that it is impossible to bomb the towns and villages from the ground. Assault boats carrying 30 to 40 armed men—the boats in which I travel carry a maximum of four or five people—assault the towns and villages each day.
    The troops are stationed 30 km outside the marshes. They have been beaten off a little, but they come back in every day and carry out their remorseless attacks—burning, shooting and killing defenceless people, and destroying whole villages and towns. I talked to a man in a hostel for the wounded in Ahwaz who came out of Iraq on Monday with his hand blown off. He was a young farmer, only 20 years old. In the towns and villages around his area lived 25,000 people; five days ago, the area was emptied by 20,000 armed men. That is what has happened since the introduction of the no-fly zone.
    Sewage dumping has further contaminated the drinking water—containerised and brought in from cities around the marshes, such as Basra. I saw the evidence of the drainage of the marshes of which we have heard in recent weeks. The water level has been reduced; the roots of the papyri show.
    I have already described the physical evidence of attacks. Clergy are at risk in the wake of the death of the Grand Ayatollah Al Khoei. There has been no medication in the marshes for many years. Medicine is not available and there are no doctors. There is a grave shortage in the supply of food and the water buffalo have almost disappeared through lack of water. The muddy fish, stinking water and malarial air are all that is left for people to live on. If that is not genocide, the word means nothing.
    In my humanitarian work this time I have been able to obtain much new military data on the Saddam Hussein marsh attacks, drawn from the evidence that people have given to me. It is compelling; it is difficult and dangerous to obtain, but it exists. I have brought back tapes, photographs and videos taken at great risk of life and limb by people deep inside the heart of the marshes. I have many written statements from personal interviews within and outside the marshes that desperate people—men, women and children—have given me. I shall give those reports to the Secretary of State for Defence and the Foreign Secretary.
    Thousands of people have escaped. It becomes ever more difficult to do so as the front line of Saddam Husssein's army gets closer to the border of Iran. People become trapped as their villages are assaulted. They run towards the safe haven of Iran but cannot get through. Eight families died in mined waters near the border two
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    days before I sailed there. There are many thousands of people in the camps in Iran—a country which has reacted with hospitality and support. Iran now has 3.5 million refugees in camps and on the borders. The country gives free right of passage to all refugees and offers a real safe haven.
    Has the official aid worked in Iraq and should sanctions now be lifted? The United Nations methods of distributing aid in southern Iraq—the district which I know—has been faulty and misapplied. The food aid that has come in and which the United Nations has been given to distribute in the past 18 months was given to officials in southern Iraq. Who are those officials? They belong to the Saddam Hussein regime. The food was then given to the Saddam Hussein army. I have no faith in the United Nations as a distribution agency in southern Iraq. The United Nations Development Programme officials in Iran have been sitting in the most expensive hotel, day in day out, week in week out, for more than a year. They seem to have achieved little.
    Should economic sanctions against Iraq be lifted to help the people? To do so would presuppose a beneficent Government aiming to carry out good actions on behalf of the people. That is not on offer. We are dealing with a despotic regime headed by a tyrant of demonic proportions—a man who lacks the normal human feelings and sensitivities and whose documented cruelty stretches back 20 years or more. His half brother, Barzal al Takriti, a murderer, is the Iraqi United Nations delegate to Geneva. That is what we have allowed to happen.
    Public and private funding has come from the Government's Overseas Development Administration, from the European Community and from the British public. It is that money which I have been spending. I pay tribute to the many Iranians and Iraqis who have formed seven committees to help me work for the good of the Iraqi people throughout Iran and on the borders. There is now an aid committee in the marshes to deliver food. The danger is acute. One man was lost delivering food—our EC aid—three weeks ago.
    I pay tribute to the Persian Gulf department of the Iranian Foreign Ministry—in particular, the first secretary, Mr. Vahid Farmand and his colleagues, to the Interior Ministry, to the governor of Khozestan and to his staff and to the governor of Shustar and his office, to the Iraqi Opposition, the Supreme Council of the Revolution in Iraq, to Ayatollah al Hakim, to Yousif al Khoei and his grandfather's foundation, and to the many other Iraqi groups and individuals who have done so much to help. Both Iran and Iraq have come together with myself to make that humanitarian aid—dangerous, arduous and sensitive work—effective. We can deliver a little food, but it is not enough.
    I call upon the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to do all that he can to secure the new Security Council draft resolution—the revised assets resolution—to incorporate aid to the Shi'ites. It does not incorporate such aid. There is no mention of the Shi'ites. I call upon him to provide food from the air and to think hard whether one could in some way achieve, not full military intervention immediately, but perhaps a massing of troops on the border. For if we cannot push Saddam Hussein's troops north of the 32nd parallel soon there will be no marsh Arabs left and few Shi'ite Iraqis either. The

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    Tigris and Euphrates great marshes of history will have gone, we shall have failed and Saddam Hussein will have won.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: I remind the House that we have come to the end of the time governed by a 10-minute limit on speeches, but many hon. Members want to catch my eye. I should be grateful if hon. Members would bear that in mind and, as far as possible, make their speeches short.
    1.10 pm
    Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones (Ynys Môn): I have listened with great care to hon. Members from both sides of the House talk with great passion about the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. There does not seem to be any consistency in the approach to tackling that massive problem. That is one reason why the conflict has escalated into Bosnia. If there had been concerted and clear action by the United Nations and the European Community at an early stage— whatever that action should have been—I think that it would have sent a clear message to the Serbs, who have committed most of the atrocities.
    It is almost 12 months since the fall of Vukovar, after a three-month seige by Serbian forces. We all recall the awful bloodshed, the senseless killings and the massive artillery attacks perpetrated by the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army. That shocked the world. We deplored the loss of life, the destruction of communities, homes and possessions, the destruction of an ancient culture and the dislocation of the peaceful co-existence between the Serbs and Croats.
    Yet our response was disjointed in the sense that there was no concerted action. By the time that United Nations peacekeeping forces had been deployed, the map of Croatia had effectively been redrawn, to the benefit of Serbia, and the land held by the Serbs became part of the drive for a greater Serbia. It is not as though Serbia had no right to be concerned about the future of 600,000 of its countrymen remaining within the borders of an independent Croatia. We all recall with horror the atrocities committed during the second world war, which surely would have allowed the Serbians to consider whether it was safe for their fellow countrymen to remain in Croatia without any protection, but that in no way condones the way in which Serbia acted in Croatia. Rather than securing guarantees for the Serbian population, the Serbs were driven by the desire to lay claim to Croatian territory and that was totally unacceptable.
    Due to the lack of concerted action in the Croatian crisis we now have a crisis in Bosnia Hercegovina. Ethnic conflict is not new in that part of the world, as we know to our cost from the earlier part of this century. Some people will point to historical precedents to prevent direct military intervention, but, because there has been no other course of action, and after the past 12 months of inaction, when ceasefire after ceasefire was breached with monotonous regularity, it could at least be argued that Serbia thought that a venture into Bosnia would not be challenged.
    Bosnia is now a recognised state, in which 44 per cent. of the population is Muslim, yet Serbia controls two thirds of that country and Croatia has also taken a share. By the time of the conference in London in August the map of Bosnia had virtually been redrawn and the prospect of greater Serbian domination was much closer. I echo the sentiments voiced in some parts of the House today that if sanctions are to he effective they must be as watertight as
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    possible. If we allow them to be breached, the Serbs will continue to drive into Bosnia and to control as much of the country as possible. It is clear that any intervention at this stage would appear to be too late to save the awful tragedy that has shattered the region, but limited western military action in a joint United Nations and European Community initiative is now essential to drive a path for humanitarian aid and for food and medical supplies to the beseiged city of Sarajevo and other places.
    When we have committed ourselves to that course of action, the rules of engagement for troops deployed in the region must allow them to protect themselves, with the freedom of action that that implies. Neil Ascherson, in a recent article in The Independent on Sunday, described ethnic cleansing as "a foul expression". How apt that description is. That cruel method of driving people away from their homes, shattering communities and destroying people's lives should galvanise others into action. It is oppressive nationalism of the worst kind, fuelled by belief in the pure race. Let us reject it completely, and let us say publicly that we do so. Let us act in a way consistent with our belief that driving people from their homes and casting them away in inhuman conditions deserves international condemnation and action.
    The Balkan conflict has led to the displacement of more than 2 million people. It has caused the greatest European refugee crisis since the second world war. Most of the refugees remain within the six republics that made up Yugoslavia, but I am afraid that the response of some western countries to the crisis has been painfully inadequate. Of course, I understand why some people say that refugees should be kept as close as possible to their homes—but many do not have homes to go to. Their homes have been razed to the ground. They have nowhere to go, no shelter and no food. The United Kingdom should play a greater part in the acceptance of refugees from that war-torn country.
    Africa, too, faces famine, war and death. Forty million people are facing starvation and there is a real danger of instability in vast parts of the continent. One in six Somalis is a refugee outside the country and, inside the country, especially in the south, there is a massive problem of starvation and malnutrition. Twenty-five per cent. of all children under five are reported to have starved to death. One aid worker reported having seen 40 babies die overnight in one of the feeding centres. As journalists and aid workers penetrate towns and villages, they encounter horror after horror.
    We know that the United Nations is now planning massive food aid and that humanitarian aid workers are dedicated to the immediate relief of the suffering. However, that is happening against a backdrop of a real cut in overseas aid, as we have already heard today.
    Ms. Mildred Gordon: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Jones: No. I am sorry, but I have only a minute left.
    Even when the immediate problems are alleviated, massive problems will remain concerning the restructuring of the country. As we alleviate famine, which we must, we must also remember that the west has an overseas aid obligation. The prospect of a decrease rather than an increase in aid is to be deplored. The United Kingdom currently holds the presidency of the EC Council of

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    Ministers, which has proposed a £200 million cut in the Community's 1993 budget for development and co-operation.
    African countries owe massive debts to western Governments, the International Monetary Fund, the World bank and commercial banks. I urge the Government to give an assurance that the United Kingdom will give the lead by increasing, not cutting, its aid budget and by calling for a meeting of G7 Ministers. They must agree to reduce Africa's total debt burden by implementing the original Trinidad terms as the first step to completing debt write-off. They must agree also to reduce the level of commercial debts owed to banks. That will help to rebuild the economy of that shattered continent, so that its peoples can have real hope for their future.
    1.20 pm
    Mr. David Tredinnick: I will never forget marching into Londonderry in 1969, when I was 19, from a troop ship in the River Foyle, together with 600 other British troops. We were sent to prevent civil disorder degenerating into civil war. It will not surprise the House if I say that I have every sympathy with the Cheshire regiment and the support troops sent to the former republic of Yugoslavia. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence on his robust statements about the rules of engagement for British troops. A lesson has been learnt, because when we went to Northern Ireland, our feeling was that if we used our rifles, we would be court martialled. There was a feeling of great insecurity among British forces there in 1969. It is essential that any British troops sent to Bosnia have the right to shoot back.
    As there is a strong possibility that some British soldiers will be wounded or worse, I am in favour of some sort of air exclusion zone. We have air superiority and we should use it. My hon. Friend the Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) pleaded for an aircraft carrier to be sent as a reserve, and that must be right when one considers the exclusion zone in north Iraq and the efforts that we are making to help the Shias in the marshes in the south in the same way, which have been a huge success.
    We should note also what hapened to the Ukranian battalion in Sarajevo that has been supporting the UN's efforts. It was shelled and several of its members killed. Last week, I was privileged to hear Mr. Zlenko, the Foreign Minister of the Ukraine, speak passionately and movingly about his country's commitment and how deeply the Ukrainians feel about the troops that they lost. We must not allow British troops to become en laagered—battened down and sitting ducks. We must have a plan for withdrawing British troops if the circumstances suggest that Bosnia is sliding into a hopeless civil war.
    There are three clear and related objectives. The first is the resolution of the conflict in Bosnia. I strongly support the sanctions against Serbia, but I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), who served in Yugoslavia during the second world war, and who did so much as chairman of the all-party Yugoslav group, and to his remarks about Prime Minister Panic. There must be a case for throwing that
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    man a lifeline and for easing sanctions. We must be rigid about sanction-busting along the Danube, but we should also build up Mr. Panic if we can.
    Our second objective must be to be restrict the conflict to Bosnia and Croatia. Many eyes are watching what is happening there—not least those of the Transylvanian Hungarians in Romania.
    I went to Cluj last year. It is a tinderbox. Mr. Zlenko referred to the problems of Moldova on the Romanian-Ukranian border. There are dozens of small enclaves—of Germans, Tartars and Kazaks, for example—throughout the Russian Federation all the way to Vladivostok. We have to contain the fighting. If it goes south to Kosovo and Macedonia, we will have NATO fighting NATO—the Greeks and Turks at loggerheads. And Bulgaria, one of the most stable of the newly liberated countries in eastern Europe, is terrified. I spoke to a senior Bulgarian diplomat the other day who was terrified that Bulgaria will be drawn into the conflict about Macedonia because Bulgaria lost of lot of land to the Macedonian province of the former Yugoslavia.
    The third objective must be to save lives in Sarajevo, Gorazde and Tuzla. The winter is coming upon us. This is not just a humanitarian tragedy; we may face a political disaster too. As the people in those cities are mostly Muslims, we have a larger foreign policy issue at stake here. We are trying to do things in the middle east and need support in that region. If we are seen to do nothing to stop Muslims starving, I fear for the future. If we fail, we shall create a huge political problem the like of which we have not seen before. It will affect our middle east policy and it will be devastating. We must not send the wrong signals. We may have to relieve those cities by force. They must not starve.
    In summary, an air exclusion zone, which can be demonstrated to be a success, can be imposed. The Chetniks are cowards. Are we really saying that we cannot hit the gun emplacements around Sarajevo with our modern weaponry?
    Finally, today's debate is also about Somalia. We may be entering a new era in foreign policy thinking. The United Nations is stretched as more demands are being made of it. We have a unique situation in Somalia, where warlords do not care about the population and use a mass of arms to damage them. There may come a point at which we have to intervene in a nation's affairs to save that nation. There may be a case for seizing the port in Somalia. The prospect is, therefore, of a new world where, in the not-too-distant future, we may have to use force in the best interests of a country's population, regardless of its leaders.
    1.28 pm
    Mr. Peter Hardy: The hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) will forgive me if I do not devote much of the time available to me to what he said, although his speech deserves to be taken seriously. He may agree that the Somali experience demonstrates the evil of uncontrolled trade in cut-price ordnance. I fear that disarmament will result in weapons being sold to third world countries that can ill afford what the rest of the world should not allow them to use.
    The debate is about the exercise of international authority. I was delighted with what the Foreign Secretary said about the United Nations. I am pleased to see my hon.

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    Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) as our principal spokesman on foreign affairs. He commenced his speech by emphasising the same important case. We must recognise that, in the guise of the UN, international authority is not in a particularly robust condition. The hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) provided us with further evidence of that.
    I am reminded of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe assembly that some of us attended as representatives of this country. I had the good fortune in July to lead my party's delegation. I have never been to a more ramshackle hotchpotch of disorganised chaos in all my life. If it had not been particularly for members of the staff of this House, it would have degenerated into a confused muddle. Those hon. Members who had the good fortune, or misfortune, to take part in the proceedings of that assembly may share my assessment and also share my gratitude for the fact that the right hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling) helped to bring some order out of chaos.
    If the United Nations is in such a condition. it gives cause for anxiety and distress. It might lead some people to say, "A plague on all your houses; they can't run anything; it's a complete farce. We'll stay on our own beaches and ignore the international cause." I am sometimes tempted to take that view.
    Just before the killing started in Yugoslavia, the Council of Europe—which has some influence at the margin, at least—decided to bring the leaders of all the Yugoslav republics to Strasbourg. Quite a lot of us attended the meeting. Each of the leaders made a speech. During the speech of the leader of the Serbs, the aide to the Croatian leader, sitting beside him, spent his time making gestures which even this House, at its most childish, would find surprising—gestures of insult and obscenity. The leader of the Serbs on two or three occasions acted rather foolishly by seeking the protection of the chair when a more Anglo-Saxon remedy might have been more appropriate.
    Against that background, the parliamentary assembly then rushed to a call for the immediate recognition of Croatia, despite the fact that I had asked that Croatian leader one very important question. I asked him whether he would be prepared to agree that before the international community recognised Croatia it should, with the other Yugoslav republics that had not yet been officially established, accept that, while the world understood that the state of Yugoslavia was finished and had no future, transitional confederative arrangements should be made that would allow mechanisms to protect minority rights to be put in place before international recognition was conferred.
    I spoke in the debate—I believe it took place the next day—on behalf of my political group and put that case. I suggested that recognition should not be immediately conferred. Unfortunately, that view was narrowly defeated. Without wishing to be rude to Conservative Members, perhaps I could say that it was a dreadful pity that the chairman of the assembly at that time was the leader of the Conservative group. It left his group rather like headless chickens. Some of them voted with me while some of them voted against, along with the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston). That is one reason why I disagreed with his assessment during his speech.
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    Those same people spoke to me a few days ago, in meetings connected with the Western European Union and the Council of Europe, and told me, "Of course we can't give Croatia full membership because it does not comply with the rules." They said that because there is no freedom, because there is aggression, because the majority in Croatia have a position of privilege that is denied to the rest. It is a great pity that wisdom was not applied earlier. But I do not believe that there is a great deal of wisdom about. During the Gulf war I spoke in favour of that war. Later I made it clear that as far as I was concerned it finished 48 hours too soon. During the Gulf war, however, Britain properly played a part. At the end of that conflict, I was astonished by the triumphalist report presented to the Western European Union. Members from almost every country flocked to speak and only two British Members were scheduled to speak at the end of the debate. At that assembly in Paris, I made an unpopular speech. Member after Member from other Parliaments spoke in a triumphalist and self-congratulatory way about the victory in the Gulf. I said that some member states had sent more parliamentarians to speak in the debate than they sent personnel to serve in the Gulf.
    We are now preparing for military intervention in Bosnia. For two years I have listened to people in Europe calling for military intervention and some of those calls have been very jingoistic. But Britain, which was, prudently, the most cautious of all, is now sending the largest contingent. Some Conservative Members are making a considerable mistake by saying only that our troops must shoot back if someone shoots or prepares to shoot at them. Can soldiers shoot at a sniper who is firing from 1,000 yards or more or at those who are lobbing mortars from wooded terrain at an armoured convoy?
    The Government must be careful. I am not suggesting that we should not put our forces behind the United Nations, but if we are not careful, a situation of inextricable complexity and embarrassment will develop and that will place an unfair responsibility on our platoon commanders in the Cheshire and other regiments.
    There should be an air exclusion zone, but we must face the fact that sooner or later the air exclusion force may be used to strike at locations from which mortars, bombs and shells are raining down upon the United Nations convoys. We must think the matter through. However, effecting the air exclusion zone does not present a great difficulty.
    Along with the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) I have the good fortune presently to be attached to the Royal Air Force and yesterday morning I flew in a GR1 with one of the young men who served so bravely in the Gulf. I also spoke to his colleagues, many of whom shared his experience. They do not know precisely when, but they know that shortly they will be expected to reinforce or replace the pilots who are currently serving with distinction over Iraq. Those pilots, who are highly intelligent young men, have enormous skill and will carry out the function that the Government will lay upon their shoulders. They have demonstrated upside down, sideways and in every other way that they are capable of operating an air exclusion zone over Yugoslavia in the same way as they operate one over Iraq.
    But once again, we shall be called upon to provide an unfair share of the burden because some member states which are eager to make calls are not good at making a military contribution. International authority must be made efficient and strong, and we must persuade the

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    British people that the burdens that they will bear and the losses that they may feel are justified. They will not be justified unless there is a rather more positive approach from the Government.
    The Government's view was prudent and cautious, but they appear to have dropped prudence and surrendered caution and the House and the country have not yet been given an adequate explanation. If we are to be less prudent and less cautious, we are entitled to say to our European partners and friends that it is time that they stopped making claims, demands and calls that are not matched by adequate contributions.
    1.39 pm
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: The House sends off a British contingent to the United Nations protection force with encouragement and pride but not a little anxiety. That force has the clear objective of escorting humanitarian convoys—a worthwhile objective. However, if it is limited to that, we shall be shoring up a crumbling edifice and bogging ourselves down in an unending process. We should then be treating the symptoms but not the causes of the illness.
    The causes are the classic hatreds, which have been exacerbated by recent events, between Serbs, Croats and Muslims. The worst examples are in Bosnia Hercegovina —provinces artificially created by the Hapsburgs in the last century. Is it our objective to shore up that artificial edifice, which itself has been pounded to rubble by its own inhabitants? Through the auspices of the United Nations or the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe perhaps we should be taking positive steps to enforce peace in the area by the imposition and enforcement of a no-fly zone and by the isolation of artillery, armour and other weapons; indeed, by the implementation of the agreement reached at the London conference.
    If we allow the situation to fester, the violence will spread like a cancer through the Balkans and northwards into central and eastern Europe.
    Europe is a tinder-box of national emnities that are now thawing after the 50 years deep frost of communism. Some 77 per cent. of the population of Kosovo are Albanians, who have been subjected to repression, which is now getting worse, from the ruling Serbs, inspired by their 14th century historic battle. Macedonia, likewise, has a major ethnic group that has been long under Serbian control from Yugoslavia, which has a destabilising effect on Greece and Bulgaria. Not only is Yugoslavia, a creation of Versailles, in collapse but so is Czechoslovakia. In the wake of its collapse we shall encounter a rekindling interest in the Sudetenland, now dominated by the Czech authorities. The Sudetens in Bavaria and elsewhere in Germany see an opportunity in this redefining of states in that area. The large Hungarian minority in Slovakia may call for self-determination, as, indeed, might the Slovak minority in Hungary. Any of these may progress from dissent to violence and war.
    In Poland, many people in Silesia and Pomerania have rediscovered their German identity. There is a destabilis-ing phenomenon in the Kaliningrad enclave, formerly east Prussia, which is populated by Russians and is now a dumping ground for Volga Germans. Newly liberated Lithuania is ignoring its own experience and is repressing
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    Poles in the south of the state. Moldova Ruthenia, Crimea and many other nationalities throughout the former Soviet Union, such as the Tatars and Cossacks, are all stirring. We must prepare ourselves in the United Nations and in Europe to cope with those problems.
    Despite the collapse of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, we must take lessons from the process. Buried deep in the recollection of the House are names that have long been forgotten: Schleswig, Allenstein, Marienwerder, Upper Silesia, Klagenfurt, Vilna and Teschen, which all had large national groupings whose destiny was unclear. The treaties created international commissions, with the participation of interested parties, but with disinterested chairmanship, which carried out plebiscites that determined the destiny of the territories concerned. In almost all cases, the belligerent armed forces withdrew. Allied forces kept the peace for the duration of the plebiscites and allied diplomats ran the plebiscites. British forces and diplomats participated in most of these. The commissions allocated territories according to the result—by zone, as in the Schleswig case, to Denmark and Germany, or by county or district, as in the cases of Allenstein or Vilna. This plebiscitary process should be reconsidered to see whether there are lessons to be learned in the case of Bosnia and Hercegovina. We currently run the risk of letting these problems fester. We should ensure that our technical capacities are in order, and we must find a mechanism to consider these solutions and how to enforce them.
    1.45 pm
    Mr. Andrew Miller: I do not wish to understate the importance of the issues facing us, but, in the interests of the House, I must speak briefly. The Ministry of Defence is well aware of my interest in the Cheshire regiment. I thank the Minister of State for the Armed Forces for his co-operation in what was to have been a visit to the regiment in Germany last week—it had to be called off because of the far more important work of the regiment preparing for its visit to a difficult zone.
    It is a curious fact that under "Options for Change" a regiment so suited to the UN's requirement is due to be merged with the Staffordshire regiment. Perhaps the Ministry of Defence will reflect on the logic of that and give the troops the present of a reprieve when they return home.
    In my view and that of many of the military personnel to whom I have spoken—they are far more qualified than I to speak about the strategic issues—these small county infantry regiments have a place in modern United Nations peacekeeping operations. I should like to discuss that in the context of other parts of the world, but I have no time today to do so.
    My one criticism of the Ministry of Defence so far is that the Government have failed to provide me and other Members representing Cheshire with detailed information with which we can respond to understandable constituency fears. Discussions have taken place today about the precise rules of engagement and the chain of command, not to mention the risks faced by members of the regiment. The length of the commitment into which the regiment is entering is a subject close to the hearts of the families concerned. I hope that the Secretary of State will note that

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    point and ensure that all hon. Members are kept abreast of what is happening so that we can offer support to these families.
    I recognise that we cannot gaze into the crystal ball, but I urge the Government to go no further than using the troops to assist convoys of humanitarian aid. Obviously the troops must be adequately equipped to defend themselves in extremely difficult circumstances. Several hon. Members have commented wisely on that. I do not often find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill), but he made some pertinent points which I am sure the Defence Secretary will have noted.
    On the ground, command may have to be given to people with a degree of control to deal with these difficult circumstances. We cannot possibly recall the House to decide each time a soldier needs to defend himself. He clearly needs the right to defend himself and must be properly equipped so to do, but that does not mean that the House should authorise the regiment to embark on anything beyond protecting its own personnel and helping the people whom it has gone to assist by means of the convoys. It is important that the House sees that in its right perspective.
    I have severe doubts about the potential structure of the negotiating table, as it is currently envisaged, around which it is hoped that a more long-term solution will be found. Nevertheless, we must give it the best opportunity possible if we are to develop moves towards a lasting peace in what is an extremely difficult and fraught situation.
    I finish by reiterating the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) who said that our hopes and good wishes go not just to the people in war-torn Yugoslavia but to our own troops and their families in helping to resolve the situation.
    1.50 pm
    Lady Olga Maitland: First, I declare a personal interest. My mother is Serbian. She was born in Belgrade. In common with many Yugoslavs, I also have relations who are Croatian.
    This tragic war has torn all the Serbian people apart. Those who have been able to get hold of the correct news, despite the censored television in Serbia, have been appalled at the atrocities and have wholeheartedly supported Panic's efforts to distance himself from Milosevic who is clearly an evil man, an expansionist.
    It is important now that we should look forward. It has been interesting to hear hon. Members ask how we can throw a lifeline to the opposition, the Free Democratic Movement, so that it can oust Milosevic who controls the army, which in turn supports the militia.
    There is a way that that can be done. There will be federal elections in November. It is important not only that we should wholeheartedly support Panic, as hon. Members have said, but that we should do so much more publicly and explain to the public that Panic has clearly distanced himself and condemned the atrocities.
    In addition, we should follow the pattern of Poland. People there supported the Solidarity movement by sending it money and giving moral support. In that way the Polish people were finally able to gain real freedom.
    Milosevic is a former communist, a socialist. He wants to control the country at all costs. If, in the forthcoming
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    elections, we can create the oxygen for democracy really to breathe, in the long term that will be the most constructive way to bring the fighting to an end, to snuff it out.
    But there are difficulties. The Free Democratic Movement of Serbia, DEPOS, needs help. It needs moral support and financial help. There is a bank account for it in London. I call on the House to give those I call genuine freedom fighters the freedom to bring real democracy and the toppling of Milosevic.
    The war in Belgrade, in Yugoslavia, has brought tremendous heartache but also much appreciation for the fact that Britain has decided to contribute troops to the humanitarian force. I agree with some comments that have been made in the House and I confess that if I had had my choice we would have done that sooner. One can hope that the Government's diplomatic initiative will succeed, and I do not underestimate that, but that cannot be done at the expense of fast humanitarian aid. Therefore, I welcome the entry of the troops.
    However, I have one or two caveats. We must not only ensure that, as we have already agreed, there must be good liaison with the local warlords but our troops must be accompanied by proper Serbo-Croat speakers. There is also benefit, which has not been mentioned today: the presence of those troops will give heart, encouragement and a degree of stability to the civilians who crave peace. I also believe that they can cramp the style of the militias. Those troops—the Cheshires and Lancers—are brave men, who, I think, enjoy the wholehearted support of the British people. They are professional soldiers who have never ducked a responsibility or a duty, and I know that they have our wholehearted backing.
    Of course, there could be a price for that dedication. There will be casualties. It may be worse: there may even be deaths. It is tremendously important for us to tell the families of those soldiers that this is a price worth paying for the sake of humanity. More than that, what I hear from the people of Serbia tells me that they appreciate this proffered generous sacrifice.
    1.55 pm
    Mr. Michael Gapes: Contrary to what an American academic said a few years ago, history is not dead; it is back with a vengeance. What we see in the former Yugoslavia is due to historic animosities and feuds, but I regret to say that it has also been contributed to by the mistakes of a number of countries in Europe and internationally.
    I want the Minister to explain why, if 11 European Community countries are against recognition and one is in favour, a state is recognised; while if 11 are in favour and one against, the state is not recognised. A series of tragic mistakes have been made over the past two years, which have encouraged disintegration and prompted fanatics on all sides to sweep away the secular, democratic and pluralistic forces. As a result, it is now very difficult for democratic socialists of any kind in the former Yugoslavia to obtain a hearing anywhere. Religious fundamentalism and ethnic hatred are the dominant forces in all the republics.
    We should also condemn the Governments, including our own, who knew what was going on in Kosovo three or four years ago but did nothing about it. It is all very well to talk about Kosovo today, but people were coming to this country two or three years ago—sometimes on visits

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    funded by the Foreign Office—explaining what was happening in Pristina. They described how university departments were being closed and how people were being kicked out of their jobs. And what did we do? We did nothing.
    The tragedy of much of Africa, among other issues, is almost being ignored except when—as in Somalia—it becomes so bad that people are forced to talk about it. A war has been raging in Mozambique for a long time. We hope that there will be an agreement and democratic elections there in the near future, but we should be talking far more about that today. No one has mentioned it.
    It is very unfortunate that, for whatever reason, today's debate was interrupted. The headlines in tomorrow morning's newspapers—and, no doubt, on television tonight—will not be about the tragic plight of the Shias in the marshes of Iraq, or that of the Somali people who are suffering at the hands of the mafia gangs who are destroying their society, or that of the peoples of the different parts of Yugoslavia. Instead, they will be all about what a particular Chelsea football supporter did or did not do on a particular day.
    It is important to draw attention to the way forward and to learn some lessons from these international crises. The United Nations Secretary-General's report, "An Agenda for Peace", presents the important concept of peace enforcement, as opposed to peacemaking or peacekeeping. I believe that our Government should be doing far more to support the Secretary-General and his efforts to strengthen the role of the United Nations. Perhaps we should also consider whether there is a role for United Nation trusteeship as a means to resolve some of the disputes.
    If we are able to secure peace in the former Yugoslavia, I am not sure whether we shall be able to replace all the pieces. I hope that we can, but I fear that the animosities and fueds will be so deep that the situation will need outside intervention for many years.
    I worry when I see the reported remarks of the Minister to the Select Committee on Defence stating that he has no idea how long British forces will be deployed. I think that it is an honest answer, but I worry—
    The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. Archie Hamilton): It is better than a dishonest one.
    Mr. Gapes: Yes, I prefer an honest answer to a dishonest answer. But there must be clear monitoring of the situation so that we know the facts and can have a full debate in the House before we go down the slippery slope of 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 or 100,000 British troops being deployed as part of the massive force that might be needed to contain the conflict.
    2 pm
    Dr. David Clark: We have today witnessed a good and useful debate which has well justified Parliamen's recall. I only wish that Parliament had been recalled earlier and that we could have spoken longer. The contributions from both sides of the House have been positive. Hon. Members have talked of their experiences —often gained during visits to various parts of the world in the summer months. Such contributions have enhanced the quality of the debate. Right hon. and hon. Members
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    have posed a number of pertinent questions and made a number of useful suggestions. I hope that the Secretary of State will deal with as many as possible, without jeopardising the safety of our troops involved.
    Although the motion refers specifically to Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia, in view of the limited time at my disposal I shall concentrate on the position in Bosnia, as that is where our ground troops are to be committed in the near future and where a number of detailed issues are of concern to hon. Members and our constituents. However, I stress that my decision in no way reflects the relative importance Opposition Members attach to Somalia and Iraq which, like many other places in the world, we regard as vital. One message that has come, certainly from the Opposition and, I suggest, from Conservative Members, is a welcome for the new, enhanced role of the United Nations.
    Before we discuss the detailed, military aspects of the operation in Bosnia it is well to remind ourselves that, when talking of the use of the military, we are accepting that our own trade, profession and art has failed. Politics and political action have broken down and we are having to resort to force to try to maintain a standard of humanitarian decency.
    However, no one should doubt that there must be a political resolution of the problem in Bosnia, Iraq and throughout the world. The use of the military is merely the means to an end—we should never forget that objective. I associate the Opposition with the thanks given to Lord Carrington for his sterling, valiant efforts to resolve the problems in the past, and we wish his successors well in the future. We hope that they will be able, against all the odds, to find some sort of resolution before we deploy troops. We still cling to that hope.
    We do not demur from the Government's decision to involve British troops in Bosnia. Indeed, we called for such action early in August. If the United Nations considers it appropriate to deploy troops to support humanitarian convoys in their efforts to get vital food and medicine through to beseiged citizens and to protect the released detainees, the Labour party believes that we should do so. As a permanent member of the Security Council, we have a responsibility to ensure that British troops play that part, although I emphasise that that has to be under the aegis of the United Nations and has to be limited to the protection of convoys.
    In no way can we give the Government a blank cheque for further escalation. To extend military participation further would be extremely dangerous, if not foolhardy. The terrain is ideal for hit-and-run attacks. The old Yugoslavian army, many of whose remnants are now fighting in Bosnia, was trained specifically for that task and we simply must not get drawn into a conflict on one of the various sides. British military involvement must not be allowed to escalate into such a quagmire, and we do not believe that escalation is inevitable.
    Having said that, we realise that we are placing the lives of our troops at risk; they really are laying their lives on the line. In so doing, we must remember that most military opinion is against such an initiative. There are too many unknowns and too many uncertainties for justification of intervention on military grounds alone. The truth is that the mission can be justified only on humanitarian grounds. In a sense, that is the essence of our involvement and that makes our responsibility as politicians doubly onerous.

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    We must ensure that our ground troops out there have a clear guide to their role and a clear list of instructions of what they can and cannot do.
    I have heard many hon. Members raise issues along those lines today. I should like to press the Secretary of State further. Clearly, the command structure is one of the most important aspects. For example, are we certain that the structure, as envisaged—with a supreme commander commanding a force comprising 16 nations, operating miles apart and performing different functions—is the right structure? As the Secretary of State knows, there have been criticisms of the present operation, and it is vital that we get the lines of communication and of command clear.
    That leads us to the next major question asked by several hon. Members from both sides of the House—what is the precise role of the troops? That may seem a silly question. The Minister of State for the Armed Services has led us to believe that the troops will be protecting convoys, travelling with them as they make their way to the besieged areas. However, the French deputy commander of the United Nations protection force, Major General Philippe Morillon, who I understand is in charge of all European forces there, was quoted in The Times on 23 September as saying that the aim of the operation is to break the blockade of various named Bosnian towns, by creating safe corridors to each, along which supplies of humanitarian aid could travel, and which could be policed by United Nations checkpoints. That is very different from what we understood the situation to be, and what I understood to be the British Government's position, as explained by the armed forces Minister. We need to know what the position is. Is it to protect convoys or to create land corridors? The two are distinctly different.
    Various right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned the rules of engagement. Have the rules been clarified? I read what the Armed Forces Minister said in his evidence to the Defence Select Committee on Tuesday—that United Kingdom troops would have the right of reply.
    I very much welcome the Select Committee's work and the fact that it held that important meeting, because it allowed hon. Members from both sides of the House to ascertain the precise position and made it much easier to stage this debate.
    However, the ambiguities remain. Various hon. Members have asked whether the troops can reply only with armour or whether they can use heavier fire power if necessary. Different reports are emerging.
    There is even further confusion on that narrow but vital question. The Minister of State for the Armed Forces, in evidence to the Defence Select Committee, confirmed the status of the rules of engagement when he said:
    "Yes, we agree our rules of engagement with the UN and we are quite happy that the rules of engagement are no more restrictive than ours."
    With that in mind, I draw the Secretary of State's attention to the official pronouncement from the UN Secretary-General's report of 10 September, paragraph 8 of which says:
    "Operational decisions relating to a protected convoy, including action to be taken in the event that the convoy encountered obstacles, would be the responsibility of the commander of the UNPROFOR escort, who would, where possible, consult the senior UNHCR representative in the convoy before taking such decisions."
    I appreciate that the words "where possible" are there, but I suggest nevertheless that that description is a recipe for
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    confusion and possible disaster. Only one decision can be taken under fire, and it is silly and dangerous to pretend otherwise. That point must be clarified.
    I shall explore that subject a little further in the light of General Wheeler's evidence to the Select Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam) asked the General:
    "Is it possible for whoever is in command of the convoy to respond with force without reference to higher authority?"
    General Wheeler replied:
    "It probably"—
    I stress the word "probably"—
    "will be the case providing we can talk it through with the UN people on the spot."
    That is not good enough. We do not want "possibly" and "probably", and "talking it through later". We need to have everything sorted out now, before our troops go, so that they know where they stand, know the rules of engagement and have the responsibility to follow them. We need specific answers from Ministers to those questions.
    I ask the Secretary of State again about appropriate equipment. The Government have been open on the subject, and clearly everything has not gone according to plan. It was not a happy situation when our engineers were sent to Sarajevo airport with only soft-skinned vehicles to transport them round the airport. As soon as the Government heard about it the matter was put right, but we cannot afford to make such mistakes. Fortunately, there were only very slight casualties, but there could have been fatalities. We cannot afford such decisions. We must have the right back-up and equipment.
    For example, I understand that there is a chemicals plant in the Tuzla region. Will our troops take equipment to protect them from possible chemical contamination? That could be a vital consideration.
    As we have already heard today, our troops in the corridor will have to pass through two separate war zones. I understand all the difficulties involved with air cover, but is the Secretary of State aware that most infantrymen feel uncomfortable about going into such action without air support and air cover? Is it not possible for us to have a helicopter back-up for reconnaissance, or even for alerting base about ambushes, and so on? I know that there have been problems with civilian helicopters attached to the military, but it seems sensible to provide some helicopter back-up. That was certainly the view of the French at the Council of Ministers meeting on 28 August, when they offered a helicopter detatchment. Are we not able to offer similar back-up?
    It is important that the Secretary of State does everything in his power to keep Members of Parliament informed about what is happening. During the Gulf conflict regular, often daily, bulletins were deposited in the Library. We appreciate the sensitivities involved and the confidential nature of many actions, but right hon. and hon. Members have responsibilities to their constituents —many of whom will be involved in the struggle or have dear ones who will be. I hope that the Secretary of State will follow the precedent followed during the Gulf war in that respect.
    We ask those questions in the hope that the Secretary of State will be able to provide further information. We pose them in a supportive manner. We want to ensure that our troops have the clearest understanding of their role and responsibilities. We are very conscious of the

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    dangerous mission that we are asking them to undertake. They are performing a vital task in saving the lives of civilians in a terrible civil war. We wish them every success. They have our blessing, and I trust that every single one of them will return home unscathed.
    2.15 pm
    The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) on his first speech from Labour's Front Bench as his party's principal defence spokesman. He has been a defence spokesman in the past and therefore comes to the Opposition Dispatch Box with considerable experience.
    It is a significant indicator of the times in which we live that in a debate on Yugoslavia and Iraq it is considered necessary and appropriate that not only foreign affairs spokesmen but defence spokesmen should participate. It has been said that ambassadors are people who can be disarming, especially when their countries are not. The facts that confront us at present suggest that a necessary contribution can be made by the defence forces of various countries in helping to achieve United Nations objectives.
    Today's debate has been disparate in addressing the problems of countries as far apart as Bosnia and Somalia. One common thread has been influenced by the ending of the cold war. That has not brought a period of international harmony but an extraordinary outburst of some of the most cruel and vicious conflicts—including the first on our own European continent—since the end of the second world war.
    Another common thread was mentioned by the hon. Member for South Shields. I refer to the extraordinary increase in the authority of the United Nations and its ability to take action to help resolve difficulties. With the ending of the cold war, the Security Council now finds it possible to reach agreement on a series of initiatives. As a consequence, the pressures on the UN are greater than they have been for many years. The armed forces of many western and other countries—including our own—are increasingly asked to fulfil new roles of a humanitarian or peacekeeping nature.
    I will comment first on Iraq. I returned 24 hours ago from a visit to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other parts of the Gulf, where I was able to meet Royal Air Force personnel involved in the enforcement of the no-fly zone in southern Iraq. I pay tribute to the extraordinary and professional work that they are doing in difficult circumstances. It is extremely hot and dusty, and they are presented with a considerable amount of potential danger, yet they approach their task with the cheerfulness that we expect, and which the RAF has always shown.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) made an extraordinarily powerful speech about the situation in the marshlands of southern Iraq. It would have convinced anyone who needed convincing why it was necessary to impose the no-fly zone. Since August in particular, there has been increasing evidence of growing acts of repression by the Iraqi Government against their own people in southern Iraq, and increasing information to suggest that fixed-wing aircraft were being used to assist those acts of repression.
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    The United States, France and ourselves now have aircraft in that region to impose the no-fly zone, and that initiative has been achieved with tremendous success. No Iraqi aircraft have been operating in southern Iraq, which is helping to reduce the level of repression against the people of that area. Sometimes, I am asked when that exercise will be ended. It can be concluded only when there is convincing and satisfactory evidence that the Iraqi Government and Saddam Hussein in particular are willing to comply with UN resolutions and to cease to oppress people in that region.
    Mr. Mark Wolfson: Was not the point of the speech that my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) made that the no-fly zone is not securing the safety of the marsh dwellers?
    Mr. Rifkind: I believe that the no-fly zone is making an important contribution in that direction. A number of the military acts of aggression in the past few months have had the support of aircraft, because of the difficulties of communication in the area. There are few roads there. It is difficult to penetrate the marshlands, so the ability to use air cover to support Iraqi forces will have been important. The zone cannot solve the problem alone, but it is making an important contribution.
    I shall now deal with the powerful speeches right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have made about the former Yugoslavia. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) and my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor) and others described the difficulty of reaching a judgment about whether it is right to deploy British forces in that quarter. The hon. Member for South Shields asked me to state the precise purpose of British soldiers' going to Bosnia-Hercegovena. They will escort convoys which may deliver the medical and food supplies that will increasingly be needed as winter approaches and hardship intensifies. They may occasionally escort detainees who have been released from the camps and wish to go elsewhere in the country or abroad.
    The hon. Member for South Shields asked whether we would want forces to be used to escort convoys or to impose safe corridors. They will not do the latter. If we were to impose a safe corridor, we would need a much greater deployment than is currently contemplated and it would imply a far more substantial and worrying military commitment than it would be appropriate to make now.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) and others asked about the command structure that is to be applied and whether it is satisfactory. The hon. Member for South Shields also asked that perfectly reasonable question. The command structure will always be difficult when forces from a large number of countries are involved in an operation of this type. Now that the UN is considering a substantial increase in the amount of military activity in the former Yugoslavia, it is necessary in our judgment and that of others that the command system should represent the new role. It is therefore proposed that under General Nambiar, the overall commander of the military forces, there should be a new two-star headquarters. General Morillon will be commander of that headquarters. He will have a British chief of staff. There will be a number of other British personnel in important positions in that command, which is likely to have responsibility in the Bosnia area.

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    The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) asked whether this was to be a NATO headquarters or a NATO contribution. It would not be appropriate to describe it in those terms. It will not be a NATO force or headquarters, but there have been discussions about whether it would be appropriate to use many of the elements of an existing NATO headquarters because of common habits, practice and experience and the valuable assets that will be of great use when these matters are taken forward. That is highly desirable.
    Several hon. Members asked about the rules of engagement. That is a crucial aspect of the matter. As my right hon. Friend the Minister of State said in evidence to the Defence Select Committee, there can be no question but that British forces must have the right to use the means necessary to defend their lives and the lives of those for whom they are responsible. We are determined to ensure that the rules of engagement will reflect that fact. The convoys that will be carrying goods to various parts of the former Yugoslavia will, of course, be armed convoys. It is an armoured battalion that is going. They will have not only personal weapons but Warrior armoured personnel carriers which have their own cannon and their own guns. Mortars will be carried within their vehicles. If the circumstances required it, in order to protect life, it is appropriate that the rules of engagement should allow persons to take such action as is necessary for that purpose.
    Clearly, the precise wording of the rules of engagement is currently under discussion. It would not normally be our practice to go into the precise detail of rules of engagement, because one would not want a potential assailant to be aware of the circumstances in which the troops would respond with fire. I hope, therefore, that the House will forgive me if I do not go into precise detail, but to the particular assurances that were sought I can give a positive and unqualified answer. In particular, it is not our belief that it should be necessary to consult headquarters many miles away if, by doing so, there would be any enhanced risk to the life or safety of the individuals concerned. Of course there may be occasions when that will be possible without risk, but if there were risk—and that must be in the judgment of the person on the spot —it would be appropriate that they should take whatever action is necessary.
    None of us knows what level of danger is going to be faced, but so far as the British Government are concerned, we have no doubt that it is appropriate for these military convoys to proceed only if they have reason to assume in advance that they will be able to make safe passage. If I can give an example: we have had for some time the Hercules aircraft which have been carrying humanitarian supplies to Sarajevo. They have made a very important contribution towards the relief of suffering in that city. Sadly, a few weeks ago, an Italian aircraft carrying out a similar function was shot down. It is clear beyond any misunderstanding that that aircraft was shot down by hostile fire from irregular forces on the ground, probably using hand-held missiles. As a result of that, these aspects of our humanitarian activities have been suspended. The Hercules have not been flying for several weeks, nor have the aircraft of a number of other countries, but
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    consideration is being given to whether those flights should be resumed. However, both we and others have made it quite clear that only when we are satisfied that the pilots and the crew who are responsible for flying these aircraft will not be exposed to dangers against which they have no defence—only at that stage—would it be appropriate to review the situation.
    Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: My right hon. and learned Friend will recall that at the London conference the Bosnian Serbs agreed to notify the United Nations of the positions of all heavy weaponry and also agreed to put it under the supervision of the United Nations. Has that been done?
    Mr. Rifkind: I am afraid there has been a very poor response by those who gave that pledge. What has happened so far is that a very small number of pieces of artillery have been collected together, but I must add the qualification that those who were in control of those weapons before are still in control of them and are still firing with them. All that the United Nations has been allowed to do is to monitor that particular operation. I cannot believe that that is an honouring of the spirit of the promise that was given by those who felt it appropriate to make that commitment.
    Clearly, the time when our forces are deployed will depend, as we were asked to ensure that it would, on when we have sufficient information as to exactly how they will be used, where they will go and what their precise responsibilities will be. Since the United Nations accepted our offer of reinforcements, we have had a reconnaissance party in Bosnia seeking to identify the precise routes that any convoys might go in order to carry out their responsibilities. There are difficulties being experienced in ensuring that there could be reasonable safe passage to Tuzla or Doboj, which are the two towns that have been identified as possible towns for relief to be provided by British-escorted convoys. A reconaissance party is in Bosnia at the present time. Only when it recommends that it is satisfied that we could expect these supplies to get through without unreasonable difficulty—only when that has been established—will it be appropriate for the deployment to take place. We hope that the forces will be available and deployed by early November, but it is a major operation. About 1,800 men, just over 1,000 vehicles and an estimated 600 tonnes of stores will have to be sent to Bosnia. That takes a considerable time and it is appropriate for these matters to be dealt with carefully.
    I thank the House and all parties represented in it for their support for the Government. That support is appreciated by the Government and will be enormously welcomed by those brave men and women who will be active in Bosnia. The fact that they know that they have the united support of the House will be a tremendous uplift to their morale and will ensure that they are able to achieve their contribution.
    It being half-past Two o'clock, MADAM SPEAKER put the Question already proposed from the Chair, pursuant to the Resolution yesterday.
    Resolved,
    That this House do now adjourn.
    Adjourned accordingly till Monday 19 October, pursuant to the Resolution yesterday.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Genetically Modified Organisms
  Mr. Tredinnick
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how he intends to respond to ethical concerns over the use of genetically modified organisms as food.

  Mr. Gummer
  I have asked the Reverend John Polkinghorne, president of Queen's College Cambridge, to chair a study into this and various related issues. The other members of the group will be Professor Derek Burke, vice chancellor of the University of East Anglia, Professor Brian Heap, director of research at the AFRC Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetic Research, Mrs. Harriet Kimbell, vice-chairman of the Consumers Association, Mr. Richard Callaghan, controller of ASDA's technical division and the Reverend Arthur Peacocke, formerly warden of the Society of Ordained Scientists.

  The study's terms of reference will be:
  to consider future trends in the production of transgenic organisms; to consider the moral and ethical concerns (other than those relating to food safety) that may arise from the use of food products derived from production programmes involving such organisms; and to make recommendations.

  Recently, we have seen significant developments towards the use of genetic modification in food production. This technology has the potential to benefit farmers, food producers and consumers by extending the range, quality and types of food available. However, the Government are also aware that these developments raise ethical and moral concerns.

  Therefore, we thought it right to give early consideration to these issues. The new advisory group will consider likely future trends in the use of genetic modification in food production and the concerns that might arise from the consumption of food from such programmes, and recommend how those concerns might be addressed.

  I believe that the issues with which the committee is concerned need to be widely debated and I know the study
  4
  team will be inviting views from all interested groups and individuals. I have asked the study team to report to me within a year.

ENVIRONMENT

  Property Services Agency
  Mr. David Evans
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he intends to offer PSA Projects for sale; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Redwood
  [pursuant to his reply, 22 May 1992, c. 273]: I hope to exchange contracts with the selected bidder for PSA Projects shortly. Parliamentary approval of new expenditure on the main sale expenses will be sought in a winter supplementary estimate for the Property Services Agency of the Department of the Environment: PSA Services Vote—class VIII, vote 12. However, since completion may take place before the House has voted to approve the supplementary estimate, any money needed to enable the vendor to complete the sale will be met by repayable advances from the contingencies fund.

  County Hall, London
  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what factors will be considered in deciding the future of county hall; and when the matter falls to be determined.

  Mr. Howard
  [pursuant to his reply, 24 June 1992, c. 197]: I have today written to the chairman of the London residuary body withdrawing the direction that I issued to that body on 22 July, prohibiting it from taking any steps in relation to the sale or disposal of county hall without first obtaining my consent.

  That direction was issued for the purpose of giving the London School of Economics and Political Science the opportunity of submitting a bid for the county hall site. It was, however, one of the conditions that I agreed with the director of the LSE, before issuing that direction, that any proposal to acquire county hall should be endorsed by the Universities Funding Council as required by the rules that govern universities' property transactions. The Universities Funding Council has written to the LSE today that it did not feel able to endorse its proposal. The Government have therefore concluded that any bid by the LSE for county hall would involve a significant and unacceptable call on public funds.

Preamble
The House met at eleven of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Norwich.

United Nations Operations: UK Role
11.7 a.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey)The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey) rose—to move, That this House takes note of British support for the United Nations operations in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am sure that we are all looking forward very much to the maiden speech of our new noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees. We shall welcome his contributions in this Chamber and particularly to the debate today.
Two years ago we celebrated the end of the Cold War; but the transition to a new international order has not been easy. Dissent and division, suppressed during the Cold War years, now have come to the surface. That is true in Europe as it is in the developing world. We see that in the former Yugoslavia, in Iraq and Somalia, the three countries on which I will concentrate today. There have been great changes in all three since your Lordships last debated foreign affairs in July.
The essential problem is a resurgence of questions of identity: rampant nationalism in the former Yugoslavia, religious and regional divides in Iraq, and sub-clan anarchy in Somalia. There are no easy solutions, but in all three the UN has a special role to play. I shall take each of those problem areas in turn.
As your Lordships will recall, events have gradually deteriorated in the former Yugoslavia since Croatia and Slovenia unilaterally declared their independence in June last year. Since last November, the United Nations and the European Community have been working closely, the UN leading on peace-keeping, and the EC on peace-making, through the peace conference of my noble friend Lord Carrington. I am sure your Lordships would wish to join me in paying tribute to the work of my noble friend Lord Carrington.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, his work and the work of this conference has been invaluable. It will, I am sure, form the basis of any settlement.
The conference was relaunched and reinforced last month by the London conference. I hope that this debate will support the work which continues now in Geneva under co-chairmen, Mr. Cyrus Vance and the noble Lord, Lord Owen. When he heard that there was to be a debate here today, the noble Lord, Lord Owen, telephoned me to say that he wished he could
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be with us. Unfortunately he has to be in Zagreb. I am sure all noble Lords will join me in wishing the noble Lord well in this crucial mission.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the conference is the principal instrument of the international community to help bring an end to the conflict. Its aim is to bring that conflict permanently to an end by negotiating a political settlement. On the ground in the former Yugoslavia there are four other aspects of the international effort.
The first is the deterrent-sanctions. On 25th September 1991, the UN Security Council agreed a ban on all export of armaments to the former Yugoslavia. As the conflict grew worse, it was clear that this was being evaded. On 31st May sanctions were extended to include all trade except for humanitarian purposes. At the same time they were made specific to Serbia and Montenegro. The Belgrade authorities are now being made to see that they can not profit from their war-mongering.
Sanctions must be fully implemented to achieve maximum effect. So, the second area of international activity has been sanctions monitoring. There are ships on the Adriatic deterring trade. In the last month, the governments in Bulgaria and Hungary have asked for the stationing of monitors along their borders to see off sanctions busters, particularly along the Danube. With those extra monitors, and the extra vigilance they bring, the international community will be able to close the net.
The third area of action is peace-keeping. The UN has been in the lead but the EC has played its part through the Monitoring Mission. The Monitoring Mission helped to bring peace to Slovenia. In Croatia, it dovetails with UNPROFOR, deployed after Security Council Resolution 743 of 21st February this year. UNPROFOR consists of some 14,000 people, including, at the UN's request, a British field ambulance unit of some 288 people. Your Lordships will wish to join me in congratulating them on the selfless way in which they have carried out their tasks—always in difficult circumstances, often in dangerous circumstances.
In the past two months peace-keeping has become increasingly supportive of the fourth area of work—humanitarian relief. Here the problems are severe. Britain, both bilaterally and multilaterally through the Community, has responded swiftly. Since September 1991 the European Commission has allocated some £125 million of humanitarian aid to former Yugoslav republics. The British share to date of the EC effort is more than £20 million. A further £90 million has been agreed by the Commission for disbursement this autumn.
In addition, in the past 12 months Britain has given more than £7 million in bilateral humanitarian help to the former Yugoslavia. Yesterday I announced a further £7.5 million in bilateral aid. The vast majority of the medicines now being used in Sarajevo hospitals come from Britain.
Britain is one of the big five contributors to the air-lift to Sarajevo. Until the suspension of the

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air-bridge after the shooting down of the Italian plane more than 1,000 flights ferried aid from Zagreb to Sarajevo. One in 10 flights was British. We have also contributed 22 trucks with support vehicles,30 drivers and five mechanics—all civilians. Backed up by logistics experts, also British, they are working flat out to keep the life line open from Split to Sarajevo, bravely facing up to the dangers. On each trip a convoy brings in 150 tonnes, tackling tortuous mountain roads and unpredictable weather. I shall see the operation for myself next week in Bosnia and Croatia.
In this humanitarian effort we must tackle the related problems of helping refugees who leave their homes and easing the suffering of those who stay. The international community has discussed this problem exhaustively. On behalf of the Government I attended a conference organised by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mrs. Ogata, in Geneva in July. We agreed that we should aim to keep refugees as close to their homes as possible. A journey over thousands of miles is a difficult step to reverse. If refugees stay close to home there is a greater chance that eventually they will be able to go back home.
Of course, there are exceptions. We saw that nearly two weeks ago when 68 seriously ill people were air-lifted to Britain from the camps in Bosnia. But in the main we try to help to make it possible for people to stay. However, we are acutely aware of the difficulties of getting aid through. That is why we were keen to support the extension of the UN protection force's mandate. UNPROFOR is now authorised to get aid to all the people in Bosnia who need it. British troops will help get the aid through.
We recognise that some of the agencies were at first nervous of UNPROFOR protection. Mrs. Ogata and her staff at UNHCR have performed outstandingly. We have no intention of complicating their already very difficult job. But while UNHCR was distributing the first aid to Gorazde the convoy's route back to Sarajevo was mined. French soldiers cleared the path to allow them successfully to complete their mission. Sadly, the relief agencies have now concluded that they need military help or else their essential work cannot be done.
We consulted closely with military experts to decide what was needed and how best we could contribute. At a special meeting of Ministers in August we decided to offer about 1,800 people to the United Nations. On 14th September the UN accepted the British offer of an armoured infantry battalion. Nobody can have seen the pictures from Bosnia of the sieges of Gorazde and Bihac and Tuzla and deny that civilians are suffering, need help and can get that help only with military assistance.
Yugoslavia is perhaps the most difficult foreign policy challenge we face at the moment. Our response has been carefully considered and I hope that it will prove effective. I can make no prediction over what time-scale matters might improve. But it was clear from the London conference that all parts of the international community are determined to see this
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through, that there will be no blessing of gains achieved by force and that international law will be upheld.
I now turn to Iraq. Some states still show a willingness to challenge the rule of international law and resort to terrorism. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was the first test of the post-cold war era. Two years ago Parliament was recalled to debate Britain's involvement in the Gulf crisis. There the problem was certainly clearer. Iraq had occupied Kuwait by force. Its aggression had to be reversed. During the following six months the international coalition, with the solid support of Parliament, prepared to do precisely that. The expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait was one of the UN's greatest successes. But other problems remained and recently they have escalated.
Saddam Hussein continues to defy the UN. His Government are failing to meet Iraq's obligations under Resolution 687. He continues to repress his own population in defiance of Resolution 688. With our coalition partners, we are keeping the pressure on Iraq to implement in full the resolutions of the UN Security Council. Where necessary, we do not flinch from backing up diplomatic pressure with action. On 27th August, with our American and French partners, we set up a no fly zone in southern Iraq, south of the 32nd parallel. That was clearly necessary because of the continuing serious humanitarian emergency among the civilian population there. We will continue to operate the no fly zone as long as Saddam's actions oblige us to do so.
The RAF has six tornado aircraft operating over southern Iraq. Their business is to monitor what is happening. We shall not take any further action without going back to the Security Council; but, equally, we shall not hesitate to go back to the Security Council if it becomes clear that Iraq has not stopped its campaign of repression. So far, Iraq has not challenged the imposition of the no fly zone. So far, there have been no incidents, so firm action seems to be getting results. The underlying message is that Iraq, indeed all states, must comply with Security Council resolutions.
Meanwhile, we must not and will not forget the needs of the north and south of Iraq. Since April 1991 Britain has given £52 million in aid to the people of Iraq. The Security Council agreed Resolutions 706 and 712 to allow Iraq to sell its oil in order to pay for the humanitarian needs of its people. Saddam Hussein has callously rejected that mechanism; he shows no concern for the welfare of ordinary Iraqis.
Moreover, winter will soon be upon us and the Iraqi Government have suspended their co-operation—such as it was—with the rehabilitation programme. I am pleased to inform your Lordships that UN planning for a winter emergency programme is well advanced. We expect proposals next week for a programme that will enable basic supplies of food, fuel and medicine to reach the many people in need. I pay tribute to the non-governmental organisations still operating in Iraq, particularly those from Britain.
I should add special appreciation for the exceptional efforts made by my honourable friend from another place, the Member for Devon West and

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Torridge, Miss Nicholson, who returned on Wednesday from her latest humanitarian mission to the southern marshes, identifying and publicising the key problems. We have already contributed £320,000 for food, clothing and relief items for displaced people in southern Iraq and in camps in south western Iran and are discussing the despatch of a health unit to the Marsh Arabs, which Miss Nicholson is seeking to organise.
In some parts of the world the problem is not states but the lack of a state, the break-down of all civil order. We are seeing that in Somalia. Since the fall of the dictator, Siad Barre, the state has shattered into clan and sub-clan-based fiefdoms, all crammed with arms and all fighting for survival in an extremely precarious environment.
Unlike the former Yugoslavia, there are no generally accepted representatives of the major political interest groups; nor is there a recognisable government. Indeed, there are times when it appears that the only representative of all the Somali people is Ambassador Sahnoun, the UN Secretary-General's excellent Special Representative in Mogadishu. He is working with elders and traditional elements of Somali society to build peace. I have no doubt that we must work under his leadership and respect his advice on the timing of any political initiative. The peace progress will be slow and painful.
Earlier this month the RAF flew our EC Troika of Development Ministers to Somalia. We went to Mogadishu and Hoddur, a small town north-west of Mogadishu. In both we saw the appalling evidence of civil war: not a building intact; no electricity; no supply of clean water, even if there was some water; no drugs; no schools. The country is full of gun-toting teenagers out to prove their manhood.
Amidst that violence and confusion, there is starvation. Skeletal figures make their way towards towns where food may be found. We saw the severe and widespread malnutrition. The state of the children moved me more than anything else—worse than anything I have seen before, worse even than Ethiopia in the mid-1980s. Those were people who had survived the walk. Many thousands had simply died on the way.
A major food delivery programme is underway. It is co-ordinated by the UN. But it could not happen without the efforts of British NGOs, who are doing an outstanding job in Somalia. They are carrying the relief operation. I am sure your Lordships will join me in paying tribute to the UN, NGO and Somali staff who have worked tirelessly in conditions of great personal danger to bring relief and hope to the desperate Somali people.
Even with increasing levels of humanitarian assistance, Somalia remains a long, dark tunnel of despair. It needs to rebuild its shattered infrastructure; to immunise its children; to start health and education services. A start must be made before the rains come, bringing the threat of major cholera and typhoid epidemics.
Jan Eliasson, the UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, has launched a 100-day action plan to accelerate relief efforts and start the
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rehabilitation process. We shall discuss the plan at a donors conference in mid-October. But it cannot happen without some semblance of law and order. The Somali people's so-called political leaders are unwilling or unable to provide this. They have connived at the looting and murder of their fellow citizens. The international community cannot stand by and let that continue. That is why I believe it was right for the UN Security Council to set aside arguments about non-intervention in the internal affairs of a nation, and to authorise the despatch of UN forces to protect the distribution of relief supplies.
We have a duty to the starving who are suffering so greatly from warlords who have prevented the delivery of tons of food, already stored in Mogadishu. The Government have fully supported UN efforts to reduce the level of violence in Somalia and secure access for humanitarian relief. Ambassador Sahnoun is playing a crucial role in this.
We have already given considerable help. We have been providing emergency help for Somalia since the fall of Siad Barre last year, long before the media found famine in Somalia. Since January 1991. Britain has provided over £31 million in humanitarian help, including our contribution to EC activities and the additional £7.5 million which I announced on 15th September.
We were among the first to give aid. For example, we have provided 29,000 tonnes of food; logistical support, including almost million towards the cost of air-lifts; drugs; shelter materials; seeds and tools; help with the rehabilitation of water supplies. This year we are the third largest bilateral donor to Somalia. Our assistance has been provided through the UN system and through the NGOs. Of course, we also contribute substantial amounts through the European Commission, which has made available more than 200,000 tonnes of food and 15 mecu in non-food aid this year.
The needs in Somalia are enormous. But we have not forgotten the plight of Somalis who fled from the conflict in their country. Almost 700,000 have crossed into Kenya and Ethiopia and are living in refugee camps. Earlier this month, I visited Kenya and Somalia and saw Somalis in camps at Wajir and Mandera on the Kenyan border. The conditions are grim and when the rains come camps will become a sea of mud and sewage. We have provided more than £2 million this year to help cope with the refugee problem. We stand ready to do more.
In all these different crises, everybody is looking to the United Nations. But we risk loading the UN with too heavy a burden; expecting the Security Council to intervene at the drop of a hat, and even, in the case of Somalia, to take over the administration of a country in crisis. The best way of preventing these demands getting out of hand is to prevent those conflicts which give rise to the demands—that is, old-fashioned diplomacy coupled with development assistance. But Britain cannot exercise preventive diplomacy or provide development aid in a vacuum. An international framework is required. The UN will be crucial, but so will the actions of the G7 and others, acting together and sharing the burden in preventing these

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conflicts. But if a conflict starts, our public rightly expects us to provide resources—diplomatic and aid—as part of a collective effort to bring about a solution. Again, the UN will be vital to this effort. It is important that none of the leading industrial nations shy away from backing the UN in the political and humanitarian task.
In the longer term the international community must provide the assistance required to promote a full, political and economic recovery. The solving of problems with their roots in centuries past is a slow, sometimes very frustrating, business. But if we show patience and imagination, and if all members of the international community continue to respond together to the pressures. then I believe that we have a real chance of tackling the full range of challenges and succeeding. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of British support for the United Nations operations in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia.—(Baroness Chalker of Wallasey.)
11.30 a.m.
Lord Richard: My Lords, perhaps I may start off by saying that we on these Benches are grateful for this opportunity to address the plight of those suffering in these three areas of the world which the noble Baroness has concentrated on; namely, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia. We are also grateful for the opportunity to discuss whether or not the actions taken by the Government so far are appropriate and sufficient.
It is timely that we should consider the plight of others perhaps at a time when our own country is being economically battered and buffeted by recession. Each issue can perhaps illuminate the other. I hope that noble Lords will allow me first to raise the issue of the former Yugoslavia, but I should like to make one general point first before I do that. These three issues and the more general issue raised by the noble Baroness just before she sat down, are not ones on which it is appropriate that we should spend a great deal of time in playing party politics or scoring party points. We on these Benches have our anxieties and it is right that we should express them. But we shall try to do so in a constructive and, I hope, a not unhelpful spirit.
I turn first to Yugoslavia and echo what the noble Baroness had to say in paying tribute to her noble friend Lord Carrington for his efforts in trying to arrive at a diplomatic and political settlement. I hope I shall be able to indicate to your Lordships in a moment that that is an immensely difficult task. I also echo what the noble Baroness said about the efforts being undertaken by Mr. Vance and the noble Lord, Lord Owen, in their attempts now to produce a political settlement.
Apart from certain specific matters which I shall put a little later on, I would have been grateful for some greater indication of the Government's thinking about future developments in Yugoslavia. The noble
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Baroness gave us a review of what the Government are doing, but perhaps not a clear picture of how they see matters developing in future.
We must forget neither the history nor the ethnic mix of the peoples in the former Yugoslavia. The population was 23.5 million. Of that number,36.3 per cent. were Serbs; 19.8 per cent. were Croats; 8.9 per cent. were Moslems; and Slovenes and Albanians were 7.3 per cent. and 7.7 per cent. respectively. There were also Macedonians, Montenegrins and Hungarians. I am told that only 5.4 per cent. of the population of the former Yugoslavia actually describe themselves as Yugoslays, and they are mainly people in mixed marriages. Serbia had a population of 9.3 million and Croatia 4.6 million.
We must never forget the history as well as the ethnic mix of that part of the world. It was not a united state until the end of the first world war. The new state was proclaimed in December 1918 under the name of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and the Slovenes. It was a marriage of convenience rather than a love affair. From the start there was serious tension between the different ethnic groups. The Croats and Slovenes were understandably fearful of Serbian domination. There were continual disputes between the three groups. Those conflicts prompted the Serbian head of state, King Alexander, to dissolve the democratic constitution in 1929. Five years later he was murdered by Croatian fascists during a visit to Marseilles.
I suppose that the conflict between the Serbs and the Croats reached a climax during the second world war. The Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941 and created a puppet state in Croatia with the support of the Croatian fascists, the Ustashe. In turn that state included parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. As far as we can tell, hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Croatian democrats, Jews and gypsies were murdered by the Ustashe. The Ustashe and the Nazis had opposition in the form of the Serbian nationalist Chetniks. The Chetniks and Tito's communist partisans also fought each other with great brutality. I have seen one figure which I find slightly staggering. I have no evidence to refute it. Over 1,700,000 people, which is nearly one tenth of Yugoslavia's population, were killed between 1941 and 1945, most of them by fellow Yugoslays.
It is that cauldron—if I may put it, I hope, in that not too dramatic way—that we are now having to try to deal with. The divisions are deep and of very long standing. Therefore it is hardly surprising that once conflict had broken out between these various factions and different nationalities, that the rival parties feel that it would be very difficult to persuade them that they should put their trust in a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations, the European Community, a combination of both, or indeed anyone else. Each day the conflict continues and it gets worse.
I should like to have the Government's comments, and perhaps the noble Baroness can give them when she winds up, as regards today's developments which are reported in the press this morning. As I understand it, President Tudjman of Croatia and President Izetbegovic of Bosnia have now signed a defence pact.

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If that is so, so much for the rumours that the Serbs and the Croats have come to some private arrangement for the division of Bosnia. So much too for the future of the London agreement for all the optimistic words of the noble Baroness. Perhaps the comments of Mr. Karadzic, the Bosnian Serbian leader, are to be taken as gospel and believed. He is quoted in The Times this morning as saying that if a confederation of all three of the republic nationalities did not materialise,
"then I think that we should look at a union of Serbian lands".
It is all somewhat bleak. I hope that the Government will give us some reaction as to how they see these developments in terms of affecting the position into which British troops are now going to be sent.
That is why we on these Benches say that it is crucial that any United Nations force which is going to Bosnia has a mandate which is clear and unmistakable. I know the Government are conscious of the fact—and I underline it—that we must avoid a situation in which the protection of humanitarian relief efforts becomes translated into a situation in which British troops become actively involved in the lighting although not as a result of any policy decision taken by the Government here. It will not happen that way if it happens at all, but it could happen as a result of a gradual drift into a situation from which it becomes very difficult to extract our soldiers. We on these Benches are conscious of that danger. While we support the UN efforts, and the Government's decision to back those efforts with troops, we look to the Government to avoid that possibility.
The specific points that I should like to raise, having made those more general remarks, relate to two issues. The first is the refugee problem, about which the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, has said something. The second relates to the efficacy of sanctions. Are the Government really satisfied that the sanctions process is now functioning smoothly so far as Yugoslavia is concerned? I am not sure from what the Minister said this morning whether the Government believe that the mandatory economic sanctions imposed on Serbia are now being taken completely seriously. For example, has the flouting of those sanctions by barges on the Danube and along the Macedonian land routes now been stopped?
There have also been some strange reports—I am sure that your Lordships will have seen them—about the extent to which the Department of Trade and Industry has been fully complying with the sanctions resolution. Is there any reason why import-export statistics on the Yugoslav republics should not be made available so that the Opposition and the country at large can keep a watchful eye on the operation of the sanctions? I do not see any reason why not and I should be grateful if the Minister could give us that undertaking.
We are also concerned about the Government's somewhat bleak interpretation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' rulings on refugees from the former Yugoslavia. While I accept the view, reiterated this morning by the Minister. that refugees should be accommodated close to their countries of
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origin to allow speedy return—that is an unexceptionable proposition to which I am sure that all noble Lords would give general assent—the UNHCR also asked that the restrictive international regulations on asylum be lifted to help in this difficult situation.
The Government's decision to expel 36—I think—Yugoslav asylum seekers, while Germany, Hungary, Austria and the other Yugoslav republics were taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees seemed to run very much counter to international guidelines and showed a lack of humanitarian concern for these suffering people and almost an obsession with preserving our borders intact. Such incidents must not be allowed to recur. I hope that the Government will tell us that they are taking steps to ensure that there is no repetition.
Finally, may I ask the Government to make it perfectly clear that no borders based on ethnic cleansing will be recognised by this country or, in so far as we can achieve it, by the international community as a whole and that the principle of non-recognition of borders that are based upon ethnic cleansing will apply equally to land which has been annexed by force? I think that most noble Lords and, indeed, the country as a whole would find it difficult to understand a situation in which, after the behaviour of the Serbians in the former Yugoslavia in the past few years, the end result was merely a gradual diminution of the level of violence inside the country. Nor would they wish to feel that we might all wake up one day and find that the international community, and especially this country, had recognised the borders of a greater Serbia most, or a large part, of which had been annexed by force and in which there had been great movements of population. As I said at the outset, I hope that the Government will take these comments as constructive. In the main, we support Britain's involvement in the UN initiatives in the former Yugoslavia.
Perhaps I may say a word about Somalia. The civil war there, linked with past under-development and natural disasters in the Horn of Africa, has left an estimated 1.5 million people at immediate risk of death by starvation. It has been estimated that a further 3 million people are in need of food and improved access to health care and clean water. The main way by which food is supplied to the starving in Somalia is through the port of Mogadishu. That is controlled, as the Minister told us, by lawless and independent fighters who, according to some of the non-governmental organisations working there, are not even under clan authority. We desperately need to deploy the UN troops which have been promised in order to try to break the grip of those lawless bands on the distribution of food.
I am concerned that the 3,000 troops which have been promised are arriving only slowly. According to recent reports, only 500 will be in place by the end of this week—all of them Pakistani volunteers. While I applaud the bravery of those individuals who are going there, this case is surely one in which there is safety in numbers. I hope that the Government can tell

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us when they expect all the 3,000 troops to be in place to protect both the workers and the food supplies to the port.
I am also concerned about the refugee situation in Somalia. Kenya has received 200,000 refugees and Ethiopia 500,000. This is a major burden on those countries. Britain could play a useful part in helping to try to resettle the refugees eventually back into Somalia. Can the Government assure us that they will raise this issue directly with the United Nations and that the refugee problem will receive the resources that it needs?
On a point of timetabling, the Government tell us that they are, of course, concerned about the situation in Somalia and I naturally accept that. Although the decision not to hold a special meeting of the European Community's Development Council before the agreed date of 18th November may be a good piece of bureaucratic timetabling, it seems somewhat tardy given the scale of the problem and the nature of the response that the problem demands. I should have thought that the Minister might reconsider her decision now.
I should like to say a few brief words about Iraq and then deal with the point about the United Nations that the Minister made at the end of her speech. I turn now to the air exclusion zones over northern and southern Iraq. Both were created with the authority of the UN Security Council Resolution 688. We fully support the UN position that the same protection should be offered to Shi'ite Moslems in the south as has been offered in the north. We are satisfied that this limited operation is necessary and that the British role in it of providing aircraft for reconnaissance purposes and tankers for in-flight refuelling is justified. I welcome the news that there have been no reports of violations of the exclusion zones by the Iraqis. So far, so good. I mention this only so that the Government can reiterate their dismissal of it, but I take it that no extra action such as air strikes on ground targets in Iraq is at present being contemplated. I do not believe that any such action should be undertaken unless it has first gone to the Security Council for consideration.
Can the Minister inform the House what action will be taken before winter to provide some aid to the beleaguered Kurds in northern Iraq, who are virtually cut off from vital food, fuel and medical supplies? I gather that UN officials fear a re-run of last year when Kurds crossed into Turkey and Iran and suffered greatly in the mountains. What is the status of the UN Memorandum of Understanding with Iraq, which allowed the UN to bring in kerosene for heating and cooking? Is it still alive and, if not, do the Government intend to try to breathe some new life into it? In default of that, a humanitarian route through Turkey has been suggested by the UN. These are questions of detail, but also of some importance.
I join the Minister in saying that Saddam Hussein must be left in no doubt that UN sanctions and the air exclusion zone will remain in place until he complies with the Security Council resolutions and until he puts an end to his regime's gross violations of human
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rights. Britain must play its part in ensuring that the international community does not forget the Kurds and the Shi'ite Moslems. I join with the Government in their determination on that point.
If I may say so, I thought that the Minister made an excellent speech until right at the end. When she launched into the United Nations, her voice which had been firm, determined and a clarion call for international action seemed to grow slightly weak and uncertain. All the three instances that we have been talking about—Somalia, Yugoslavia and Iraq—are ones in which the United Nations is very deeply involved.
Last January the Prime Minister chaired a unique meeting of the Security Council itself, it being the month of the British Presidency, at a level—that of heads of government—which the United Nations had not hitherto seen. It urged the Secretary General to be more active and more interventionist, to look at world problems and to make better use of the machinery which the United Nations affords. It asked him to report back with his suggestions to the Security Council. He did so, and the report is stimulating, full of ideas and even a trifle visionary at times in its approach, which is not the case with all United Nations' documents. Certainly it is a good read for those of us who have been involved in international affairs.
The inviolability of Article 2(7) of the charter (the non-intervention part)—in other words, the extent to which the United Nations' international community can interfere in matters which up to now have always been considered the internal affairs of a member state and therefore outwith the possibility of UN intervention—is an issue which is now firmly on the international table.
I am afraid that this week the Foreign Secretary poured cold water on the work carried out by the Secretary General—at least, the temperature of the water seemed fairly cool to me. I do not know whether the Government can persuade us that it was slightly more lukewarm that it appeared to be. But it seemed to be echoed in the last part of the speech today of the noble Baroness. I do not think that this is the time to be quite so cautious and quite so unwelcoming—indeed, almost verging on the unhelpful—so far as concerns the future activities of the United Nations. However one looks at it, the UN is, after all, the great hope for international order and the rule of law. There is no other international institution which has the constitution, the legal authority, the membership or the machinery for trying to pursue those aims. At this stage, I should have thought, especially against the background of the three instances under consideration in this debate, that this was the time for the Government to be more enthusiastic and more supportive of the United Nations than appeared to be the case at the end of the Minister's speech.
11.52 a.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Richard, I followed with great sympathy the speech of the noble Baroness until the final paragraphs about the United Nations, to which I hope to refer a

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little later. We welcome the very informative and sympathetic statement she made about these three desperately difficult problems. We are glad to hear that she will soon be visiting Bosnia. If I may say so, the Minister's speeches in the House are valued all the more for the deep personal commitment she evidently has in tackling these humanitarian problems. In all those three countries innocent people are suffering on a massive scale. In all of them acts of unimaginable brutality are being perpetrated. Moreover, in all of them attacks are made on aid workers; that is, gallant people who are only there to try to help diminish suffering.
Of course, Britain has no specific treaty obligations in any of the three countries; indeed, it can be argued that there is no direct British interest at all. Yet the scale and nature of the suffering are such that there is a universal feeling in the country which is shared entirely on these Benches that Britain cannot honourably stand aside and not do its utmost to help.
All three problems are frustrating and difficult in the extreme. All of them raise difficult questions of intervention: what its nature should be and how far it should go. In Yugoslavia the problem is particularly frustrating inasmuch as the United Nations has the power but cannot deploy it. We are all used to the idea of nuclear fire power being unusable in practice. In the former Yugoslavia the same is true of conventional fire power and to a considerable extent it is also true as regards economic power. I share the doubts expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, about the efficiency and firmness with which the policy of sanctions has been applied by the United Nations.
It was cheering to hear from the noble Baroness that at long last the leaks along the Danube are to be stopped. They should have been stopped years ago; indeed, they could have been stopped long ago. That is a very great weakness in the UN intervention so far. Sanctions inevitably work a little slowly and inevitably they tend to punish the just as well as the unjust. Sometimes they seem merely to reinforce the resolution of the unjust to persist in their misdeeds. But they do have an effect. It is possible that the greatest effect that the sanctions will have will arise if and when the fighting dies down and we come to the question of a settlement: for example, pressing the Serbs to accept a settlement, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, rightly said, must not provide for the sanctification of land won by conquest and as a result of ethnic cleansing. We entirely concur with that view.
It is harder to judge how far intervention by armed force should go. The arguments for caution are very obvious. It was most interesting to hear from the noble Baroness that aid workers and United Nations personnel in Bosnia are no longer taking the line that military intervention will increase the dangers which they already face. I believe I understood correctly what the noble Baroness said on that point. It would have been extremely difficult if those who are already vulnerable in Bosnia were to feel that by intervening militarily the United Nations made their position still more dangerous.
When one thinks of the nature of the terrain, it is hard enough to see the military justification, the
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military rationale, for basing armed troops and armoured carriers on the convoys. I feel sure that there will be embarrassments and I am afraid that there will be casualties. But the convoys are life savers on a massive scale. They also challenge suffering on a massive scale. The United Nations forces accompany-ing them will be saving life and reducing suffering. They will be operating with the full sanction of international law and at the request of the United Nations. It is hard to see how they could be operating and risking their lives in a better cause. We must hope and pray for their success.
My noble friends and I entirely support the Government in this matter. We insist—and we shall call them to account if necessary—that such troops be trained and equipped as well as they possibly can he and given rules of engagement as precise as such rules can be. Even so, whatever the rules of engagement. we fear that the danger of spreading the conflict beyond the roads, of engaging more and more forces, is a danger which needs to be very carefully guarded against.
In one respect we ask whether intervention could not go further. Surely it is intolerable that Serbian war planes should be used to support operations in Bosnia. That occurred last weekend. It cannot be argued that these aircraft operate without the knowledge and control of Mr. Karadzic. He must be called to account and made to live up to his promises. The United Nations has the power to ground or indeed to destroy the Serbian air force and it should use that power.
If the situation in Bosnia is depressing and frustrating, so it is in Iraq. Against all expectations, Saddam Hussein has not merely survived but has actually regained the initiative in many respects. He treats United Nations' resolutions with complete contempt; he humiliates United Nations' inspectors; he harasses aid workers; his ground forces assault Shia villages in the south from time to time; he is blockading the Kurds in the north and mortaring frontier villages; and he has just had the impudence to restate his territorial claims on Kuwait. Increasingly the moderate Arab governments, those who joined the coalition and fought with the coalition in the Gulf War, are seeing Iraq as a defence against the greater long-term menace of Iran and of Islamic fundamental-ism. This is a factor of growing importance which I think will cause us great difficulties in the future.
I do not wish to involve myself too much in controversy, but it needs to be said that the same view was held by the American Government right up to the outbreak of the Gulf War. They acted on this view and secretly helped Saddam Hussein to a remarkable extent to arm himself with really modern and effective weapons. Nor were the British Government guiltless at this time of the same offence. I saw an interview on 2nd August in the Sunday Telegraph. It was an interview in which Mr. Taylor asked Mr. Alan Clark whether he had tipped off our machine tool manufacturers as to how they should frame their export applications to get round the guidelines for trade with Iraq. Mr. Clark, always famous for candour and courage, replied:

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"Yes, and I did it for two reasons. First, I was Minister for Trade, so it was my job to maximise exports despite guidelines which I regarded as intrusive. Second, Iran was the enemy—still is—and it was clear to me that the interests of the West were well served by Iran and Iraq fighting each other, the longer the better".
Many of our difficulties today in Iraq stem from the covert support given to Saddam Hussein by the American and British Governments up to the outbreak of the Gulf War.
Two dangers particularly seem to stand out today. The first is the onset of winter in the Kurdish area in the north. I understand that the United Nations relief co-ordinator, Mr. Fulchieri, recently asked the Iraqi Government to allow United Nations importation of kerosene for cooking and heating in the Kurdish area. I understand that no reply has been given. Perhaps the Minister can correct me if necessary. In addition, the Iraq Government are not only embargoing food entering the Kurdish area but are confiscating United Nations' food designated for the Kurdish people. It is appalling that the Kurds and the United Nations should be beholden to Saddam Hussein in this way; that the United Nations economic blockade of Iraq should be paralleled by the Iraqi blockade of the Kurds.
How are the Kurds going to survive the winter? What is the policy of the Government and of the United Nations on this point? For example, are they trying to establish a new humanitarian lifeline bypassing Baghdad in the north towards Turkey? I should like to ask the noble Baroness that specific question. It seems extremely important and urgent. The second critical danger is the use of ground troops by Saddam Hussein in the north and the south. What is the Government's response here? We warmly support the "no fly" policy of the allies in the north and in the south, and that seems to be working well. But how far are the Government planning to resist ground attacks in the north and the south? What line are they taking with their allies? We are a senior member of the coalition that fought and won the Gulf War, and in our view we should not shirk our responsibilities.
In Somalia the problems of intervention are not quite so difficult, though the humanitarian task is even greater. The protection of aid convoys is more straightforward. We warmly support the tribute paid by the noble Baroness to the work of the agencies in Somalia. The work of the Red Cross and other agencies has been magnificent. We hope that the dispatch of United Nations' forces will enable the food to be spread out towards the villages, discouraging the disastrous congregation of starving people into urban centres.
If I may gently touch on a controversial matter between the parties, this means of course, when we think of Somalia, of the cost of current aid and the cost of recovery, to which the noble Baroness referred and which will be extremely formidable. We urge that there should he no cut but rather an expansion of aid expenditure by this country in the coming years.
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Finally, I come to the point on which the noble Lord, Lord Richard, focused—the surprising references to the United Nations at the end of the noble Baroness's speech. She said that the United Nations is doing too much.
Several noble Lords: No!
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, the United Nations is certainly doing more than ever—sometimes with success. I beg the noble Baroness's pardon if I misquoted her. She gave the impression that the task of the United Nations should be more widely shared. Perhaps that is putting it better. But of course the United Nations is playing a more and more prominent part in many parts of the world. The blue beret is proliferating. The United Nations has taken on eight new peacekeeping operations in the past four years compared with 13 in the previous 40 years and many have been, and are being, successful.
On these Benches we warmly support the ambitious proposals of Mr. Boutros Ghali to increase and amplify this function of the United Nations in his report published quite recently called Agenda for Peace. We want to develop a world-wide early warning system that would increase the time and the scope for preventive diplomacy. We want member governments to make specialised peace enforcement units quickly available on a permanent basis to the United Nations. We urge the Government to play a positive part not merely in supporting these things but in supporting the fund raising that will be needed to bring them to success.
In the past the United Nations has been too slow in responding to emergencies. It was too late in its reaction to the famine in Ethiopia and later in the Sudan, and it is too late in Somalia, though it is making up for time now. If it had made a quicker political and diplomatic intervention in the former Yugoslavia our problems there might be less intractable than they are. In spite of many failures the United Nations is now playing an increasingly positive role in an increasing number of the world's trouble spots, and to the extent that Her Majesty's Government assist it in this they will get the support of these Benches.
12.8 p.m.
The Archbishop of York: My Lords, like others who have spoken I welcome this opportunity to debate these vitally important issues. I greatly welcome the opening statement by the noble Baroness. On the whole, I also welcome the support that the Government have given to the United Nations in its attempt to tackle some of these problems. However, I cannot resist expressing a private wish that the list of trouble spots could have included the Sudan, where the all too familiar combination of political, social and religious animosities has for years created just as terrible a picture of human suffering as those which day by day fill our screens from other parts of the world. As has been said, we live in a world where too many problems and too much preventable suffering compete for our attention.

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I should like to sympathise with the Government for the difficult position they have found themselves in over sending troops to the former Yugoslavia. It is surely right that we should play our part in trying to bring peace to that tragic part of the world. I would also join with others in underlining the need to be cautious about how far we allow ourselves to become involved in direct military intervention.
Earlier this month I had an opportunity to meet a number of church people from that part of Europe together with some military advisers who had been responsible for peace-keeping operations elsewhere. It was a depressing experience. The overwhelming impression I gained was of the extreme difficulty of dealing with the appalling situation by the use of force, the extreme difficulty of United Nations operations even under the most favourable conditions and the extreme danger of becoming bogged down in a long-term commitment, as in Cyprus, with no end in sight. I believe it right not to be swayed too much by the emotional need to do something dramatic in that part of the world, a need which comes through very strongly because of the media images to which we are all subjected. There is probably little we can do over and above the present attempts to negotiate, maintain essential supplies and prevent the flow of arms into that area. I also believe that we should not act there at the expense of operations in other parts of the world, particularly Africa, where the political gains may be fewer but where is a real possibility of relieving dreadful suffering.
We cannot applaud too much the heroism of individuals and voluntary agencies, many religiously motivated and deeply distressed by the religious dimension to some of these problems. We should give every possible support to those people who go into troublespots to bring help. It seems to me that our duty is not so clear when the issue is whether to put at risk the lives of soldiers in trying to sort out what at present seem to be intractable, insoluble problems. That is why I see it as all the more important that we should be thinking creatively about the future role of the United Nations. Personally, I did not detect that note of coolness in the opening speech of the noble Baroness to which others have referred. I am at least prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
The Archbishop of York: My Lords, this has been an important week from the point of view of the United Nations. Many valuable things have been said at the General Assembly. In particular, I should like to applaud very strongly the Secretary-General's agenda for peace, idealistic though some of it may be. It seems to me that the United Nations is gaining in confidence in its more active role. It is important not to spoil or undermine that confidence by overstretching it in areas where not much can be achieved.
Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said, I welcome some of what the Foreign Secretary said, particularly as regards the proposal for preventive diplomacy. The need for preventive diplomacy in the Balkans cannot be overstressed. In the consultation to which I referred earlier people were saying that
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perhaps the situation was slightly easier in Yugoslavia than in some other parts of the Balkans because the deep divisions with which one was dealing were only about 500 years old whereas in other parts of the Balkans they were 1,000 years old. One is conscious of the vested interests that all the Balkan states have in what is happening in neighbouring states. That sets the scene for possible catastrophe.
There is an important difference between preventive diplomacy and conciliation. I believe they need to be distinguished and that both are needed. As I understand it, conciliation is a more neutral, hands-off exercise than diplomacy. It is not about applying pressure but winning understanding, and it can be done only by agencies which can clearly be seen to be totally detached from the issues. I am not sure whether in today's world the United Nations can have that image. It has to be involved in the life of other nations in too many other ways. Therefore, I hope that within the total package of preventive diplomacy there will be space for supporting independent conciliation initiatives. The efforts of the CSCE in this direction are a pointer to what is needed, but again it has the problem of not being fully independent.
The aspect of the Foreign Secretary's support for preventive diplomacy which alarms me is the suggestion that it is desirable because it is cheap. To see it as a cheap alternative to other forms of United Nations activity would, in my view, be a grave mistake. Diplomacy, in contrast to conciliation, has to be backed up by effective force, and that is why the other parts of the Secretary-General's agenda for peace must not be played down. Organisational changes in the United Nations peace-keeping and peace-making operations are essential if it is to be able to respond effectively to today's problems. I hope that the Government will give an enthusiastic welcome to President Bush's call for a rapid deployment force and his offer of logistical back-up. The present complications of getting together a United Nations force and, once formed, enabling it to work together have been crippling. If one is to believe the complaints of those who have been involved at command level, they are almost paralysed in attempting to get anything going and then to work it once it is in place.
We also need to give much more serious thought to the problems of those countries which have conscript armies and the moral questions which inevitably arise where governments commit troops to operations in which their countries' vital interests are not clearly at stake. We are not looking for a new United Nations imperialism, but I believe there is a place for a permanent United Nations volunteer force staffed and paid for by those countries, which begin to look to the United Nations as their future guarantor of security, reducing their military commitments. Slowly and painfully the churches are having to apply the same principles in their ecumenical work.
In order to increase what you do together you have to decrease what you do separately. Surely, that is the direction in which our security policy must move. That too is the logic behind the Secretary-General's plea that United Nations costs should be paid for out of defence budgets rather than foreign office budgets.

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Better still, perhaps there should be a United Nations budget which would mark a new awareness that in today's world global issues are not marginal to national life but central to it. Idealistic thinking at a time when we have been recalled to consider specific issues may seem out of place, but I believe it is precisely when we are most conscious of the intractability of some of the immediate issues that there needs to be a degree of bold thinking about the future.
12.19 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, my normal preference for speaking briefly in your Lordships' House is fortified by the knowledge that so many noble Lords are waiting to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, who is a great addition to our counsels. I propose to make my speech brief by omitting Somalia, which I think is the least controversial of the issues confronting us, and Iraq because what I might have said has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. It is an unusual axis in this House and I hope that it will be welcomed.
When we last debated Yugoslavia I was reproved by my noble friend the Minister for implicitly criticising my noble friend Lord Carrington. I explained at the time, I hope successfully, that I had no wish to question his devotion or skill but that I believed that the task which confronted him in acting as an emissary of the European Community was an impossible one. The fact that the situation in Yugoslavia has deteriorated, as was agreed by the noble Baroness and other previous speakers, and that the new Owen-Vance team is facing precisely the same kind of difficulties as confronted the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, seems to me to make the point that I tried to make then.
My point was that the European Community is an impossible device for reaching agreement on an important matter in European politics when national interests and instincts are different. We therefore have a British policy—or what is alleged to be a British policy—which inevitably represents the result of compromises, not all of which are in a direction that we ourselves might have preferred. The conflict in Yugoslavia is not the kind of outburst of primitive hatreds or the wish to excel in weaponry that we see, for instance, in Somalia. It is a new stage in a political struggle whose antecedents were portrayed for the House earlier in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Richard.
We confuse and deceive ourselves—and this point relates to what is much on our consciences; namely, the question of British troops—when we use the words "humanitarian aid" in respect of Yugoslavia. A good word can he over-used and "humanitarian" is a good word. By "humanitarian" we mean, or did mean until very recently, giving succour and help of various material kinds and perhaps moral succour if necessary to people whose lives have been devastated by nature—by hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. But it is very different—here there is a link with Iraq—when the
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sufferings that we are asked to alleviate are sufferings directly and wilfully created by human beings or human agencies.
It is not that floods have swept away the homes of Croats or Moslems in Bosnia. Those homes have been deliberately destroyed. Therefore, unless we are prepared to accept that this is a political issue and that the situation with which we are dealing in Bosnia is what one could call a civil war—a civil war that is encapsulated in a conflict between warring peoples and warring states—we get nowhere. It seems to me that that fact has been obfuscated in many of the discussions that have gone on at European Community level.
I leave to others the discussion of the military risks involved in intervention. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, who will follow the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, no doubt will have a great deal to tell us about that matter. But even considering sanctions, an issue which the noble Lord, Lord Richard, raised, it is quite extraordinary that sanctions that were agreed months ago have taken so long to put into effect and that so many reasons have been given as to why they could not be brought into effect.
The Danube has been mentioned. We have been told that the Danube can be monitored. I understand that we have sent experts from Customs and Excise to help the Romanians monitor the Danube. Those are the kind of jolly chaps from Heathrow who try to stop the extra bottle of booze brought back after your holiday. But monitoring is not what is required. We are told that international law makes it impossible for Romania to block the passage along the Danube of barges containing war materials. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether it is correct that it is not possible even now, under international law, to interfere with transit on the Danube.
Reference was made to the breaking of sanctions on land. One member of the European Community which, for its own political reasons, is closely allied with Serbia—namely, Greece—has provided, many people believe, because of the so-called transit traffic, an excuse for the evasion of sanctions. It seems to me, as has been pointed out, that we also have been very slow in reacting to the consequences of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. When we met in July I referred to the unfortunate action of Germany, again based on the conception of national interest, in bouncing us into premature recognition of Croatia before measures had been taken to ensure the safety of minorities. At the moment we know from our television screens that the process of ethnic cleansing is spreading from Bosnia to Kosovo and that Albanians, who form the majority community, are being expelled from their homes in order to provide more room for Serbs in order to sanctify, if you like, the historic Serbian claim to that province.
We are also worried about the possibility of the involvement of the Republic of Macedonia. There again Greece has prevented action to monitor events in Macedonia, beginning with its recognition so that it could be a member of the United Nations and assisted by the United Nations. Again, there has been intervention by one member of the European

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Community which is clearly against the general interest of bringing about peace which, in the end, must be the major goal.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, called attention to the use of air power by Serbia. I should have thought that it was not simply a responsibility of the so-called leader of the Serbs of Bosnia; it is a clear responsibility of the Government in Belgrade. If it is possible—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, will comment on this point—to have an air exclusion zone in Southern Iraq, which is a very long way from us, why is it not possible to have an air exclusion zone in Bosnia? It is extraordinary. The facts are so appalling that one sometimes just runs away from them. It is appalling to think that for over three weeks it has been impossible to fly into Sarajevo civil relief planes with medicines and food that are urgently needed to prevent starvation and disease. Can we not find a way to do that? That is not to blame the countries who were sending in flights, such as the Italians. The most reverend Primate referred to that matter. To ask pilots to fly unarmed planes through hostile territory is asking rather a lot.
Therefore, surely we ought to forget about Brussels. We must get together with the only countries which have influence and authority in that part of the world; that is, Germany, Russia and France. That would be like trying to avoid the last Sarajevo crisis in 1914. There must be an agreement between the powers whose collective force would be sufficient to make the Serbs think again. To say that we are not going to recognise territory which is taken by force and populated by force, is very good for our international conscience but it is totally impractical to tell the refugees from Bosnia that they should stay as close as possible in order to get home more rapidly. That is to raise hopes which we have no right to raise, when we know perfectly well that their homes have been destroyed or occupied by others and that military forces exist to prevent them from going home.
It is a horrid situation and I would not, therefore, wish to criticise either Her Majesty's Government or the efforts of Mr. Vance and the noble Lord, Lord Owen, or anyone else. However, we must face the fact that the situation in the Balkans is an international conflict and not a case where humanitarian aid is concerned. If we send in military forces we must realise that that is an inevitable part of the problem that will confront them.
12.32 p.m.
Lord Merlyn-Rees: My Lords, it is a privilege to be a Member of this Upper House in general, and I thank the noble Baroness for her words of welcome, as I do the noble Lord, Lord Beloff. In particular, it gives me the opportunity, after a period I did not enjoy in limbo, once again to play a part in bringing the Government to account for their policies, which is the hallmark of our parliamentary system.
On the subject of Somalia, I pay great tribute to the noble Baroness who continues her invaluable work in the Department of Overseas Aid. Her work is recognised in another place as well as this House. With regard to Iraq, I simply point out that the skies may
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be clear, with the aid of our six Tornados; but the oppression of the Kurds continues unabated—and I hear this week to an increasing extent on the ground. The position of the Kurds should never be forgotten.
I turn to deal with Yugoslavia, or what is left of it, about which I have some knowledge from the last war. It is always dangerous for old soldiers or old airmen to refer back 50 years; but one is on better ground in Yugoslavia because nothing has changed there for such a long time. Our forces were SAS and there was a small Balkan airforce that operated from the east coast of Italy. There was no question of being drawn in to a full-scale war. The Germans and the Italians made the supreme mistake in that respect, as the President of Austria could confirm. It was a bestial war. One story that I heard has been confirmed in writing. When a partisan group in the mountains came across a German patrol and a baby cried, the baby was handed over to have its throat cut to save the lives of the rest of the partisans. That is an experience which most of us, including myself, know little about, but it tells us something about the nature of the ethnic problems of Yugoslavia, which are not new and which, as the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, pointed out, have been going on for centuries. We should not be drawn in.
I recall that when I was an Army Minister and an RAF Minister, after 1948 the Yugoslavs learnt the hard way that a possible enemy was the Soviet Union, and they reorganised their armed forces to deal with the invasion not from the west but from the east. They organised their forces in small groups in the states and in local areas. That is still the case and gives some explanation for the way in which some armies which are out of control, and deliberately out of control from above, behave. I hold a strong view today that we must not be sucked into a Balkan civil war.
The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, dealt with the role of the EC in political matters. The Government have complained about the lack of co-operation from the European Community in economic matters in recent weeks. The situation is the same in regard to Yugoslavia. It was foolish for the Germans and the Italians to press for recognition of Slovenia and Croatia too early. It exacerbated the position in Serbia and Herzegovina, where the Serbs believe that if you grab land it will be recognised at some stage. The Germans and Italians acted atavistically—a throwback to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There is no common European policy on that matter and there cannot be, whatever happens in the long run. We must press for what we know is right.
There has been a report about 1,800 British troops. I point out that in dealing with our armed forces, we may be going the wrong way. In the future we may need more soldiers and sophisticated equipment in the other services. However, we are sending 1,800 people of a regiment that has to be made up from outside because it does not have enough of its own soldiers. Apparently, British commanders hoped that it would be located at Bihac with direct links to Zagreb, where there is already a British communications unit and a field ambulance unit, but somebody decided that that was not to be and now they are to he around Tuzla,

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which has seen fierce fighting during the past two months. Tuzla is 100 miles from Belgrade. It is a Moslem enclave that is surrounded by Serbian artillery positions, which seems to be a bright place to send the Cheshire regiment troops and the armoured cars that are to build them up to strength. Did the Ministry of Defence play a part in the resolution of the matter? Who was in control? Who was in command? I am worried about the situation.
A more recent report from the French general in charge of the force states that he is unable to give a firm guarantee (which I understand) as to the safety of the troops who will conduct the operations. However, is that guarantee, or lack of guarantee, because it is the nature of the situation, or is it because he has not got the right back-up, the right kind of soldiers, the right kind of troops and the right kind of equipment? The situation must be looked at very carefully.
I welcome the efforts of the United Nations; but in its recent work, since the end of the Cold War, I question whether the preparation and organisation is enough. In doing so, I pick up the point which was made by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York. Command and control cannot be exercised from New York. What is the role of the military committee that has not operated for 40 years? Where does it operate from? Should there not be a forward UN military headquarters? I had a look at a map this morning. Why not Foggia across the sea? It is flat, it has airfields and you can get there very quickly. Why not have a forward military headquarters not only to state the obvious, which is so often done by military headquarters, but also to enable them to address their minds to any changes that take place in strategy.
We all learn from experience. I certainly was not at Maastricht in 1940, but I served in the Royal Air Force where what happened in Maastricht in 1940 lingered. Brave young men died on 12th May 1940. The Blenheims and the other aircraft—the Fairey Battles—were all wiped out on one day not because of lack of bravery, hut because of lack of control from above. They were sent to do a job that they should not have been sent to do. The command of all this is important. There is a monitoring system with the qualifications that have been made. There is a hospital ambulance unit; but more needs to be done. I have made some inquiries. Where is the petrol and oil to come from? What is the routing for that? Where is the food for our soldiers to come from? It will not just appear from anywhere. They will not live off the land. There is also the question of clothing for the winter because it may be near sunny Italy and the Adriatic coast, but it is extraordinarily cold from November through to March and the normal uniforms that soldiers wear will not be enough. I hope that people in the UN and in the Ministry of Defence have addressed their minds to that. As the most reverend Primate will know, up in Yorkshire we have many factories that could make that kind of clothing.
My memory of Yugoslavia is of a hateful, in the true sense of the term, collection of ethnic and linguistic groups who indulge in civil war perhaps even worse than most civil wars. We must reassess the role
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of the United Nations. That can be done in the long term for many things, but it must be done in the short term now. Are the troops under their command being given a task that they can do properly? It is a developing situation. I agree with the most reverend Primate that it is time to act quickly now. We have no right to send soldiers and airmen to do a job that we think is all right without making sure that they can carry out their task.
12.42 p.m.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will join me in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, upon his maiden speech. Those of your Lordships who are familiar with the Arthurian legends will know that Merlin was celebrated as an enchanter and a wise man. Those of us who have heard the noble Lord's speech today will agree that he was felicitiously named. He has come to this House after a distinguished career of public service. As he reminded us, he served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. When he left the services he embarked upon a distinguished political career which culminated in the 1970s when, between 1974 and 1979, he was successively Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and Secretary of State at the Home Department. He comes with a distinguished political pedigree. I am sure that your Lordships would wish me to welcome him to this House and to express the hope that we shall listen to him here on many future occasions.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I find it easy in one special way to follow the noble Lord's speech because I want to support almost everything that he said about the importance and difficulty of using armed force in the way in which it is being used in many cases at the moment. We must think far more profoundly in this country and in the international structure about the implications of using armed force almost, it seems nowadays, as an automatic response to any kind of crisis or instability. I do not think that many people would accuse me of being soft or wet about the uses of military power. The armed force of this country and of other countries is already deployed in all of the three areas that we are discussing today and I have no quarrel with that. I do not criticise the Government; indeed, I support their action.
Nevertheless, it is necessary to raise a more general point about the employment of military force in crises of this kind. The general concept, as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, has outlined, is clear. Under Article 2 of the United Nations Charter—I think that it is paragraph 7; perhaps the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong—the United Nations is forbidden to intervene in affairs of domestic jurisdiction. That is clearly stated. On the other hand, it is also clearly stated in the charter that that is subordinate to the provisions of Chapter 7 which deals with threats to peace and acts of aggression.
There is no doubt that in Yugoslavia there is a threat to peace. Whether it is a civil war or a war between states is an interesting argument, but

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whichever it is it is a threat to the peace of Europe. It is possible to argue without too much trouble that there is a threat to the peace in Iraq. There certainly was at the time of the Kuwait war and it is arguable that that still exists. About Somalia I must confess that I have some doubts and this is perhaps where I find the argument becomes most interesting.
The noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, said in her clear and valuable opening speech that the United Nations was right and—I believe that I quote correctly from her remarks—to set aside arguments about nonintervention. Perhaps we need to look at that a little more carefully because it will be difficult to know in the future where we should draw the line. There is a clear but difficult line to be drawn between interference in the internal affairs of nation states under the provisions of Article 2 of the United Nations Charter and the right and duty to carry out military intervention under Chapter 7. In the way in which the world is developing at present we shall have to be much more rigorous in determining the criteria upon which we decide to use armed force.
We are moving into a very important period of transformation and transition of political science and political philosophy. We are moving from the world of the nation state, in which national interests are paramount and always have been, to what I might call, for the sake of shorthand, globalism—the belief that most of the world's problems can and should be handled on a global basis by such organisations as the United Nations. If we are to adjust our national and international policies to that fundamental change in the perception of the way the world is regulated, we must be careful in deciding the criteria upon which the use of armed force depends.
One of the difficulties has been mentioned by the most reverend Primate; namely, the need to avoid emotional reactions to crises and instability of that kind. I wish to make one special case here. We must be careful about the extent to which the media, especially television, begin to control and dictate national and international policies. There are cases of emotive and selective broadcasting and reporting of events by the electronic media which I believe are beginning to have far too much influence upon the decisions that politicians make.
I return to the question of the use of force and the way in which force is used in these international problems. The United Nations Charter, even under Chapter 7, provides only for the use of armed force. It does not lay down, nor was it intended to lay down, any of the basic principles of war, the principles of the use of military force. Those remain unchanged by whatever the United Nations Charter says.
A number of factors, as any student of military history will confirm, have constantly to be borne in mind whenever military force is applied to the solution of a political problem. The first is the aim—clarity of what it is that you are trying to do—and the maintenance of that aim throughout the period of the engagement of troops. Secondly-and this point has already been made by the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, with great clarity—there must be what is known in the military jargon as "C3", or command,
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control and communications: who commands the troops; how are they controlled and what communications are provided to enable that command and control to take place.
So not only have we to ask ourselves what these soldiers are meant to do and who is controlling and commanding them while they do it but what their rules of engagement are. What are they allowed to do, either in self-defence or in other applications of military force? The noble Lord, Lord Richard, made what I think is the crucial point here, which is that unless those vital principles of war, with others, are fully observed throughout the deployment of armed force there will be drift. There has been drift in military operations in South-East Asia, in Korea and in Beirut. Thousands and thousands of troops and thousands of millions of pounds worth of equipment are sucked in because command, control and communications and maintenance of the aim are not clearly held in the minds of those deploying the forces.
Let me refer to the campaign to which the noble Lord referred in Yugoslavia in the Second World War. In that terrible terrain—a nightmare terrain for any military commander—in August 1943 there were 15 divisions of German troops fully deployed attempting to pacify and control the Balkans. They failed: 15 divisions. We are at the moment in the process of arranging reinforcements of the troops in Yugoslavia. If the 6,000 troops which the United Nations has now recommended and endorsed are actually deployed there will be 21,000 United Nations troops in what used to be Yugoslavia. It hardly needs to be said that that will not be enough. There will be a tendency for more and more troops to go in unless a very careful watch is kept upon this. I would only refer your Lordships to the words of General Lewis Mackenzie, who was the United Nations commander in that area until the end of July. In a recent interview in a defence newspaper he said that any attempt to pacify the Balkans by the use of military force, whether United Nations or otherwise, will end in disaster.
I go on briefly to mention Iraq. Again, I think this is a wise operation in which Her Majesty's Government are engaged; and here we have a "no-fly" zone. Perhaps I may digress briefly and say in answer to the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, that of course there is no reason why there should not be for any military reason a "no-fly" zone in the Balkans, just as there is in Iraq. In fact it might be even easier to enforce. I do not necessarily endorse it: I say only that there is no reason why it should not be done. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, like many others, will recall that in Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter there is a special requirement on the part of member states of the United Nations to have specific air forces ready to assign to the UN for that purpose.
However, before I leave the subject of Iraq, I add that, although I fully endorse the policy of enforcing the "no-fly" zones in the north and south of Iraq, I hope that the Government will not be seduced by any of the somewhat emotive calls for this to be translated into ground force action against Saddam Hussein's

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forces either in the north or the south. A "no-fly" zone with reconnaissance aircraft, and indeed combat aircraft if necessary, is one thing: ground attack is another. I hope the Government will resist any calls, however siren-like they may be, to go along that road.
In conclusion, I say this. Having made the point that the use of military force as an arm of diplomacy or politics is an immensely complicated matter, this does not by any means suggest that we should not engage in it. We are moving through a period of immense instability. There is going to be instability based on ethnic rivalries, economic rivalries and religious rivalries. For a very long time the world will be a very dangerous and precarious place. It may be that we as a nation will want to take a full part in dealing with all those matters and, if necessary, dealing with them through means which include the use of armed force. But if we do, as the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, has hinted, we may then have to look again at the provision of our own military forces which seems at the moment not to be consistent with playing a large part in the world scene. It is perhaps no more than an amusing paradox that the Cheshire Regiment, which I gather is about to be deployed in Yugoslavia, would if the original plan for Options for Change had been implemented not even exist today. That is not an important point; it is just a part of the rich tapestry of life in the Ministry of Defence. I should like to reserve some further thoughts on this whole issue of the role that we play in the world and the military implications that flow from it to a later stage in your Lordships' House.
Before I resume my seat I should like to ask just one question of the Minister. It is to do with the arms transfers which still seem to be going on in this embattled area in the Balkans in spite of all the sanctions and the monitoring. I should like to ask her specifically whether the NATO early warning aircraft which are deployed in Yugoslavia have a role to play in this and whether in fact we cannot ensure that those who are maliciously and irresponsibly pouring arms into certain parts of this very troubled area are by one means or another prevented from doing so.
As I said, we have a difficult, precarious and complicated world to face. I believe that in the areas we are discussing today Her Majesty's Government are approaching these problems responsibly and sensibly, but I repeat that if we are to continue to play a major role on the world scene, which seems to be what we are claiming to do at the moment—and I have no quarrel with that because I believe that we should—we must take care that we give our military establishment the resources it will need to do the job.
12.59 p.m.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, having been in and out of Yugoslavia for 60 years and having some knowledge of the lingo, I propose to focus on that problem. May I say that my wife has family links with both sides in the Serbia-Croat conflict, from which the Bosnian war is a spin-off. I may say that we maintain contact with our relatives there by telephone but we have noticed that none of them dares talk about
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anything except the weather. They will not answer any questions or give us any hint as to what they are feeling.
One ought to begin by praising the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for his work, together with Mr. Vance, and also wishing the best of British luck to the noble Lord, Lord Owen. Blessed are the peacemakers. I must say I was greatly impressed by the opening speech of my noble friend Lady Chalker and I was also deeply impressed by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Richard. We have spoken in these debates before.
On his point of the Yugoslav ethnic "cauldron", it is worth pointing out something that people forget about Yugoslavia. It is that until the break-up of the communist regime people were getting on very well at street level. There was an enormous degree of intermarriage—that is one reason why my wife's family have links all over the country—with Catholics, Moslems and Orthodox all together in a most extraordinary mixture. At street level it was all perfectly peaceful. As a matter of fact, by East European standards the Yugoslav solution to the problems there was not as bad as it has been commonly made out to be, except by the leaders who are now at war.
I was relieved to hear my noble friend say something to the effect that we must beware the risk of loading the United Nations with tasks beyond its capacity. I have to say that at times the international institutions appear to offer a rather inglorious picture. First, there was a show of European Community unity on foreign policy—which was simply giving way to Germany—for the premature recognition of Croatia. At a stroke this undermined the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for a political settlement. That was a disastrous blunder by the EC in the face of German pressure. Then there was the premature recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina. That made the EC and the UN a kind of Balkan laughing stock in the face of the Serbo-Croat deal, concluded not yesterday but months ago, to partition their country if at all possible.
Then at times there is the picture of the sheer shambles of UN monitoring forces and aid escorts, plus the mysterious recall of the Canadian General Mackenzie. I have never understood the reason for that because he was one of the few men who could run the show, what there was of it. Then there was the piteous sight described by more than one newspaper of patrols or groups of soldiers doing their job without even having a common language. There were Ukranians and French side by side with not even an interpreter between them. All this has brought some degree of ridicule to a well meant intervention, and I say "ridicule" deservedly.
Now we have the prospect of British troops going in to safeguard what has been euphemistically called humanitarian aid although, as the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, implied—and I rather agree with him—it is a form of political pressure to break the various military sieges. I share the alarm that has been expressed by the

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noble Lords, Lord Beloff, Lord Merlyn-Rees, Lord Chalfont, and others about British military involvement unless everything is crystal clear.
It is something like 16 years since the United Nations sent forces into Cyprus, but that was merely a two-sided conflict. Here there is conflict on many sides, and in very difficult terrain. It is absolutely vital that the rules of engagement are a) clear and b) made very clear to everybody else. Without that, I fear that we are heading for an even more dangerous situation.
I should like to ask my noble friend a few questions about UN activities. How are we getting on with regard to access to Serbian detention centres, and the control of the Serbian artillery? Pledges were given by Karadzic, the Bosnian-Serb leader, at the London conference. I should like to know whether they have proved of any value or are as empty as many of the other pledges about which we have read in the past six months.
A word of caution is necessary with regard to sanctions. The mere bludgeoning of the Serbs, however meritorious it may be in the eyes of the rest of the civilised world, could be counterproductive. The more the Serbs are threatened, the more they will stick together. No matter who their leader is, if they feel threatened they will hang together. That is a serious psychological consequence of what I would call the bludgeoning policy. The civilised world may sympathise with bludgeoning but whether it is prudent is another matter.
The sanctions also have to be realistic. Again, I would underline the questions which have already been asked about sanctions busting which appears to he going on, certainly from Romania and possibly also from Greece, but in particular up the Danube. The other day my family made a telephone call to Belgrade. They said that there was no worry there because the real sanctions busting is across the land border from Romania. But there have been many signs from different quarters that barges laden with fuel have been going up the Danube. From where? They are doubtless from Romania and possibly from Russia. What about blockading the Danube? We have a ship in the Adriatic. Why is it in the Adriatic? Surely it should be in the Black Sea or, if not, a Russian ship should do the same job. It seems to me that the Adriatic is the wrong place in which to have a frigate sitting around.
Inside Serbia of course we should all like to see an effective parliamentary opposition to Milosevic, but I have to tell your Lordships that there is a common proverb in Serbia that two Serbs equal three political parties. They are a most disunited opposition. The present parliamentary opposition there surely has a long way to go to find effective leadership and cohesion. Its strength is largely confined to the middle classes and the intellectuals of Belgrade. On the other hand, Milosevic has certain critical assets. It is no good pretending that he is just a baddie and mentally writing him off. In fact, he has some very strong cards in his hand. The first is that the old Serbian communist party never broke up into two or three as it did in Croatia. So he has intact a communist party machine still operating throughout the hinterland of Serbia and
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Montenegro. Therefore, he has a solid machine for facing any elections which he chooses to call at any time. He can call an election with the greatest confidence and without worry. In addition, he controls the national TV broadcasts from Belgrade. That in turn has a considerable effect on public opinion in the peasant countryside where he has great support.
There are a few other things which are perhaps not quite so dismal. The first is that in Belgrade itself the daily paper, Borha, which originally was the communist Struggle, has maintained an independent stand, unlike Politika the other paper, with great courage and despite great personal pressure on staff and economic pressure on resources. Those people who work on the Borba deserve whatever support is possible from outside without causing them embarrassment.
I am told that there are plans afoot to establish an independent TV station in Belgrade to cover the countryside and therefore rival the official station. There again, any help or any moral encouragement that can be given to that project will he very worthwhile. On that subject—I warned my noble friend Lady Chalker about this—I am going to ask to what extent the BBC transmissions directly aimed at Serbia and Croatia have been increased. At the time of the Baltic crisis there was a rapid and useful increase in BBC transmissions to that area. Now we need to broadcast full blast to the Serbs. They still listen to the BBC and still trust it. It is important, in the interests of a change of leadership in Belgrade, to put the truth across.
Perhaps the brightest hope in that situation is that interesting character, Mr. Panic. He is a Yugoslav who has very few words of Serbian at his command but lots of American experience as a businessman. He deserves encouragement. According to my information, he is increasingly estranged from Mr. Milosevic. He has made headway in surviving no fewer than two votes of censure in the Skupstina, the parliament, and I understand that his relations with the army are steadily improving. Despite whatever personality problems he may have—he is an excellent man, but we all have our faults—surely he is our best hope of preventing hostilities spreading over into Samsjak and Kosovo, with all the frightening consequences that could result.
There are and can be no winners. However, how realistic is it to talk of non-recognition of borders changed by force? Are we to say, for example, that Serbia and Montenegro, however wicked their leaderships have been, are beyond the pale for the next thousand years? That is not realistic. I do not know how they are to be obliged to disgorge territory. I wonder whether the international community is not making a stick for its own back by saying that there will be no recognition of any kind until all conquered territory is surrendered. That would also have to apply to Croatia and elsewhere.
Generally speaking, a standstill by exhaustion is probably the best hope for a political solution. As I say, there are no winners; they are all losers. Slovenia, which is quiet, has lost its markets in Serbia and

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Croatia. It does not have alternative new markets in Austria and Hungary. Slovenes are now wondering what it is all about. Croatia's dash for freedom has certainly been more costly than Tudjman ever imagined. The Serbo-Croat deals under the counter about partitioning Bosnia will redound in three or four directions. Serbia and Montenegro are bankrupt and isolated, and Bosnia's Moslems have gained very little from their ill-judged alliance with the Croatian predator beforehand.
It looks as though the eventual international political settlement is going to leave the United Nations and the European Community eating humble pie.
1.12 p.m.
Lord Finsberg: My Lords, I apologise for speaking on the parliamentary day following my maiden speech, even though two months in the real calendar have elapsed. However, I wanted to participate in the debate.
Perhaps I may say first how much I enjoyed the speech of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees. It was, as usual, full of sound common sense.
I have been much concerned with Yugoslavia because I have had the privilege of leading the United Kingdom delegations to the parliamentary assemblies of both the Western European Union and the Council of Europe since 1987. In the Council of Europe we have tried to see where we were going with the former Yugoslavia.
As your Lordships know, the fundamental basis of the Council of Europe is respect for human rights and for multi-party democracy. We introduced a new concept, of a transitional nature, to see how states managed to comport themselves. We gave guest membership to former Yugoslavia and to the Soviet Union, which has now been taken over by Russia.
At one particular conference we had the Speakers of all the republics of former Yugoslavia sitting in the same room. If I say that the atmosphere was probably worse than that between, say, Mr. Shamir and Yasser Arafat your Lordships will realise how deplorable the situation was more than 15 months ago. The behaviour of former Yugoslavia became so bad that it was clear that its parliament had no control over its armed forces, so we first suspended guest membership and, some five weeks or so ago, withdrew it completely.
One of the other factors in the equation is the Western European Union. I am sad that no mention has been made of it today because it has been playing a major role in the monitoring of sanctions. The organisation has not been playing as great a role as I should have liked, but it is right to point out to your Lordships that more than a year ago your United Kingdom parliamentary delegation—myself, the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, and my colleague from the other place, Peter Hardy—all called for an immediate form of action against former
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Yugoslavia more than 12 months ago we advocated the shooting down of any Yugoslav plane seen in the air. We were way ahead of the exclusion zone in Iraq.
In my judgment, such action would have achieved two objectives, and I do not change my view. First, it would have saved innumerable civilian casualties. Those who did not follow that line have those deaths on their consciences. Secondly, it would have been a warning to Serbia and Montenegro that there was a determination in the world to stop their brutal behaviour.
Nothing happened. As your Lordships have already heard,30 people were murdered last week by bombing from Serbian aeroplanes. No ground troops would have been needed. I go along with those who are very cautious about involving ground troops in Yugoslavia. One of my German colleagues in the Council of Europe is a great friend of mine. He and I often talk about the number of German divisions which were tied down unsuccessfully in Yugoslavia during the last war. Unless we are prepared to put in a quarter of a million or half a million ground troops, which no sane body would do, ground troops will not solve the problem in former Yugoslavia.
It was as long ago as September 1991 that the presidential committee of the Western European Union called for an effective UN force to secure (the word was carefully chosen) a cease-fire in Yugoslavia. The presidential committee comprises politicians—members of nine national parliaments. We were united then in our view that peace-keeping was not necessarily the answer and that there had to be some form of peace-making. Nothing happened.
Since then we have seen the most murderous abuse of human rights. As many of your Lordships have said, we must not be influenced by what we see in the media. Nonetheless, no one could fail to have been moved by some of the sights we have seen, or by some of the stories which we have heard. I had the privilege of visiting Croatia, leading the Council of Europe monitoring team during the recent elections. At one particular place I spoke to refugees who had been moved, on ethnic grounds. For me it was a very sad moment. Here were people voting for members of a parliament for an area which was no longer under its control. Some of the stories were heart-rending. Of course the Bosnians and Croats are not immune from blame, but on a scale of one to 10 Serbia stands at eight. Let the world not forget that.
I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Carrington for the patience which he must have shown over those frustrating months. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, will show equal patience and may achieve more than it was possible for my noble friend Lord Carrington to achieve at that time.
The London conference came to a variety of decisions and they were marvellous to read. Everybody put their signatures to them, although some probably signed in ink which became invisible in a very short time! Those who lead Serbia, both the legal republic and the Serbian leader in Bosnia, have learnt much. They are true disciples of Dr. Joseph Goebbels. To watch them one would believe they are

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intending to try to comply with the wishes of the civilised world. Their actions belie everything that they say.
I am sad that one of the greatest failures of the past 18 months has been the CSCE. We had high hopes that that body—its membership included all the nations which started at Helsinki and were responsible for the breakup of the Soviet empire by opening it up to outside inspection of human rights, and so forth—would have some effect. It has had none. I regret that, and I do not know what we can do to give it the kind of moral authority, let alone physical authority, that is needed to do a job of work. It has not saved lives; it has talked and talked and talked. Too much talk and too much thought paralyse action.
There are now humanitarian convoys which are much spoken about. They were mentioned by my noble friend Lord Beloff, and others. The convoys will try to relieve the suffering of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I ask my noble friend a question. British troops are to help those convoys to pass. What are they supposed to do when they are attacked by a mortar from over a hill? I am told that so far Her Majesty's Government have refused to allocate helicopter gunships to find out where the mortars are coming from and to destroy them. I am also told that, on the contrary, the French will provide helicopters to carry out spotting checks because without them one is fighting blind. I should be unhappy to see British troops put in that position.
A little more than 10 days ago the Western European Union looked again at the question of sanctions. Perhaps I may read to your Lordships its decision. It recommended that we should:
"Seek United Nations approval to impose a complete and total land, air and sea blockade of Serbia and Montenegro, the cessation of all financial, economic and other international assistance and the exclusion of Serbia and Montenegro from all international organisations until such time as they comply completely with all United Nations resolutions and the decisions of the London Conference".
It further recommended that the council:
"Offer to the Secretary-General of the United Nations to keep WEU forces available to the United Nations under European command and operational control in order to maintain cohesion and to carry out Resolution 770 effectively, and in close co-ordination with the United Nations".
As my noble friend Lord Lauderdale said, of course one can bludgeon them and make the Serbs close ranks and decide that they will continue with their uncivilised behaviour for many years. What is the alternative? If we say that by putting pressure on them we may stiffen their resolve are we to put less pressure on them, relieve that pressure, in order to allow them to continue with their murderous activities? If I had to chose I should—
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, perhaps I may clarify my noble friend's point. I was merely saying that we should be rather more subtle about the matter than we have been hitherto.
Lord Finsberg: My Lords, we have been so unsubtle that we have achieved virtually nothing so far. Sanctions have not been at all effective. Greece and
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Romania have been mentioned but we have not gone far enough with even the subtle sanctions to achieve what needs to be done.
I have mentioned the Western European Union and the Council of Europe. In all this parliamentarians appear to have been ahead of governments. But what will happen when Kosovo erupts? If your Lordships believe that what we have seen on the screens in regard to Bosnia is horrific I must point out that we have seen only a tea party compared with what will happen in Kosovo. Kosovo will not be confined within former Yugoslavia. Albania will be unable to stay out and Greece and Bulgaria will become involved. If Bulgaria becomes involved Russia cannot be far behind because of the friendship that exists. Turkey will also become involved—the list is endless.
For six months I had the opportunity of being President of the Council of Europe. During that time I was visited by the Speakers or their representatives of the Parliaments of Azerbaijan and Armenia—and we know what is happening in Nagorno-Karabakh. I persuaded them to agree that if they wished to become members of the Council of Europe they must stop what they are doing and submit to some form of arbitration. They both said "Yes" in front of witnesses. They went away and it was all forgotten. That is the dilemma which the civilised world faces. How do we make people keep their word when they give it solemnly in front of the world's cameras at the Queen Elizabeth Centre? Until we solve that problem we are in for a very rough two or three years at the best.
1.26 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, that is a major human programme in general, is it not? Our Secretary of State, Mr. Rifkind, was quoted in The Times yesterday as speaking,
"bitterly of Iran's costly weapons programme".
I make no apology for starting a little wide of the Motion before us. I shall circle in towards it but the starting place appears to me to be Iran. Mr. Rifkind went on to say that the Teheran government should explain why they are rearming when there is no likely threat to Iran at the present time or in the foreseeable future. The best one can say to that is, "Well, up to a point, Lord Copper, up to a point". Mr. Rifkind is no doubt hoping to sell British weapons to the Arab Gulf States. Perhaps that is a way of assuring Iran that he will use whatever influence he has to prevent them from using their British-made weapons against Iran.
Nevertheless, Mr. Rifkind will know that, despite the Security Council Permanent Five—that is those with a veto in the Security Council—recently giving a public undertaking to exercise restraint in sending arms to the Middle East, President Bush has recently decided to sell a large number of military aircraft to Saudi Arabia. Why? It is apparently for electoral reasons; to give employment to his arms industry. Did Mr. Bush discuss that with this country because it is also a member of the UNSC "restraint group"? Probably not.
Mr. Bush has, after all, undertaken to make a balancing provision of presumably similar weapons to

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Israel, thereby giving yet more employment to his arms industry. If Israel is to be compensated because new weapons have been given to the Saudis, how can the same balance and compensation be denied to Iran? After all, this is an arms race. Well, Mr. Bush did not miss that point, so he ensured that China would meet Iran's balancing needs. He has—yet again in order to give employment to his arms industry at election time—decided to sell a very large number of military aircraft to Taiwan. That is in despite of a specific US undertaking to China not to provide Taiwan with offensive weapons, which these are. It is fairly obvious that that was not discussed with the five permanent members of the Security Council group either, since one of them is China against whom Taiwan wants to use the weapons which Washington is sending them. China has said that it will not abide by the five's intended restraint in those circumstances; that means, in particular, Chinese weapons for Iran. This morning we learnt that India is also selling arms to Iran—submarines. It seems that our Defence Secretary has much to complain about and that most of his complaints should be directed to Washington.
I began with those stories because control of the international arms trade is one of the tasks crying out loudest to the UN for attention. The present violent Middle East export drive now being so energetically conducted by the members of the Security Council endangers one of the operations which we are invited to consider in the Motion before us. It bears directly on Iraq and on actions or threatened actions by various members of the United Nations against Iraq.
One thing that still seems fairly likely is that Iraq will get no arms from the US. One can only say "fairly likely" because it is not long since Washington was bending its public policy and its own domestic law to arm Iran, the Nicaraguan Contras and Iraq itself, as we the British were also doing. No doubt if Iran responds, as it looks like responding, to the steady arming of its local opponents—the Saudis, the Israelis and the Gulf states—there will be another war. This time it could involve Israel's and Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
The present military actions in Iraq are not UN actions, and to bracket them, as the Government's Motion before us does, between the real UN actions in Yugoslavia and Somalia is, I fear, a fairly crude attempt to pull the wool over the public's eyes. The interdiction flights over Iraq and the on-and-off threats coming from Washington of a new air war, are not carried out by the UN but by certain members of it. They are not under UN command.
That must be bothering President Bush. Four days ago he told the United Nations General Assembly that he wished to place vast military resources belonging to the United Sates at the disposal of the UN. He said that he wanted to draw on the United States vast experience of, as he put it, winning wars to support UN peacekeeping. He proposed a more aggressive role for the security council to prevent nuclear and missile proliferation. He proposed also to abandon what he called hand-outs—that is, development aid—to developing countries in favour of policies to
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promote the private sector and free markets. That presages the end of development aid in favour of help to ideological missionaries. In the decade when the failure of Reaganism and Thatcherism in the United Sates and the United Kingdom has become so clear, that approach does not seem very interesting.
What are all those sayings of the President about? Is this mixed enlightenment and dogma timed for the election or does it represent a real growth and shift in understanding of the world and its future needs? To judge that we must look at what Mr. Bush proposes to do about the existing needs of the UN itself. Is he coming to the help of that extremely overstretched organisation on which the safety of the world depends? He is evidently not doing that. He has not mentioned the Secretary General's recent plea—and how many pleas have successive Secretary Generals not made about this?—to the major military powers of the world that they should provide the standing military forces to the UN which they undertook to provide half a century ago. Has the President at last paid in full the arrears of American subscriptions—now 757 million dollars—which the United States owes?
What has our own Foreign Secretary been saying? He has said things which are more credible and sensible than Mr. Bush from Washington. He was right to point out in and out of season that it is risky to deploy armed forces in war zones without an enemy, without even a defined purpose and without guaranteed funding. However, he was also right in my opinion to agree in the end to run that risk. It will be better if we burn our fingers in the attempt to awaken the west Balkan factions from their dream of open-ended slaughter than if we had never tried.
However, what was alarming was Mr. Hurd's use of the word "imperial". Before he went to New York, he said that he wanted the United Nations to assume imperial roles here and there in the world; and I think he did not repeat it in New York. That is not surprising, for what an ill chosen word it was. Empires were built by force of war, and mostly war against those who had done the imperial countries no harm. That is not what the United Nations is about. In fact, the present massacres in the west Balkans are still due to the breakdown of the prolonged communist dictatorship in Yugoslavia which was imposed on a new unit invented by the imperial powers of 1918 after the old imperial powers—Turkey and Austria—were defeated in the First World War. In the Balkans we now see a multiple legacy of empires.
The Security Council must now act under international law and not invent it as it goes along. Under pressure from the present United States administration and with, I deeply regret to say, the connivance of the British Government, that has not always been the case in the recent past. Let us by all means have a Security Council backed by permanent forces. I believe that this country should start a permanent token unit now and that should have started 30 years ago. Let us never depart an inch from the balanced composition of the Security Council. It must be truly representative of all the kinds of country that there are in the world from time to time and let

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us avoid imposing settlements which, after the most profound calculation of risk, seem to carry any risk of leading to new massacres in future years.
I conclude by wishing the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, a successful visit to Bosnia and Croatia in which she will he continuing her personal tradition of going and having a look from which the British Parliament has benefited greatly in recent years.
1.38 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, in her characteristically masterly opening speech the Minister has drawn attention to three countries in this debate which are geographically miles apart and which have very few common denominators but in each there is a tragic situation. I shall bypass Iraq as I have never been in the Middle East.
About Somalia I say only that anybody who has watched Robin Denselow's television accounts from Somalia will have been horrified by what they have seen. I believe that that is a masterpiece of understatement. I know that my noble friend has been there and has seen what is going on there.
Just what help we can give through the United Nations or any other body is difficult for somebody like myself who has never been to Africa to understand, except, one hopes, medical aid. What young and old people need in countries like Somalia is medical aid.
I turn now to Yugoslavia, which the vast majority of people recognised as a lovely country for holidays and tourism, with beautiful scenery and friendly people. Today it is a very different picture. I am sure that the average Yugoslav is still very friendly. If we each met a Yugoslav this afternoon we would probably find that, whether he is a Bosnian, a Serb, a Croat or of any other nationality. Therefore, it is very difficult for the uninitiated completely to understand what is happening.
In a very distinguished maiden speech the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, referred to the remarks of old soldiers and airmen. My national service was very much less distinguished than that of the noble Lord and of most Members of Your Lordships' House. At the end of the war I spent two years in Austria, which is not all that far from the Yugoslav border. At that time Austria was an occupied country controlled by the four powers. I believe I have it right in saying that there was in that country at the time the United Nations relief and rehabilitation agency.
At that time there was enormous poverty in that country. There were not the divisions which there are now in Yugoslavia. There was a very different set-up. One saw the very good work which the United Nations did in Austria and elsewhere in those days. The United Nations is now a much larger organisation made up of countries of all origins. It is now asked to do an extremely difficult job in a country which is not heavily populated but which has communities of different races and characters.
What can we really do? Mention has been made of sending land troops in particular to this country. Having seen the terrain of Yugoslavia on television the deployment of land forces is risky at the very best.
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The aid which we can give and which we are giving is medical aid. My noble friend the Minister gave some encouraging figures in her speech. I believe that our record in giving medical aid to many countries is an extremely good one, notably to Romania, which is a country that I have visited. We have also given medical aid to other countries which have been devastated by war or by other means.
Therefore I hope that through the United Nations we can continue to give what aid we can to Yugoslavia provided that we can get it through. That is the problem which from the television or the other media we know is the real one.
There is no quick solution for any of the three countries which are the subject of this debate. Many of us who are old enough to have lived through the last war know of the problems in Yugoslavia then. Perhaps we are not entirely surprised that problems have continued to arise. Despite the problems that it has, all we can hope is that the United Nations can continue to assist. Incidentally, mention has been made of the number of refugees which Austria has taken in. That is perfectly true. Austria is very much nearer to Yugoslavia than we are.
Our own record of taking refugees from countries such as Yugoslavia is by no means a bad one. But what has to be recognised here is what real help we can give to refugees who come here whether for a short or longer period of time. With those words I conclude in what is a very sombre debate as regards the solution which, with the best will in the world, is going to be very difficult to find.
1.46 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, this afternoon we are asked to take note of the British Government's support for the United Nations operations in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia. I find it curious that we are asked to take note of Britain's support for the UN only in what I would describe as certain politically sexy areas. What about Britain's support for the United Nations in other areas of the world? There is a very difficult United Nations operation going on in Kampuchea but we are not asked to consider that. We are asked only to consider those countries which appear on our television screens and are reported in our newspapers. That is a very significant factor.
We need to recognise that since the end of the cold war and with the breaking down of the Berlin Wall we are at the beginning of a new international order. That international order is characterised by increasing unemployment and escalating poverty in large parts of the world and not just within the areas which were formerly the planned economy countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain. These conditions also arise in countries in what I would describe as being on our side of the Iron Curtain.
This escalating unemployment and poverty causes the breakdown of civilised society. I mentioned yesterday the effects of unemployment on our own society in the United Kingdom. Today we have to look at the effects of those conditions around the world. As I have said, they cause the breakdown of civilised society, the escalation of anti-social and

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criminal behaviour and the emergence of violence. It starts with individual acts of violence, with individuals taking to the gun. We can see that taking place in the streets of our own country. In Manchester and Salford the incidence of guns being used by individuals or small gangs is rapidly escalating. From the use of guns by individuals they then go into the hands of gangs and ultimately we see the horrors of effective civil war.
We can see it in the former Soviet Union, in the Iraq-Kuwait conflict and in Eastern Europe. We can see the beginning of it in Germany with the horrific incidents involving the immigrants and the local communities. We also have our own experience of it. I point to the experience of Northern Ireland and to what happened in the early 1980s in Moss Side, Toxteth and Brixton and to more recent experiences in other areas of our society. These problems will not be resolved until people are taken back into employment and their living standards are seen to be rising.
As the so-called victors of the cold war, the United States, Germany, France, Japan, ourselves and the other western powers, have an awesome responsibility to shape a new international order which is a bit different from the one which seems to be emerging now and to ensure that, throughout the world, people are not subjected to mass unemployment and that all people can have a share in the increases in our standards of living.
I could talk for hours on the subject of how we might shape that new international order, on how it might evolve and develop, but the time and the place are not right for that debate. Therefore, I should like to talk about just one element in the conflicts that we are being asked to discuss this afternoon. I refer to the idea of disarming the combatants. One of the factors that is common about these three areas of conflict in different parts of the world is the use of military arms, and especially the use of imported arms. Yes, let us have an arms embargo, but let it not be one-sided. Let us recognise the difficulties that have arisen because of previous actions of governments on one or other side of the divide when they have armed their client factions in the different states. This is one of the causes of the difficulties in Somalia. Different factions in that country are being armed by different political external elements.
Let us look to the United Nations to be even-handed and not to take sides. I believe that it was the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, who pointed out that the United Nations has no mandate to interfere militarily in any of these areas because its charter effectively states that national boundaries are sacrosanct. In each of these areas, the United Nations has recognised the state's national boundaries but is talking about involving itself militarily. We need to recognise that there are two things to be learnt from this. One is that the whole structure of the United Nations need to change and evolve. There is a growing awareness that the United Nations needs to become much more "globalistic", if I can put it that way, rather than "nationistic". We need to look at the way
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in which the United Nations arrives at its decisions, how it involves the people of the world in arriving at those decisions and how it implements those decisions.
One of the difficulties with the subject that we are debating is that it relates to British support for the United Nations position in terms of particular areas of activity rather than to British support for the United Nations. In terms of the conflict in Iraq, I believe that it was the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, who pointed out that the military action that is taking place there at the moment with the no-fly zone is not a United Nations operation; it is an operation that is being conducted by the United States and its supporters.
It is very important that we should remember that when the Gulf War finished there was a general agreement that the international community should not pour more arms into that troubled area. There was effectively a tacit understanding and agreement that there should be an arms embargo for the Middle East, including Syria, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel. But what has happened since then? Both Britain and the United States have effectively broken that tacit international agreement. Britain has supplied tanks and Tornadoes. The United States is supplying war planes to Saudi Arabia and continuing to arm Israel. That can only mean trouble.
Finally, I should like to speak a little about Yugoslavia. I was amazed by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, when he suggested that Russia, Germany and France should be involved in sorting out the Yugoslav problem. I wondered whether he was calling for the German army to go back into Yugoslavia in the way that it did 40 years ago. While I would be appalled at that possibility, one of the interesting things to recognise, as the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, mentioned, is that if people are threatened they will stick together. I can think of no better unifying condition for Yugoslavia than for the German army to go back there and for there to be four or five years of utterly horrendous and bloody conflict and then, following that conflict,40 years of peace in a unitary state of Yugoslavia. I do not think that that is the way that we should go forward, and I was amazed that that seemed to be in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff.
We must think of positive ways in which we can influence the people of Yugoslavia to live at peace with one another. I was interested to hear the comments of, again, the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, when he asked about beaming the BBC World Service into not only Serbia but the whole of Yugoslavia to enable the people of Yugoslavia to know what is happening on a comparatively truthful basis rather than having to rely on the biased reporting of the different communities, with their different television stations, which is what they currently appear to be getting.
I return now to my original point; namely, that the reason for the existence of these conflicts is the breakdown of the old order that has caused mass unemployment and increased poverty. There is an imperative need for the new international order to find

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ways of resolving those problems of mass unemployment and alleviating poverty to ensure that people can live at peace with one another rather than fighting each other.
2 p.m.
Lord EnnaIs: My Lords, I should like first to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees and welcome him to the House. We have been colleagues for more than a quarter of a century. He talked about his experience in the Ministry of Defence as Army Minister. It is interesting to note that he followed me into that role and then followed me again when I took over responsibility for immigration and community relations at the Home Office. He has not followed me since; indeed, he has led me. Nevertheless, we have been colleagues over many years and in many situations. I welcome his speech. I was interested to hear my noble friend say that the British Army or the Armed Forces should now consider their training programme so that we may be better equipped and better trained to fulfil our peacekeeping and peace-maintaining role within the United Nations. I shall return to that aspect in a moment.
Secondly, in her absence, I should like to say some friendly words about the noble Baroness. I should point out that. I am not referring to the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, who is at present sitting on the Government Front Bench, although I would like to say some friendly words about her. I am referring to the Minister who is just returning to the Chamber. I admire the sympathetic approach that she adopts in all the debates in this House. I admire her commitment to the humanitarian causes about which she spoke today. I also admire her energy and diligence in travelling the world to find out the facts for herself. I believe that we are privileged to have such a Minister in this Chamber.
But, having said that with real sincerity, I cannot say that I share the Minister's view about most of her colleagues in the Government. We must recognise the fact that we are meeting here today only because of the events of last Wednesday, the days that preceded it and the following days. I entirely agree with the points made by most of my noble friends, and by my honourable friends in another place, about the economic situation. I welcomed what was said by my noble friend Lord Cledwyn when he opened yesterday's debate from this side of the House. He said:
"These are critical times for Europe; in Bosnia and neighbouring regions dreadful crimes are being committed; in Eastern Europe and Russia democracy itself is on trial, and stability is essential; in Somalia and other African countries millions are in the deadly grip of starvation. Those are huge problems".
He continued:
"It is time for inspired leadership to which people everywhere will respond".—[Official Report,24/9/92; col.421.]
I have to say that the kind of inspired leadership that we received from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer when tackling the currency problems was very poor. In fact, I feel very deeply that our commitment to Europe, to the ERM and to the whole future of Europe was betrayed in the
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actions that were taken last week and in the statements that have been made since then. I find that betrayal comparable in my mind—and I am looking back now through my own political history—to Munich. I also thought of the Suez crisis. They are both examples of absolute betrayal of principles previously stated.
Of course, yesterday's debate concentrated on the economic consequences and less on their impact on our wider role in the world. Britain is vigorously agonising over its need to preserve its role in the Security Council as a permanent member. I support that aim. I believe that Britain should continue to be at the heart of the UN as well as at the heart of Europe. However, I must say that we shall be much more likely to be judged by the way in which we behave in Europe, in the UN and in all our situations. I believe that one of my noble friends said that there had been a bit of selection as regards the issues that we were to note today. That is quite right because there are many situations in which I fear Britain is not setting a lead. I feel ashamed that, in relation to Europe, we so quickly cut and ran.
I should like to support the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Richard about the United Nations, especially about An Agenda for Peace which is the document published by Boutros Boutros-Ghali which deals in a very comprehensive way with the new challenges to the UN in the field of preventive diplomacy, of peacemaking, of peacekeeping, and of post-conflict peace building. In his report, Mr. Boutros-Ghali makes many interesting proposals.I shall mention just one at present. He draws attention to the fact that there are financial problems to he faced with peacekeeping. He says:
"For this reason, I strongly support the proposals in some Member States for their peace-keeping contributions to be financed from defence, rather than from foreign affairs budgets, and I recommend such action to others. I urge the General Assembly to encourage this approach".
I believe that that programme put forward by Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali is one that ought to be debated in this House—and, indeed, in another place—because it has so many positive proposals which I hope that we shall all support. I share the views of my noble friend on the Front Bench that the noble Baroness seemed a little lukewarm in what she had to say in that respect. However, having made such kindly comments about her, I hope that she will tell me that I am completely wrong.
As the noble Baroness realises, and as my noble friend Lord Richard said, there is a particular British interest in the matter. Mr. Boutros-Ghali was instructed to produce the report by the summit session of the UN Security Council over which the Prime Minister presided. So he has a sort of maternal or paternal interest, not only in his document but also in the proposals that it makes. I hope that we shall take a very positive position as indeed, in terms of words, did President Bush in his speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly. However, I should add that all of us should beware of promises made in the heat of election campaigns. I suppose that that also applies to election campaigns in most countries.
I turn now to the very disturbing and difficult situation in Bosnia and in the former Yugoslavia. I

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agree with almost all that has been said in the House today. I find it terrible and tragic. I have had a long link with Yugoslavia. One of my brothers was a liaison officer with the partisans under Tito during the war. At that time I inevitably followed very closely what was going on. I know that he would be as horrified as I am about these events, and particularly about the concept of ethnic cleansing.
The United Nations has imposed sanctions against Serbia, but I believe that there is much evidence that sanctions are being ignored by some countries: by Russia, the Ukraine and Romania. Russian and Ukrainian oil and petrochemicals are apparently still reaching Serbia. These countries are allies of the Serbian Government, fuelling fears that the conflict could escalate and involve neighbouring countries. The noble Lord, Lord Finsberg, rightly pointed out that there are dangers that this conflict could spread. Conflict in Kosovo between the Serbs and ethnic Albanians would almost certainly draw Albania into a war.
Macedonia is another area of tension. There is animosity between the Macedonian Government and Greece. Greece has prevented the EC from recognising Macedonia. There are fears that an independent Macedonia will lay claim to a Greek province of the same name. Macedonia was once part of Bulgaria, which also might be drawn into conflict on the side of Serbia. There are dangers for Hungary as well. We face there some severe problems.
I should like to touch on the refugee problem. At present more than 2,500,000 people have either fled from their homes or been forced from their homes. Many of them have left under extreme duress, as other speakers have said in the course of this debate. Both Serbs and Croats have been accused of using methods reminiscent of the Nazis to drive people from their homes. The whole concept of ethnic cleansing is one that must be disgusting to most of us. In some areas race regulations have been enacted whereby Moslems may not go out in the evening, or may be restricted from visiting certain areas. Other towns have tried to organise population transfers through advertisements and posters. We find all this quite appalling.
I wish that I could feel happier about the way in which our own Government have faced the real problems of the refugees. This was touched on again by my noble friend Lord Richard. About 1,700 people have applied for asylum. He drew attention to the fact that Britain recently deported 36 asylum seekers, claiming that they were travelling via safe third countries. I am deeply disturbed about this, at a time when Germany has accepted well over 200,000 and when Austria and other countries have opened their doors to the terrible problems faced by these people.
I understand what the Minister said. Of course it is better that they should be as near to home as they possibly can be, and you can say that about Germany. But we ought to join together within the European Community to see how we can best work together to solve these problems. We should allow all those escaping from former Yugoslavia at least to apply for
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political asylum. Visa restrictions and the use of safe third country criteria should not be used to prevent people applying for asylum.
Allowing nationals of former Yugoslavia to enter Britain does not mean concessions to ethnic cleansing policies. The Government should examine ways of sharing responsibility for refugees with other European countries, particularly in looking at the needs of refugees living in unsatisfactory transit camps in former Yugoslavia or in neighbouring countries. When we return, once again we shall have before us the Asylum Bill. It is unhelpful that we are being so negative in our approach to refugees leaving their country. I am not criticising much of the aid programme that has been offered.
I just want to say a brief word about Iraq, including the Kurds. I warmly welcome what the Government have done in relation to the exclusion zone in the south of Iraq, but I want particularly to express my concern about the future of the Kurds in northern Iraq. I recently received a deputation from those representing the Mosul Vilayet Council, the Kurdish tribal leaders, who, together with the political parties, are worried about their future, and particularly, as my noble friend said, about what may happen as winter approaches.
I hope that we can have some reassurances from the Government that our commitment to the Kurds will continue. There is a particular problem that we should look at. I have given my support to plans to exploit Kurdish oil for the benefit of the Kurdish people. At present this would be in conflict with United Nations resolutions, and it seems to me wrong that United Nations resolutions and their interpretation should act against the very people we seek to protect.
Finally, I turn to Somalia. I must be brief because time is short and the issues are profoundly important. We are not talking just about Somalia; we are talking about other parts of the Horn of Africa. We are talking about Ethiopia and the Sudan, which face grave problems because of internal dissent but also because of famine. In Southern Africa there has been the worst drought in living memory; it has devastated crops and affected a further 18 million people. As the Minister knows better than any of us, about 40 million people face grave problems in the future.
The Minister paid tribute to Oxfam and other voluntary organisations. I agree with her tribute to the role of voluntary organisations in bringing relief to starving people. We are talking about Africa at the moment. As she must know, deep concern is felt by those voluntary organisations about what will happen to the aid programme. According to reports, the United Kingdom is in danger of having its aid programme cut as part of the Government's attempts to control spending. I am sure the Minister would like to give some assurances; I hope she can say something about how she sees the aid programme, which is still only half our target of 0.7 per cent. of gross domestic product. No doubt she is aware of the threat that the aid programme will be cut.
As far as Europe is concerned, the Council of Ministers, with Britain as president, has proposed a cut of £195 million to the proposed 1993 EC budget

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for development and co-operation. That will obviously mean a lower amount than for 1992. At a time when demands are growing, it is absolutely vital that resources should be made more widely available. Although we may have forgotten it during our handling of the sterling crisis, Britain is in the presidential seat and must ensure that Europe, including Britain makes its contribution to the starving people of Africa, not only Somalia. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some assurances when she winds up the debate.
2.16 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I do not normally take part in debates of this nature in your Lordships' House. The only claim I can make is of being rapporteur of the CSCE committee of the North Atlantic Assembly. During the course of that work I have made visits to former Yugoslavia.
I was a little sorry that my noble friend Lord Finsberg expressed some disappointment at the role CSCE was taking in matters of this kind. Perhaps he will agree with me that as NATO refines its role in the changed climate since the collapse of the Eastern European regimes—the re-emergence of the WEU, the Council of Europe and the Community itself all having competing claims to roles in this area—it is perhaps not surprising that there are some conflicts of interest and that the CSCE has yet to put its mark on those events. I think that he would be working towards that end, as indeed l would.
When my noble friend the Minister opened the debate this afternoon she said that nationalism was rampant. Perhaps that is not surprising, in that if you live under an oppressive regime for 40 or 50 years and it collapses very suddenly a vacuum is created into which, I suggest, nationalism is swept. It is a substitute since there are no other institutions. In the wake of that nationalism there come the memories, some real and some imagined, of former glories to be reinstated. Obviously, that means that no cognisance is taken of the fact that the world has moved on in those 40 or 50 years. In some volatile areas such an attempt to relive the past will inevitably lead to conflict. I think that that is part of the problem we now see in former Yugoslavia.
When I was there late last year and early this year I was appalled at the lack of control over the regular and so-called irregular forces that the so-called leaders of the parliaments claimed. It was quite obvious that small groups were indulging in satisfying their own wishes. I am very much in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Richard, who said that Yugoslavia was a marriage of convenience and that the great powers just after the First World War who drew those artificial boundaries should take no credit for it. When one argues with Croatians and Serbs about the rightness of the decision at that time they go back another 50 years; and when one argues on that point they go back another 50 years and another 100 years. It is a nonsense for Serbia to claim that where a Serb lives that is Serbia. It is equally wrong that Serbia should claim land annexed through fighting. One hopes that
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when some solution is found—what will be the catalyst, I do not know—there will not be another arbitrary drawing of geographical boundaries.
I am particularly concerned this afternoon to draw attention to the position in Kosovo, which we visited earlier this year. Other noble Lords have mentioned it, notably my noble friends Lord Lauderdale and Lord Finsberg. Around 80 per cent. of the people of Kosovo are Albanians, and I was appalled to find that they are subjected to active as well as passive brutality, such as the denial of education for their children, the denial of employment opportunities and the denial of hospital facilities, through the over-policing, military presence and rule of the Serbians. That seems to me to be wrong.
At that time we talked with the principal Albanian leaders, including Mr. Ibrahim Rugova. At that time they declared that they were still in agreement to take part in a renovated Yugoslavia on two conditions: first, that they be considered a nation as opposed to a minority, since they form over 80 per cent. of the population; secondly, that direct Serbian rule over the province of Kosovo, which was imposed by Mr. Milosevic in 1990, be abolished.
Concerning their relationships with Albania itself, Mr. Rugova told us that he would be happy with transparent borders. But since that time the view has changed, probably due to a combination of three factors. First, Serbian rule was tightened. Many of us have seen at first hand evidence of that; it has been portrayed through the media in recent weeks. Secondly, Mr. Rugova's position is probably considerably stronger. He is regarded fairly widely as a moderate and cool-headed leader but he now speaks of inevitable conflict. Then one has to consider Albania's position should they support Kosovo; that is certainly a complicated issue.
Behind the official rhetoric of brotherhood in President Berisha's speeches are the realities. I suggest that the first reality is that Albania simply would not have the means to face a Serbian armed force in any kind of conflict. Secondly, Albania's own preoccupation at present is mainly with the economics of the country. Thirdly—this may seem a little abstract—there is what might be called a "complex of inferiority" of Albanians towards Kosovars, because Albania was isolated for a long time while those in Kosovo did business in Yugoslavia and with Europe and (certainly before Milosevic) they had opportunities to travel and study abroad. There is no clear official support from President Berisha for Kosovo's independence. Tirana's line is that the Kosovars should choose their own way and exercise self-determination. The President added clearly that Albania does not have any intention to change the borders in the area.tt
Bearing those matters in mind, any conflict in Kosovo would almost certainly involve Albania in one way or another. There may be arms smuggling and mercenaries. There would also be a massive refugee problem and an influx into Albania. The latest news from Belgrade that has arrived from my informants in

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the past few days indicates that some of those who support Mr. Milosevic would like to expel at least half of the Kosovar population to Albania.
If one adds the question of Macedonia and its 20 per cent. of Albanians, Turkish support for the Moslem brothers in Kosovo and Greek/Albanian tensions, one has a recipe for yet another bloody disaster.
It is difficult to know what can be done. One can only commend the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and Mr. Cyrus Vance, in the wake of my noble friend Lord Carrington's sterling work over the past 12 months. I should like to reassure the Minister that most noble Lords support what the British Government are doing in support of the efforts of the United Nations and other bodies in that unhappy part of the world.
I conclude on a personal note. I wish my noble friend the Minister good fortune in her tireless travels, endeavouring to bring help and succour to people across the world.
2.27 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I should like to join noble Lords who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, upon his maiden speech. The congratulations are not merely perfunctory and formal: it was a jolly good speech. That is not always the case when one hears those words spoken in public, but on this occasion it is stated with genuine feeling. When we say that we wish to hear a lot more of him, on this occasion we mean it.
I should like to mention Yugoslavia my knowledge of that country is not as recent of that of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I take leave to doubt whether peace-making is a role which can be performed by any military organisation, in contrast to peace-keeping. If the coolness that some noble Lords may have detected on the part of the noble Baroness was due to the fact that she doubted whether the move of the United Nations from peace-keeping into what may be seen as the more positive role of peace-making is fraught with difficulty and danger, and even whether it should be embarked upon at all, then she was entitled to be cool. She says not. In that case I wish that it was. It might have been coolness on account of some reason that I would find less reputable.
Yesterday we discussed the consequences of the breakdown of a mistaken drive for unity by the governments of a group of sovereign nations. That is the link between the debates of yesterday and today. The degree of unity envisaged by Maastricht is total, as was honestly admitted in another place yesterday by one of the chief advocates of Maastricht, Sir Edward Heath. As he agreed, it is a drive towards the establishment of a united states of Europe. Europe is not North America. It does not consist of states but of established nations with their own history, language and culture.
The reason why the peoples of Europe are rebelling against their governments and the reason why our Government dare not test opinion by referendum is that Maastricht has revealed that what was sold to
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people as a Common Market is much more than that. It is an attempt, seen by its supporters as a very worthy attempt, to diminish the sovereignty of nations and substitute for it subservience to a continental power over whose actions the electorate of each nation would have little or no control. As Conor Cruise O'Brien pointed out percipiently on Channel 4 the other day, there is a great deal of difference between nations and states.
I shall return to the subject of Yugoslavia in a moment, but before I do so perhaps I may say that the United States of America exists because its components are no more than states. The attempt to force Britain to become Arkansas or to persuade France to dwindle into Louisiana is doomed to failure. I shall support Tony Benn's petition for a referendum and help it in any way that I can. I hope that it will be successful and that we shall abandon the meretricious glamour of a non-existent community which exists in the minds of politicians but not in the hearts of people. Europe must return to the common sense of the European Free Trade Association—vox populi, vox dei.
Today we are invited to discuss, among other things, the sad state of Yugoslavia which may be regarded as a failed attempt to form a nation out of a federation of nationalities. As a matter of the head, Yugoslavia had much to commend it, but when the strong central control was removed the heart, which can be malign, reasserted its sway. That is what is happening through that country of many nations.
As has been suggested in the debate, the action of Germany in recognising the break-up of Yugoslavia before it had taken place or immediately that it showed signs of taking place was to say the least unfortunate. The dissolution of a federation once formed is a delicate and dangerous business. That is another reason why we should not form a federation of Europe.
As regards the Serbs, Germany is the enemy. History makes that inevitable and it was short-sighted of the present leadership of Germany not to understand that. Fortunately, this is understood by many Germans today. Here again, there is a gap between the enthusiasm of politicians and the awakening of people to a conviction that they are being led too quickly, too far and perhaps in the wrong direction. Serbia feels itself to be unfairly, wrongly and unreasonably treated by the United Nations.
When we investigate the efficacy of sanctions now being placed upon that country we might examine the purposes of those sanctions. According to my information, they are effective. I have some contacts in Yugoslavia. One hears of people in Belgrade who have to queue up for four days to get a tank or even just a few litres of petrol. Shortages of supplies are being found in many areas such as schools, children's hospitals and so on. So they are beginning to be effective and therefore in examining how to make them even more effective we might begin to ask ourselves what they are for and whether they are working.

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I am not at all sure that the control of Belgrade of the forces in different parts of Yugoslavia is as strong as has been suggested. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, also suggested that there is a great deal of independent spite going on, as is not unusual in civil wars, particularly in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
I was once in the rather pleasant town of Sarajevo having a very interesting time there during the period immediately following the world war. That was a time of hope because the various nations of Yugoslavia seemed to be living together under what was certainly a very heavy government, but nonetheless they appeared to be living in peace with one another. It is a tragedy that sometimes if one takes the lid off a box one exposes not what one necessarily hopes to see but rather what one dreads to see, and I think that that has happened in this case.
As I said, Serbia feels itself to be wrongly and unreasonably treated. I would ask the noble Baroness whether we ought not to ask ourselves to what extent sanctions imposed on Serbia can effectively control what takes place in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I rather think that the degree to which that can be effectively done is exaggerated.
What is taking place in Yugoslavia today, and particularly in Bosnia, with appalling results, is a civil war. Alas, it is the case that civil war is invariably atrocious. That is so on both sides, in Bosnia and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia. One has great fears that we may not have seen the end of it. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has made clear, an alarming situation is beginning to develop in Kosovo. Already in Bosnia enough crimes have been committed on both sides and I share the feeling that we ought to do something urgently to bring this terrible business to an end. What we must be careful of is that we do not become involved in the terrible business ourselves; that is the danger. I think the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, also envisaged that possibility.
The West is seen as aiding the Moslems. Serbia is undoubtedly aiding the Serbs; but it is a mistake to suppose that Belgrade is in full charge of the forces in Bosnia or that sanctions placed on the latter country can favourably influence what happens in other parts of Yugoslavia. On the contrary, an excellent broadcast by the BBC File on Four from Belgrade last Tuesday evening suggested that the effect of sanctions has been to make the Serbs feel that they are being unreasonably penalised by former friends for something which is outside their control and which was anyway inflicted upon them by our former mutual enemies. I hope that that broadcast is being studied in the Foreign Office.
2.39 p.m.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I do not intend to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, save to say that the model of the European Community that he put up and then knocked down is so totally dissimilar from anything that believers in the European ideal have in their minds that it is not really worthy of comment. I wondered whether, later in his speech, he was calling for the reinstitution of Marshal Tito, and
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precisely what steps he would intend to take to put an end to ethnic cleansing, which certainly has had the support of people in Belgrade.
This has been an interesting debate. I think that the Minister—who is always welcome in this House when she returns from her hectic and tiring journeys—was a little unfairly treated both by my noble friend Lord Mayhew and by the noble Lord leading for the Labour Party; but she is robust enough to stand up to that. Nevertheless, her remarks have opened up an interesting area which has been widely discussed throughout the afternoon—that is, the question of how far the United Nations should be prepared to intervene in a changed situation in the new world.
My attention was drawn to a speech in your Lordships' House on 16th October last year in the defence debate which touched on that subject all that time ago. The speaker said:
"The world has changed. The nature of war has undoubtedly changed, but human nature has not".—[Official Report,16/10/91; col.1126.1
He then went on to say:
"What the police force is on the national scene, the Armed Forces are on the international scene. There is as yet no world army so our own Armed Forces have to perform that role … The United Nations is built on the sovereignty of the individual state … But the human individual also has a sovereignty, and that sovereignty needs to be respected. If it is grossly violated in a nation either through the regime's active fault or because it cannot be bothered, then the United Nations should have the authority and the teeth to go in and do something".
That was a speech by the late lamented noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cheshire. I thought that this would be an appropriate time for us to recall that gallant and remarkable man who has sadly passed from this Chamber and from this life.
I have some qualms about the way in which intervention by the United Nations should take place. I shall come to that in detail later; but I think we agree in principle on these Benches that the United Nations has to be able to intervene to support human rights and the freedom of individuals. It is not a new proposition from the party of which I am a member. Indeed, I shall quote from another speech of some time ago:
"If a country has a tyrannical Government and you substitute for it a free Government, you make what I think a very great improvement. This is not a matter only of opinion to be bandied this way or that. I bring it to the test of history. Look abroad over the face of the world, and you will find that few are the nations which have, in recent times at least, established their own liberties without foreign aid. Liberty was established for Spain by England in the Peninsular War. The same was done for Belgium by France and England in 1830. The liberties of Greece and Italy were established by the aid of Foreign arms; in the case of Italy by the arms, first of France and then of Germany … The liberties of the United States themselves were only established, at the date when their emancipation took effect, by the powerful aid they received from foreign arms".
That was a speech on intervention in a debate on the Balkans by Mr. Gladstone in May 1877. Plus ca change … But things do change. We have different circumstances existing today in the three places about which we have been talking.
I do not want to dwell too much on Yugoslavia and Bosnia because my noble friend Lord Mayhew has already dealt with that, but I want to reinforce what he said about Lord Carrington. It is widely felt on all

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sides of the House that he did a good job in extremely difficult circumstances. It may or may not be a comfort to him to know that at our party conference last week a resolution was passed including commendation of the job that he had done. It may come as a slightly greater surprise that the noble Lord's successors were also commended by our party conference. Having had certain negotiating experience with the noble Lord, Lord Owen, nevertheless I hasten to add that he has our very good wishes on this occasion for a successful outcome of his activities.
The United Nations operation is not without its critics in Yugoslavia, as we have heard. There have been problems of lack of co-ordination, which have been mentioned this afternoon. On the other hand, the United Nations has done some things which were absolutely right. It was quite right not to collaborate in the mass deportation of the 30,000 Moslems and Croats in August when the Serbs tried to force the United Nations to do that. We should welcome the United Kingdom's contribution to the UNHCR, WHO and UNICEF. However, I am told that the cost of the necessary winterisation programme is of the order of 7 billion—that is,7,000 million—US dollars. Here the United Nations has to take firm action and take it quickly.
The question of Kosovo is already on the table in your Lordships' House. There is a serious danger of violence spreading. There were reports on Wednesday of Serbs preventing Albanians entering schools in Kosovo. It is not the first time that that has happened, but the action is being reimposed. The dangers of Greece, Bulgaria and other nations becoming involved as a result of the situation in Kosovo is extremely serious, as has already been mentioned.
I spoke to a friend who recently returned from Albania. What he said confirms what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said. The economic situation there is so bad, and getting worse, that people who come from Kosovo are regarded as being extremely well off. How long that will continue one shudders to think.
I turn now to Iraq. In putting my remarks together, I have had considerable assistance from various NGOs which meet through my chairmanship of the Middle East Committee of the Refugee Council. A different situation exists there. I believe that we all agree that the intervention in the form of the No-fly zone is necessary. However, one has to recognise that there is a cost to that as well. The cost has been the refusal of the Iraqi Government to sign the memorandum of understanding. The answer to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, is that the memorandum of understanding has not been signed. Therefore the United Nations personnel operating in the south of Iraq and from Baghdad into the Kurdish area in the north are not having their visas renewed. I understand that the number of United Nations guards in the south has now dwindled to 150, and they cannot he replaced as they come to the end of their tour of duty. Therefore we and the Kurds and Shias in the south are paying a price as a result of the protection which is undoubtedly being afforded by the exclusion zone.
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In northern Iraq the situation is becoming increasingly difficult. The Kurdish National Assembly and the administration which was elected earlier this year have been somewhat undermined by the lack of international recognition and also by a lack of income. The Kurds were collecting customs dues at the border with Turkey and using that to sustain the administration, but that operation was interrupted in June and July by the fighting which broke out between the Turkish Government and the PKK (the Turkish workers' party) on the Turkish side of the border.
Crisis is looming again with the onset of winter. The harvest this year in that part of Kurdistan was down by 200,000 tonnes. The lack of fuel is making the distribution of food and medical supplies extremely difficult. There is a great need for food, medical supplies and shelter for the coming winter. However, here again there is a snag because it is felt by the NGOs that too much food, dumped randomly in that part of the country, could quite easily lead to failure to plant seeds for the crops for the coming year. There is a need for seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and fuel for tractors and for distribution. It is important that in the medium term we restore the agriculture of that area; it can be a fertile part of the world.
The plans must involve both the international and local NGOs—they have a great deal of local knowledge—and the local Kurdish administration. Unfortunately, the expatriate staff are not likely to be as effective as they were last year as a result of security problems. They are under a severe threat every day of their lives. Again, one must give credit to them not only for the work that they are doing but for the risks to their lives that they are undertaking.
Perhaps I may turn to Somalia, which in human terms is the worst of the problems with which we have been dealing today. I disagree slightly with my noble friend because I believe that we must not forget that we have a special responsibility for Somalia. I shall quote from a fax which I received yesterday from my right honourable friend Sir David Steel. He is in southern Kenya visiting refugee camps. He stated:
"One man, pathetically but proudly, showed me his British passport issued in 1957 from the Somali protectorate".
We have therefore a special responsibility as a result. In a slightly twisted but real way so do the Italians. As we have heard approximately 1.5 million Somalis are in immediate danger of starvation, and about 25 per cent. of the children under the age of five are already dead. The situation is said to be worse than that which existed in Ethiopia in 1984– 85. United Nations activity in the area has been patchy indeed. Nicholas Hinton, the director of Save the Children Fund, has called the United Nations involvement "a shambles". After the cease-fire of March 1992 a United Nations draft resolution referred to a monitoring mechanism being set in place to guarantee the stability of the cease-fire. That would have allowed aid to proceed effectively. Had the opportunity been taken, it may well have been that the problems caused by the drought could well have been overcome. Unfortunately, at that stage the United States insisted on the omission of that provision from the resolution on grounds of cost.

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However, the NGOs have been extremely impressed by the new humanitarian affairs ambasiador, Mohammed Sahnoun. My right honourable friend Sir David Steel wrote in his fax that he found the UN HCR to be very impressive on the ground. The death toll before June was too large to count but approximately 60 people died each week in a camp in northern Kenya. During that current week the number was down to 10. There is still a long way to go but there are signs of real improvement. My right honourable friend inspected good food supplies and stated that a new corrugated iron hospital is opening this month to replace the tents. At least some progress is being recorded.
Unfortunately, there appears to have been a certain insensitivity on the part of some of the UN officials in relation to the NGOs. Following Resolution 767, a technical team went to Mogadishu. Its members met the NGOs soon after arrival and had a good informal and frank discussion. It was agreed that until then the United Nations relief effort had been marked by a lack of personnel and resources. Most of the criticism could be justified. The people who gave me the information say that the method of operation was somewhat strange. They moved around in a hired Hercules C 130 and spent only the shortest time in each place. In fact the NGOs wondered whether the report had been written before they arrived.
Before flying back to Nairobi the team met the NGOs again but from the NGOs' point of view that was a waste of time. The team gave no information about their intentions despite the fact that their findings and recommendations would affect not only the programmes of the NGOs but also their safety. Therefore, I fear that there has been a lack of communication between some of the United Nations people and the NGOs. Of course, NGOs have a lot of expertise on the ground as regards how to handle detailed situations and problems, but they do not have the infrastructure which only the United Nations can provide.
As regards troops in Somalia, there seem to be two divergent views. The Government and the United Nations have now reached the position in which they wish to send in more troops. The NGOs largely seem to be opposed to that because they do not believe that you can put in sufficient troops to do the job properly. It is possible to put troops into Mogadishu in order to protect the storage areas there but it is not possible to have a convoy for every single truckload of food which is going to every distant part of the country. Even when the food is delivered into the villages, the chances are that it can be looted.
Again, Nicholas Hinton has said publicly that the only way is to flood the country with food; to put in so much food that it no longer becomes a bargaining counter for the wild men who exist there so that the value of the food on the market is depressed. For example, it is suggested that in January of this year some of the shelling which took place was organised by businessmen who did not wish to see the price of food depreciate. I have no means of proving whether or not that is the case, but it is firmly believed by many of the people working on the ground there.
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I understand how difficult it is for governments to convince taxpayers that they should put forward money so that vast amounts of food can be put into a country in the certain knowledge that looters will take the first share of it. But in the long run, that may be cheaper and wiser than trying to send in large numbers of troops who will not succeed in doing the job for which they have been sent. I am agnostic on this point, and I look forward with interest to hearing what the Minister has to say.
As regards the future, the lessons are that the United Nations needs to get on to the scene quickly and needs to be properly funded. The richer part of the world must recognise that prevarication is much more costly in the long run and that the people who suffer as a result of the United Nations not having the equipment, training or people on the ground early enough is the cause of many of the problems which we face today.
I hope that the reports to which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, referred about reductions of funding that we are prepared to put forward for overseas aid in this country are wrong. I hope also that the proposals to reduce the European Community aid budget by £200 million are wrong. I fear that in the present climate those of us who believe in foreign aid, as the Minister does, may have a fight on our hands to preserve even the present situation, let alone improve it for the future.
2.58 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am privileged in a number of ways to be taking part in this debate: first, of course, because I am the first from this Dispatch Box to congratulate my noble friend Lord Merlyn-Rees on his excellent maiden speech. Quite properly, in his speech he drew on his military and ministerial experience but it transcended that. When my noble friend tells the House that we must not be sucked into a civil Balkan war, he says so with a transparent authority which is of enormous benefit to the House. We are extremely pleased to have him with us. I suspect that the Government Benches will be less pleased by his interventions in the future.
I am also privileged to be able to greet my professional colleague the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker of Wallasey. When she joined the House she increased the number of professional market researchers in the Chamber from one to two. It is a pleasure, but not just for that reason, to have her with us. It is a privilege for the House to have someone with her authority dealing with this subject from the Government Front Bench. It is not just that she has established herself over a period of six years in that post, but because of her transparent energy and dedication to overseas development. That is evidenced by the amount of travel that she undertakes in the most difficult areas of the world and also by the fact that from time to time she is able as she was today, to announce additional government funding for overseas development. Whether that is sufficient and meets our obligations is a matter to which I shall be obliged to return.

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I am also privileged because it is the first opportunity which I have had to speak in a debate on foreign affairs from this Front Bench. That is partly because my noble friend Lord Judd is in Southern Africa on humanitarian aid business. It is also because, sadly, my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs is in hospital, although all her many loving friends in this House will he happy at her marriage last Saturday to Kevin O'Sullivan.
I do not believe that it will be possible for me to attempt to sum up the debate that has taken place today. Perhaps I may take two or three of what seem to be the repeated and significant strands in each of the three areas which we have been debating and then try to draw some common threads and conclusions from them.
First, a general concern was expressed from all sides in this House about the adequacy of the involvement of the European Community in Yugoslavia. I do not believe that we need to go quite as far as the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, who said that we should forget about Brussels. We have heard of the difficulties which exist in getting together the countries of the European Community. We have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Finsberg and Lord Lucas of the potentiality for rivalry between the Western European Union, the CSCE, the North Atlantic Alliance and all the other regional bodies. That potentiality for rivalry is very great. It does not appear that those bodies have been anything like as successful as we would have wished.
Secondly, well-documented concern has been expressed about the ability of any of us to enforce sanctions in the former Yugoslavia my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney doubts whether that would be desirable even if they were to be effective. I believe the general view was that sanctions, particularly those relating to the arms trade, could only be to the benefit of that unhappy part of Europe. We have not yet found the solution to that problem.
The noble Lord, Lord Beloff, asked a very pertinent question as to why there has been a three-week gap in the airlift to Sarajevo. I believe that to be a particular issue which deserves a specific answer from the Minister when she replies. In general, there was no flash of inspiration from any speaker as to the solution for the former Yugoslavia. It appears to be a very long haul not only to solve the deadly conflict but, in the longer term, to deal with the problems of refugees, rehabilitation and reconstruction. There are also the problems which will arise if the break up of the former Yugoslavia is to continue. They will include sharing the foreign debts and dividing up the assets of the different parts of Yugoslavia. That is not a very happy prospect.
As regards Iraq there were many well informed speeches which concentrated in particular on the adequacy of the preparations for winter. Clearly, there will be a considerable degree of suffering in both the north and the south of Iraq.
My noble friend Lord Kennet, who probably knows more about the arms trade than anyone else in this House, made excellent points about the mixed
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motives of so many in the Government in terms of restraining the arms trade. He made a particular point about the inadequacy of the restraint shown by the United States Government over its arms trade with the Middle East as a whole.
I turn to Somalia which is perhaps less important to us in terms of our direct involvement, but which is enormously more important in terms of the misery and horror which the Minister has experienced personally and which we know only at second-hand. The point has been well made by a number of your Lordships that the tragedy in Somalia is only a small part of the tragedy in the Horn of Africa as a whole where 23 million people are at risk of starvation, and of the tragedy in Africa as a whole, and especially in Southern Africa, where the droughts have been so disastrous and where perhaps 40 million people are at grave risk of starvation. Here again, other than in terms of the rather limited involvement which is possible for this country on its own, the news is not good.
I seek to consider the common threads that underlie the situation and the problems of these three countries. Obviously, we on these Benches wish to add our tributes to those which have been paid to the work of the non-governmental organisations in all of these countries. In the absence of and given the delays in providing official relief, the work of the non-governmental organisations, which can get there quickly and provide effective relief on the ground before anybody else, is absolutely invaluable.
The second general thread is the whole issue of the arms trade, to which I have referred. Behind this lies the capability of those who wish to wage war in these areas to do so using weapons which are sold to them by this country, and by other countries in Europe and the developed world. Our participation in this arms trade was revealed clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, when he appositely quoted the words of Alan Clark, which revealed the mixed motives within the Government as between the Department of Trade and Industry on the one hand and those who wish to preserve peace, which I assume to be the role of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, on the other hand. That lesson needs to be taken very much to heart. We must simply not allow one part of our Government to deplore the arms trade when we are allowing other parts of our Government to encourage it and to encourage British people to make money from it. Again, the words of my noble friend Lord Kennet were entirely apposite in that respect.
Although the problems in Bosnia, Iraq and Somalia are of only a few years' duration—we have had many valuable historical insights into all three—they are nevertheless long-term problems. We must bear in mind the responsibility of this country, the European Community and the United Nations and consider the resources that we are prepared to give in order to solve them. Every pronouncement of the Minister—including her speech today—is welcome, but it is a fact—is it not?—that we are well below the 0.7 per cent. of GNP which is the target for the aid to be given to developing areas. Our lack of success in achieving that target has been more serious during the

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period that the Minister has been in charge of these matters. We support her and admire her, but we wish that she had greater influence on government policy. We wish her success in the current public expenditure round not only in maintaining but also in increasing the expenditure which, from the speeches of all noble Lords, is clearly necessary in developing countries.
Then, again, as regards the European Community, it is not just a question of the immediate effectiveness of negotiations in London, Geneva or anywhere else. The fact is that, under the UK presidency, the proposed budget for development and co-operation of the European Community for 1993 is lower than that for 1992. That reduction includes humanitarian aid. If I am wrong about that, I shall be glad to be corrected. I recognise that they are only proposals which could yet be changed. But I suggest that in its presidency the UK has a specific responsibility in that respect.
But, above all, as the most reverend Primate reminded us, what we come back to is the importance of the role of the United Nations and its future role. I was very much impressed by an interview given earlier this week by Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary General, in which he referred to the threat of Balkanisation, of the break up of the existing nation states of the world, and the danger that that would present not only for world peace but also for individual liberties and, indeed, for human survival.
There are already 179 nations in the United Nations. Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali raised the prospect that there might be as many as 400 economically crippled mini-states, unless the rights of minorities moved to the top of the international agenda. He gave us a worst-case example of the situation in Africa where there are already 50 states and where there is a possibility at the extreme of 5,000 tribal states—that is, tribal mini-states—each with perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 people. He suggested that that is not a stable situation.
In this matter I am afraid that I disagree with my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney who draws the conclusion that we should not be seeking closer co-operation in European economic union. I suggest to him, and to anyone who does not draw that conclusion from the debate that took place in the House yesterday, that our nation states as they are at present are not in a state of equilibrium. They will not necessarily survive in their present form. The threats are that the existing nation states of Europe and other parts of the world will actually break up into small units. Therefore, the importance of co-operation and of joint action will be greater rather than less.
It is a curiosity—is it not'?—that George Orwell's prediction 40 years ago in his book 1984 was that there would be three great superpowers which would combine or split in mutual antagonism as the leaders of those superpowers of Eurasia and Oceania (and whatever the third one was) felt fit. That has not happened. We are seeing the reverse; we are seeing a threat to existing nation states of which the leading example is the original example in the Balkans.
When my noble friend in his excellent opening speech raised the possibility that the Government were being cool about their support for the United Nations
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in these matters, I sensed some disagreement on the Government Benches. I sensed that they felt that any accusation of coldness towards the United Nations and to United Nations' intervention was unjust. Well, I took the trouble of recording what the Minister said, and no doubt her script will confirm it. She said that,
"We risk loading the UN with too heavy a burden".
If there is to be any solution to these desperate problems, we must not reduce the burdens on the United Nations but increase the resources of the United Nations to deal with them.
3.15 p.m.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to seek leave to reply to as many of the points raised by noble Lords as possible. I first give the apologies of the Leader of the House, the Lord Privy Seal, who could not he here for the wind-up speeches. We have had a thoughtful, interesting and, I think, helpful debate in many ways. Many noble Lords have made extremely kind remarks, including the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. When there are two market researchers in the House I hope that we shall base more of our debates on the facts, because once or twice today I have to say that the facts were missing. I am not criticising the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, but I am just making a point.
I turn now to a speech which was not only factual but helpful, thoughtful and a great contribution to our debate, and that was the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees. I shall not add to what others have already said, but there are many good things one can say about the noble Lord and on another occasion I might be tempted to go a little further.
I want to concentrate in this reply on the United Nations, about which I was accused of being cool, and Yugoslavia. But before I come to that, let me express my gratitude to the most reverend Primate for coming to my defence against the noble Lord, Lord Richard. Certainly I listened carefully to the history lesson of the noble Lord and to his comments that I had nothing to say about the future. Let me put that right, if that is what he really thought.
The United Nations is in a time of great transition. For all the institutions this is a time of far greater activity than at any time previously in its history, but I regard it as a time of opportunity too. I know that I said that we risk loading the United Nations with too heavy a burden. We must think about what we are putting on the shoulders of the United Nations. That is why I put it in those terms. The Secretary-General's Agenda for Peace is extremely welcome, and my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary welcomed it not only for the United Kingdom but in part for the presidency of the European Community.
It was just the sort of paper we were looking for when it was commissioned by that Security Council summit chaired by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in January. The Foreign Secretary's speech to the General Assembly earlier this week offered a particular welcome to the ideas on preventive diplomacy and on peace-keeping. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, was concerned about this

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too, but I hope that once the general debate in the General Assembly is over we shall be able to press ahead with the detailed examination of the report's proposals in the relevant United Nations bodies. If your Lordships wish it, I shall be happy to engage in discussing it in your Lordships' House.
What my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary warned of in his speech to the General Assembly was this overburdening. The reason he did that is that our commitment is to reform to a more efficient and dynamic United Nations. Our commitment to that is undiminished, and all the ideas we have fed in in different ways are consistent with that. We shall work with the Secretary-General and others to give further substance to that commitment.
It is also welcome that the Secretary-General has had a shake-up at senior levels in the secretariat. More steps may need to be taken to give the United Nations the modern management structures that it needs to cope with all the demands we place upon it. We should also like to see a revived General Assembly, more action-oriented and able to respond to the demands, and less rhetorical, if I may put it that way. It is what this Parliament wants, and I know that it is what the people want.
We welcome the idea commented upon by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, of a United Nations standing force and anything else that increases the ability of the United Nations to respond to threats to international peace and security of this nature. I am not sure whether it would be right to put specific units on permanent standby since the circumstances and requirements of crises differ greatly—even the three crises we have been concentrating upon today.
I believe that there is much to be done and much to be achieved, but if I say again to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, that I regard it as a time of opportunity perhaps he will think I am a little warmer now than he thought I was at the beginning of the debate. I am the same person with the same views but just expressed in different words.
I should like to pick up something which the noble Lords, Lord McIntosh, said. I too saw the Oxfam advertisements and their figures. I have to tell the noble Lord that I do not recognise them. I can only assume that they are based upon quite a selective use of figures. As a statistician as well as a market researcher, I have a little to say on this matter.
Perhaps I may tell your Lordships that we have an agreed commitment for development assistance under the 1992 budget. At the beginning of the year it was just over 1.8 becu. The equivalent figure for 1993 is yet to be finalised, but the sum under discussion is about 1.9 becu representing an increase of over 5 per cent.
Since the 1992 figure was agreed commitments have been substantially increased to fund a special food aid programme focused particularly on Africa and humanitarian assistance to Yugoslavia. At this stage it is impossible to say what additional sum will be needed in 1993. Whilst food aid and emergency assistance are funded from the EC budget, development assistance for Africa is funded by the European Development Fund under the Lome Convention.
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That is set in five-year periods. We would expect to spend more in Africa under the EDF in 1993 than in 1992 and for expenditure to continue rising for the foreseeable future because of the incredible needs of that continent.
I turn briefly to Somalia. As many of your Lordships know, the United Nations Security Council has called upon all the Somali factions to observe the cease fire and co-operate with the Secretary-General's special representative to restore legitimate authority in that country. I fear it is a long way off. Although Ambassador Sahnoun has done very well since he arrived in April, he has responsibility not just for humanitarian affairs but for the political progress which needs to be made. There has been negotiation of a local cease fire in Mogadishu, yet regrettably there are few signs that the major Somali political figures are prepared to resolve their differences around the conference table rather than at the point of a gun. We welcome the United Nations strategy of building up locally from the political and economic situation on the ground.
There has been some criticism and I understand frustration of the UN forces in Somalia. Having discussed that in some detail on Monday of last week with Ambassador Sahnoun, perhaps I may just explain briefly. He is taking the forces into Mogadishu and Somalia as quickly as they can be accommodated, but each group to be deployed has to be negotiated with the people on the ground. The number one priority with regard to the 500 Pakistani troops, all of whom will have arrived by the end of today and will be deployed next week, is their gradual negotiated deployment to the port and airport so that they may be the central points from which food will feed out, but the corridors to all areas, particularly the terrible Hoddur-Berdera-Baidoa triangle, have to be negotiated successively with several groups. That is a very intensive job which must be done properly; otherwise, food will be wasted. Whatever representatives of the NGOs may say, I do not believe that with the loss of crops all over Africa we can afford to waste food. It would be a waste of money and would give false indications for the future.
I turn to Iraq. We are determined to keep up the pressure on Iraq to implement all the relevant UN resolutions. The flagrant defiance of the United Nations' authority by Iraq requires us to continue our action and from time to time—it may be through new Security Council resolutions—to top that up. The no-fly zone seems to be successful at the moment. But let me assure the House that that was there to monitor Iraq's compliance with Security Council Resolution 688 and to deter attacks on the civilian population. There is a fully justified case for it in international law in the case of severe humanitarian need. That certainly exists both in the north and the south.
I can reassure those noble Lords who asked the question that we have no intention—nor do I believe that any of the other allies have the intention—to put in ground troops. We have no hidden agenda. We do not seek to dismember Iraq. We seek to alleviate the situation of the people in Iraq who are being so desperately oppressed.

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I shall make one further comment on the Memorandum of Understanding. There has been continual refusal until now but negotiations are taking place in the UN at this very time about whether we shall get an extension of that MoU. If there is no extension of that Understanding we shall need to find another way, maybe through cross-border action, of putting the help into Iraq, into the north and indeed, I hope, the south. The UN representative's report is being studied and recommendations will go to the UN next week to make sure that the "winterisation" can be put into action as quickly as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, asked me about plans to exploit Kurdish oil. We are trying to respond as helpfully as possible to the requests from the Kurdish people within the terms of the Security Council resolutions. I have met the Iraqi national council members. We are seeking to work toward helping them restore their lives. We shall see whether or not that is possible. For the present I shall say no more.
There is much that one can say on Yugoslavia. I certainly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Richard, who described it as a cauldron. It is an immensely difficult situation there. The noble Lord referred to the news today that Mr. Tudjman and Mr. Izetbegovic have formed some defence pact. I would regard that as very serious indeed, certainly if there are plans for the further use of force, such as those by Mr. Karadzic of which we have read in the newspapers. I hope that they will desist immediately from all provocative military movements. We have made it quite clear, as have other members of the United Nations, that further violence will increasingly alienate any foreign sympathy which they still enjoy.
But neither of those threats affect the validity of the London Conference undertakings. It is not possible to solve Bosnia's problems by ignoring the views of any of the ethnic communities. We need to have them talking in Geneva. I am glad to say that at the moment there is no indication that the parties do not intend to continue talking.
Let me turn now to some of the other aspects of the situation in Yugoslavia my noble friend Lord Lauderdale asked me a direct question about influencing people in the former Yugoslavia. The BBC services in both Serb and Croat have been increased from 6i hours to 10 hours each week. I know that my noble friend will not consider that to be long enough but it is at least a considerable improvement. There is also a Slovenian service, and an Albanian service will be started quite soon.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, is there any chance of that situation being further extended because it is terribly important?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I hear what my noble friend says and I shall make the point to the Foreign Secretary.
It is important that we are absolutely clear about the work that is being done by various different groups in Yugoslavia. It is quite clear that the Bosnian Serbs, encouraged by the Serbian leadership in Belgrade, precipitated the conflict. That is why we in the
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international community have condemned the Bosnian Serb air attacks, the existence of the detention camps and the abhorrent policy of ethnic cleansing.
The Bosnian Moslems and the Croats must also bear a measure of responsibility for the tragedy in Bosnia. All three parties have had detention camps and have carried out forcible expulsions. Moreover, UNPROFOR has held the Bosnian presidency and predominantly Moslem forces responsible for the recent deaths of the two French soldiers and so many ordinary Bosnian people.
We have always deplored disregard for humanitarian principles, whoever is responsible for it. That is why we are looking for every way to make sure that Security Council Resolutions 764 and 711 are applied. We remind the parties at every turn that persons who commit or order the commission of grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Convention are individually responsible. We are taking careful note of what is being done.
A great deal more work than has hit the newspapers in recent weeks has been carried out by a number of the groups mentioned in the debate.I should like to say that the special rapporteur for UNHCR, the distinguished former Polish Prime Minister, Mr. Mazowiecki, has written an excellent report about human rights abuses. The CSCE mission, led by Sir John Thompson, has been very helpful not only in highlighting the appalling conditions but in giving the information that is needed to stop human rights abuses and in seeking to follow up those abuses. The London Conference agreed that the humanitarian issues demanded the unconditional and unilateral release, under international supervision, of all civilians currently detained. The work is being carried through notably by the ICRC but also with the backing of those people in CSCE who have sought to find out the facts of the situation, which are so terrible.
The noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, asked about access to camps. The International Committee of the Red Cross has access to 21 camps. Croatia has recently agreed to establish reception centres for the detainees from Bosnia while the UNHCR seeks to close down the Trnopolje and Manjaca camps. We have not yet made definite progress but a great deal of work is being carried out on that account.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, I also asked whether we have control or supervision of the Serbian artillery.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I was coming to that point a little later on, if my noble friend would allow me.
The important aspect of the situation among the various groups that are trying to help is that there is rarely a consistent response. I am not surprised that my noble friend Lord Finsberg has been frustrated in that some of the ideas that he and fellow parliamentarians have put forward through the WEU Assembly or the Council of Europe have not been followed through.
It is quite clear that ideas have come in from many different areas. Sometimes they have been torpedoed on the ground before they got any distance, but I

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disagree with my noble friend on one point. I understood him to say that the failure to accept the ideas that came from the WEU Assembly and the Council of Europe parliamentarians meant that the governments were irresponsible. I can assure him that no European government, no government that is involved in trying to find a way to achieve peace in Bosnia, is in any sense ignoring the recommendations that come forward. It is a question of sorting out what can be done. It is the limits of possibility that count in this very difficult time.
I should tell the House that just a week ago the CSCE meeting in Prague made progress on the missions of long duration launched with an advance party to try to establish first presences in Vojvodina and Sandzak and, as my noble friend Lord Lucas will be glad to know, in Kosovo too. CSCE is also working on sanctions monitoring, a subject to which I shall return in a moment. It has a monitoring mission to Skopje. I have already mentioned its Thomson Report.
I now turn to the subject of Kosovo and Albania mentioned by my noble friend Lord Lucas. Certainly, the Government agree about the seriousness of the situation and particularly the grave risk of tension erupting into armed conflict, bringing in neighbouring countries especially Albania. That is why there is a special Kosovo working group in the international conference to bring together the Serbs and the Kosovars to seek to find a political settlement. That will certainly be helped by the CSCE long-term monitoring mission encouraging dialogue and trying to ensure the observance of human rights.
Perhaps I may now respond to the sanction points raised by my noble friend Lord Beloff, by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and many other noble Lords. Certainly we began with one level of sanctions. We have always believed that sanctions would need to be built up, and over the past three months Britain has been in the lead in building up the effectiveness of sanctions. British customs officers went out to examine and recommend many weeks ago. We now have acceptance from the Romanian Government that they can and will stop traffic on the Danube. The customs assistants whom they will use will come from countries with experience of controlling river traffic, particularly Germany and France. The British Customs officers who are going out now will go to Hungary to help that country deal with its land border. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, asked me about figures for imports and exports in the area. I shall write to him about that. I cannot answer that detailed question at this time.
My noble friends Lord Lauderdale and Lord Beloff and the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, referred to arms. One of the problems with the Serb heavy weapons is that they were grouped at UN supervised sites around Sarajevo. We are well aware that insufficient progress has been made on this so far. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, and Mr. Cyrus Vance have made this a high priority in their work.
I was asked by my noble friend Lord Beloff and by other noble Lords about the cessation of the airlift and
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the fact that it has not run for three weeks. The airlift to Sarajevo could not run because the Italian airliner was shot down and there are continual threats from hand-held systems, not from other aircraft. The Italian plane was certainly shot down by a hand-held missile launcher. Who held it is not yet clear, but that is certainly true. In this situation, therefore, I cannot see that a no-fly zone would reduce the risk to our aircraft trying to deliver humanitarian goods because there are far too many armaments on the ground. The noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, suggested in his interesting speech that we might use AWACs and E3 aircraft for tracing the transfer of arms into Bosnia. We do not believe that those arms are being transferred by air. We would know about it if they were. We believe that they are being transferred in other ways and plans are afoot to try to stop that.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Baroness knows that AWACs and the E3 aircraft are capable of detecting movement by ground and by all forms of transport, not only in the air.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I am aware of that. The circumstances, which I shall not describe in detail if the noble Lord will forgive me, indicate that we may have other ways of finding out how the various armaments are getting in. However, I remind your Lordships that there was a great deal of weaponry stored away in the hills long before this conflict ever came into being. That has been the practice, as the noble Lord, Lord Merlyn-Rees, said, certainly for 50 years and possibly for hundreds of years in the Balkans.
The humanitarian convoys do need protection. We are absolutely certain that troops should not be dragged into a fighting situation. I know that my noble friend Lord Cranbrooke totally agrees with me. Where we deploy the British units has not yet been decided. The United Kingdom force will include in the first six months the 1st Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment, some of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, the 9th and 12th Lancers, the 35th Engineer Regiment and the 10th Regiment of the Royal Corps of Transport, together with the 3rd Ordnance Battalion. How we deploy them is something that we must agree between ourselves and the other contributors to UNPROFOR and the UNPROFOR command and control. Certainly we know that French and Canadians have been asked to deploy near their current operations, which are in the United Nations protection areas, but the reconnaissance party which is now in Bosnia, led by a British officer, will decide upon that, together with the chiefs of staff. Certainly he will act as Chief of Staff in overall UNPROFOR command. We expect the British troops to be doing a useful job within 40 days, as a minimum. I suspect that in fact it will be very much sooner.
I have been asked about rules of engagement. They must be got right before our forces go in, and of course that is happening. The United Nations rules of engagement, as the Secretary General said, will allow troops to return fire in self-defence, and in the UNPROFOR context self-defence is deemed to

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include situations in which armed personnel attempt by force to prevent United Nations troops from carrying out their mandate.
There are many other aspects of the work that we must do in Yugoslavia, together with our allies under United Nations leadership. We will do it in a way which I hope will not be provocative. I have to say to my noble friend Lord Finsberg that we consider the French small helicopter unit is both very vulnerable and also may well he very provocative in certain areas in which it might otherwise have been able to fly. After all, I think we all know that helicopters are very vulnerable to shrapnel, let alone to mortars. Certainly we have to make sure that in any situation where a convoy is being escorted by UNPROFOR troops they are able to defend themselves and are as protected as possible.
Many other aspects of the situation in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Somalia, or in even wider areas of the world
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referred to by your Lordships, I know are of grave concern to us all. Our strategy is to increase the pressure on all parties to talk, to come to the conference table and not to fight.
We wish the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and Mr. Vance every success in their Yugoslav efforts. We wish the United Nations special representative in Somalia, Ambassador Sahnoun, every success in what he is doing there. We also wish every success to members of the United Nations who are active in so many other places, whether in Yugoslavia or in Iraq. We certainly intend to back them to the full. But we intend also to be realistic and to make sure that the new opportunities for the United Nations in the 1990s and beyond the year 2000 are fully realised.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at sixteen minutes before four o'clock, until Monday 19th October.

  COUNTY HALL
  COUNTY HALL