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Rural Transport
Mr. David Prior accordingly presented a Bill to make provision for rural transport partnership schemes, administered and operated by voluntary groups, parish and town councils, to supplement bus services in rural areas: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 23 July, and to be printed [Bill 103].
Kosovo
[Relevant documents: Third Report from the International Development Committee, Session 1998-99, on Kosovo: The Humanitarian Crisis (HC 422) and Minutes of Evidence taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee on 28 April 1999 (HC 188-iii).]
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Jane Kennedy.]
Madam Speaker:
We now come to the Adjournment motion on Kosovo. I have to inform the House that I have imposed a 10-minute limit on all Back-Bench speeches.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Robin Cook):
I begin with a personal reflection on the evil that we are fighting in Kosovo.
Hon. Members who were present at the close of Question Time will recall the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Clark) referring to the death of Mr. Agani. I knew Mr. Agani well and I had met him on many occasions during the Rambouillet peace talks and before. I had a private dinner with him in Skopje in the spring, when he praised the steps that we were taking to force the Serbs to negotiations.
From the start of the Serb offensive in Kosovo, Fehmi Agani knew that the Serbs were looking for him. He spent the time since then in hiding, moving--always in disguise--from house to house. About two weeks ago he heard that the Serbs were clearing his neighbourhood of Pristina as part of the new wave of expulsions to Macedonia. He thought that that would provide his opportunity to escape from the country. He boarded the train in disguise in the thick of the crowd of deportees.
Unfortunately, perhaps because of a tip-off, the train was halted 20 miles south of Pristina and turned back. It was searched, and Fehmi Agani was found and forcibly removed. When his wife came to the police station in Pristina to ask after her husband, she was beaten by the police. Two days later, she was asked to come back to the police station to collect his corpse. The right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea is correct at least in that the Serb police told Fehmi Agani's wife that he had been shot by the KLA, presumably while in police custody. A more plausible explanation is that he was shot 48 hours after his arrest by the Serbs--just long enough to get the instructions from Belgrade and act on them.
Mr. Alan Clark (Kensington and Chelsea):
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. As the record will show, it was Mr. Berisha, a highly respected senior Albanian politician, who attributed the murder of Mr. Agani to the KLA.
Mr. Cook:
Yes, and Mr. Berisha was echoing what has been put out by the Serb propaganda machine. Mr. Agani was an entirely different politician and an entirely different quality of man from Mr. Berisha. He was a gentle, elderly man. He was not a threat to anyone. Throughout his political life, he had urged the path of non-violent protest. His death has a much bigger impact on those of us who knew him, but his murder carries a
When we enter Kosovo, we will take with us the investigators of the International War Crimes Tribunal as a vital element of the international presence. There cannot be security and peace for those who have survived the terror, unless there is justice for those who have been killed in it. Already, Britain is doing more than any other single nation to help the International War Crimes Tribunal. We are sharing with it all our information on war crimes, including reports from intelligence sources, and our defence personnel in Macedonia are helping to record the evidence from refugees.
We are also ready to help the International War Crimes Tribunal on the ground in Kosovo when the time comes. There will be an immense job to be done in examining the many sites of suspected massacres.
I can announce to the House today that the Foreign Office and the Home Office have agreed that we will provide from the British police force a scene of crime team to work alongside the tribunal. They will be forensic experts with experience and expertise in exhuming bodies, gathering evidence about cause of death and looking for evidence of sexual assault before death. We will put their forensic skills and technology to the service of the war crimes tribunal in preparing the evidence to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough):
Will the Foreign Secretary give way?
Mr. Cook:
I will, on this occasion, but a lot of ground has to be covered and I am conscious of the fact that, as Madam Speaker said, many people hope to speak.
Mr. Leigh:
Will all that happen? The Foreign Secretary said, "when we enter Kosovo," but will bombing alone do the trick? Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with what the German Chancellor said in Bari today:
Mr. Cook:
Just before I came into the Chamber, I heard that such remarks had been attributed to Chancellor Schroder, but I am bound to say that I know by now not to respond to something that has been reported in the press without checking what was said in the original. Many of the remarks that have been attributed to me over the past few days confirm me in that view. Yes, I am confident that our air campaign is making a serious impact on the forces in Kosovo. If the hon. Gentleman will be patient, he will hear exactly what I have to say on that point.
Whatever view hon. Members take of the current conflict, I am confident that they will all, including the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), want to see war criminals brought to justice, and we will secure the entry of the tribunal and the return of the refugees under our protection only if we maintain and intensify the military pressure on President Milosevic.
For a year before the present military campaign, we tried every approach short of military force to persuade Milosevic to stop the repression in Kosovo. Indeed, the
frequent complaint of the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) until we commenced military action was that we had not done it sooner.
I have read some recent articles complaining that the Rambouillet peace accords were too harsh on Belgrade and that it was unreasonable to expect the Serbs to agree to them. Looking back on Rambouillet in the light of the bloodshed that the Serb forces have visited on Kosovo, I am amazed at the moderation of the Rambouillet proposals, and that we were ever able to persuade the Kosovo Albanians to sign up to a package that required them to give up their demand for immediate independence and accept the continuing presence of a large Serb force.
Mr. Frank Cook (Stockton, North):
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the situation at Rambouillet immediately before the 10-day adjournment was such that the Serbs were all but signed up to the proposals--apart from the nature of the military force for monitoring the agreement--and that their whole attitude had changed when they returned? Is that correct or not?
Mr. Cook:
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to say that the Serb side indicated broad consent to the political accords at Rambouillet. The Serbs returned to Paris with a long list of changes that they wanted made to those very same peace accords. I also have to report to the House that the leader of Serb delegation said to me that it wanted a break in the negotiations in order to sell the agreement to its people. It used the interval not to do that, but to denounce the agreement and take a more hardline position than it had at Rambouillet. There is no doubt that the Serb side refused to make peace through negotiation, and even the Russian negotiator was blunt in putting the blame on the Serb side.
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate):
Will the Foreign Secretary give way?
Mr. Cook:
I will, but I must make progress.
Mr. Blunt:
There was a story--emanating from Germany, I believe--that the military annexe to the Rambouillet agreement contained clauses that would have allowed NATO forces to go all over Serbia and to do virtually anything that they desired to do. Can the Foreign Secretary tell the House whether those reports are correct?
Mr. Cook:
I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that the reports are wrong. All that was included in that text was the standard status of forces agreement, which used identical language to the status of forces agreement that the previous Government, with his advice, agreed for the forces in Bosnia. I tell the House that not a single complaint was raised by the Serb side at Rambouillet about that annexe. Complaints have been raised only since then.
Mrs. Alice Mahon (Halifax):
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
3.56 pm
"Germany believes that sending in ground troops is unthinkable. This is our position and it won't change in the future."
Does he agree with that point of view?
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