| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Hogg: No, it is not nonsense. Withdrawing the monitors and embarking on an air campaign gave Mr. Milosevic cover to commit crimes that I am by no means persuaded he would otherwise have committed.
I share the view of many hon. Members that this war has been badly managed. I am no military man, but I was in the Foreign Office for five years and I have a certain experience of what happened in Bosnia. We did not have enough air assets in place when the war started. We renounced the ground option so that Mr. Milosevic knew full well that he had only to weather the air campaign to survive. By faulty targeting, we have killed many hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of non-combatants--civilians in Serbia and in Kosovo.
It is also wholly plain that we failed either to predict, or fully to provide for, the mass emigration of refugees that has been the appalling consequence of the action in Kosovo. We should have foreseen and guarded against that.
Moreover, our strategic interests are now being gravely impaired and we face serious challenges to our long-term interests. In respect of our strategic interests, we have greatly damaged our relations with the Russians and the Chinese. For the Chinese, the bombing of the embassy was a deplorable act of incompetence; for the Russians, once again, as we have done far too often, we have been unduly insensitive to their views and their requirements.
I say this, too; we are placing a very great strain on Anglo-American relations. The posturing of the Prime Minister is damaging to those relations. He goes to Washington, and elsewhere; he gives briefings through No. 10. The broad message is this: the British want to deploy ground forces, but the faint-hearts in Washington will not permit it. We must not be surprised if people in Washington deplore that message, and remark on the mismatch between the extravagant rhetoric of the Prime Minister and the much more substantial contribution that, in reality, the Americans are making.
I am bound to say that I think the prognosis is bleak. We are told that we can win if we intensify the campaign--so we will intensify the campaign, and as a result many civilians will be killed and the infrastructure of Kosovo and Serbia will be laid waste. I am bound to say that I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews): this raises serious questions of morality and proportionality on which I do not think that we have focused sufficiently so far.
If the air campaign does succeed, and if Milosevic yields, we shall face pretty onerous consequences. No one really disputes the fact that we will have to deploy tens of thousands of troops in the region for many years, and to spend billions of dollars putting right what we have done. If the air campaign does not succeed--if it does not cause Mr. Milosevic to yield--we will face the unpalatable choice outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis): either we enter into an undesirable compromise and agreement, or we deploy ground forces. Those are the only two realistic options, and they are urgent.
Let us be clear about one thing: the consequences were always predictable. They stem from two fatal mistakes--the decision to go to war in the first place, which I believe to have been wrong, and the failure of the strategy. If force is to be used, that force must be overwhelming in impact and nature. We should have done what we did in the Gulf: we should have mustered tens of thousands of ground troops before we embarked on an air campaign. That would have enabled us, had we so determined, to take and hold territory. We failed to do that; we embarked on a war unthinking, and now we are where we are.
Mr. Frank Cook (Stockton, North):
I am delegated by the House to serve on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I am Vice-President of the Assembly, and Vice-Chairman of its Defence and Security Committee.
I could take issue with two thirds of what has been said by two thirds of speakers today but, given that I have only 10 minutes, I want to make some more sensible points.
We are in a mess, and one that will not be solved by the shadow Foreign Secretary's getting his lines mixed up as he has over the past few months. He confirmed today that he had criticised the Government for not carrying out the threats that were made last year; in fact, he took great glee in confirming it. He did not, of course, remind the House that those threats were not exactly withdrawn, but were left in abeyance because of United Nations Security Council resolution 1199, which required Milosevic to desist immediately and withdraw his troops--a resolution to which Milosevic agreed. Had we not withdrawn the threat, and gone to war in any event, we would have been damned anyway. That is typical of the opposition that is being launched here by some Conservative elements; yet, in his opening speech, the same shadow Foreign Secretary protested that he fully supported the policy. If that is the kind of support that he gives, I do not want to find myself in a lifeboat with him.
A mess like this is hardly helped by the remarks of armchair soldiers, a phrase that has been used in earlier debates on this subject. I remind the House that we all sit here as armchair soldiers--that is why we are paid, why we must consider these matters and why we must express our opinions candidly and forthrightly, as I hope that I am doing now. Nor is the mess helped by the fact that we have rapid reaction forces. Today's display certainly demonstrates that we do not have rapid reaction politicians: so many rationales have been advanced in favour of no action that I feel ashamed of the standard of some of the debate.
Questions of legality have been raised by, for instance, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews). In terms of morality, I am convinced that we are doing the right thing; as for legality, I merely ask my hon. and learned Friend to consider the genocide convention. The United Nations charter was endorsed in 1948, and the genocide convention was adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly in 1951. Does the fact that the convention is not part of the charter mean that the UN can ignore it? Does the convention not become part of its remit? Anyone who tries to convince me that what Mr. Milosevic is trying to achieve in Kosovo bears no relation to genocide will have a serious argument on his hands.
The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) referred to proportionality.
Mr. Cook:
I have already referred to morality myself.
The Yugoslavian Government claim that 1,200 lives have been lost through NATO air strikes. I think we can safely assume that they would not underestimate the figure. That is 1,200 lives lost in 12,000 sorties. Some of my colleagues have accused NATO of bombing civilians deliberately. I must say that if NATO can kill only 1,200 people in 12,000 sorties, that does not say much for its strike capability if it is acting deliberately. The suggestion is farcical.
The House should also compare the loss of 1,200 lives--assuming that 1,200 people were killed--with the many tens of thousands who have been displaced, the many tens of thousands who have been raped and the many tens of thousands who have been assassinated, not by accident but, as it were, by deliberate accident. People have been sought out, hounded, pursued, persecuted and eventually killed; so do not give me any arguments about proportionality--those arguments are absolutely false.
Let me briefly tell the House about a Greek diplomat whom I met at the NATO summit. We met at a function. He followed me around like a gun dog, nagging me about the wrongness of NATO's action. He pursued me for 20 minutes, finally commenting that what was wrong was that Albright and Holbrooke--it sounded like a firm of solicitors--had run out of ideas. Because they had no ideas left, they had embarked on the bombing. I said, "Oh, is that what you think?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Excellency, you may be right; but if ideas are so plentiful, give me one." You would have thought that I had kicked him in the most tender part of his anatomy. He said, "What?" I said, "Give me one. If they are so plentiful, give me an alternative." He could not, but I said, "There was an alternative, Excellency." "What was that?" he asked. I said, "The alternative was to allow Milosevic to go on doing what he had been doing for the previous 18 months, and indeed for the previous 10 years." I have visited Bosnia six times, and I have seen the results of Milosevic's action--along with the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who is nodding now.
My son received a commendation for his conduct in Gorazde, from where, using a satellite telephone, he called me on my car telephone as I was driving into the House. Of course, I was overjoyed and surprised. I said, "What is it like son?" He said, "Pop, it's a real shit hole. We are here as a peace force, but everyone is shooting at us and we are not permitted to return fire." Is that the sort of role that we are going to give our ground forces if we send them in? Not in my book.
We have talked about putting troops in. I should like to put forward an alternative. We have an agreement in Bosnia: it is called the Dayton agreement. It has several elements: a military element, a civilian element and a restitution element. The military element was concluded on time--which was very good--thanks to the fact that the Americans finally came in. Before that, it was a hotch-potch of nations, principally ourselves, the French and the Spanish, with a lot of others, including Maoris. The Americans came in, we had Dayton, and we got the military element. We are finally near to achieving the civilian element. The thing that we have not done is reinstate the refugees in their places of origin.
At a conference in Washington that I addressed and that was run by the Institute of Foreign Policy Analysis, I discussed that matter with Richard Perle. If we insist now that we return the refugees from Bosnia to their places of residence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, it emphasises the fact that we believe in applying the agreements that have been reached. It says to Mr. Milosevic, "You were a signatory to the agreement. Get it done brother."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |