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Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham): Things have moved on since 1984.
Mr. Maples: Perhaps that is so, but I want the Foreign Secretary to explain, because the argument for the right of intervention in Kosovo stood on two planks: Serbia's breach of three United Nations Security Council resolutions, which somehow internationalised the conflict and legitimised NATO's actions; and the various treaties
on human rights. The mention of human rights in the United Nations charter somehow superseded the charter's other provision, which states that the only legitimate uses of force are self defence and pursuance of a UNSC resolution.
There is an attempt in the United Nations to develop the right of intervention as a doctrine. That requires legal principles, and we want to know what they are. In the international community, there is a clear division of views: Britain, the United States and Germany want to be able to act without United Nations authorisation; France believes that United Nations authorisation is necessary; and other countries, led by Russia and China, claim that no such right exists. The Foreign Office must take a view. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) said that events had moved on since 1984, which is true, but the Foreign Office has not presented another view on the international legality of intervention since then. I invite the Foreign Secretary to present such a view and to publish the basis on which we believe such intervention to be legal. Our attitude to events in Kosovo, East Timor and Chechnya has been radically different and, despite all the moral rhetoric about crusades, the Government are adopting a rather practical policy in those matters. We cannot intervene in lots of places--it is simply impractical or too dangerous--and I believe that foreign policy should be based on British interests, not moral crusades.
Of course, British interests involve a strong preference for democracy and human rights, but we also have an interest in stability and a peaceful world, which relies on relationships with other powers. We need to ask ourselves some hard questions about the moral doctrine and the legality of intervention if it is to be a feature of NATO policy in future. I am not saying that it should not be a feature--I wholly approve of what NATO did in Kosovo--but we need to understand rather better the moral doctrine and, more particularly, what international legal view the Foreign Office takes.
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington):
I wholeheartedly support the hon. Gentleman's proposition. In all the international disputes with which we have been involved over the past 20 years, there have always been rows in the House of Commons about the legal justification, both before and during those disputes. It would be helpful if we could have those matters updated, because many of us have a great interest in them.
Mr. Maples:
I welcome support from any quarter; perhaps the Foreign Secretary will listen to his hon. Friend if he will not listen to me. We need to be slightly clearer about the basis on which the House is invited to authorise military action and to be sure that it is legal. I understand that international law is an organic matter that moves on with circumstances and practice, but we need a slightly better basis than we have at the moment, particularly as the only outstanding document from a British Government--admittedly a previous Government--denies the legal right of such intervention.
That leads me to the Government's so-called ethical foreign policy, which the Foreign Secretary launched in one of his first acts, as though ethics was something new
and people such as Geoffrey Howe, Douglas Hurd and Malcolm Rifkind had been unethical and had pursued unethical policies.
Mr. Maples:
I do not think that Lord Archer was ever Foreign Secretary, or likely to be.
Ethics has always been part of foreign policy, both in its conduct and its objectives, but the Foreign Secretary made it the main objective. By doing so, he has opened himself to charges of hypocrisy and foolishness. His pretentiousness knew no bounds, and he even made a video about it to complement his speech. I refer him back to that speech, because it illustrates some of the points that I am making. He listed a series of human rights that he said were important--not all of them, because he said there were too many to do that--and then, rather pompously and with no apologies to Thomas Jefferson, he said:
The Foreign Secretary then listed certain commitments on behalf of the Government, and I should like to remind him of some of them. He said:
The Foreign Secretary said that at meetings
Mr. MacShane:
The Foreign Secretary met him.
Mr. Maples:
The Foreign Secretary met him eventually, but he refused to meet Wei Jingsheng--who
This is what I wanted to say to the Foreign Secretary. Nowhere in politics is policy more driven by facts outside one's control than in foreign policy, and it is those facts that have exposed the hollowness of the Foreign Secretary's pretentious position on human rights. In Kosovo, in East Timor, in Chechnya, we have seen columns of refugees, we have seen provinces seeking autonomy or independence from effectively imperial masters, and we have seen brutal repression; but our responses to all those have been very different. In Kosovo, we rightly launched a moral crusade. In East Timor, we did a little. In Chechnya, until this week, we have done absolutely nothing. We waited for someone else to take the lead on East Timor, and until last week we had nothing to say about Chechnya.
I told the Foreign Secretary that I would return to the subject of Cuba. In his party conference speech, he contradicted himself in the space of half a page. Cuba is, of course, one of the left-wing dictatorships for which the Foreign Secretary has a predilection. He said, "Britain has held talks"--[Interruption.] I bet the right hon. Gentleman had posters of Che Guevara on his walls when he was a student. [Interruption.] This Foreign Secretary, who spent much of his speech lecturing us on Britain's place in the world, is the Foreign Secretary who used to be a campaigning member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, who begged Labour conferences to pass motions on nuclear disarmament, and who was a tacit friend of the Soviet Union during the cold war. No doubt he was what one of his childhood heroes would have described as a useful idiot.
Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maples:
Not yet; not to the hon. Gentleman, anyway.
In his party conference speech, the Foreign Secretary said:
"We hold these rights to be self-evident",
as though he had coined the phrase himself and it had not been said 225 years earlier by somebody else.
"Britain will support measures within the international community to express our condemnation of those regimes who grotesquely violate human rights".
Not, apparently, including China. He went on:
"Britain will fully support sanctions applied by the international community."
Not, apparently, including sanctions on Cuba. He added:
"At multinational conferences, such as the annual meeting of the Commission on Human Rights, Britain will"--
[Interruption.] I am coming to Cuba. I have something to say about the right hon. Gentleman's views about Cuba, because he has contradicted himself about it. [Interruption.] No, there are United States sanctions on Cuba. [Hon. Members: "Ah!"] Let us come to the next charge.
"of the Commission on Human Rights, Britain will support measures and resolutions which criticise abuses of human rights".
Under his stewardship, Britain, for the first time, failed to sponsor the United Nations resolution on human rights criticising China. He went on:
"Britain will support the proposal for a permanent International Criminal Court."
However, as we have heard again today, not yet. [Interruption.] It is more than a year since we signed the treaty--a whole parliamentary Session has gone by and now, apparently, most of another is to go by. He said:
"Britain will give stronger support to media under threat from authoritarian regimes."
That, apparently, did not extend to him meeting Wei Jingsheng, China's most famous human rights activist, at that gentleman's first request.
"I made it clear we want to see better human rights"--
[Interruption.] Hon. Members should listen. The speech contains a direct contradiction within the space of a few lines. The Foreign Secretary said:
"I made it clear we want to see better human rights in Cuba. But we have a better chance of getting them, not by blockading Cuba but by making the world open to Cuba."
Four paragraphs later, referring to Burma, the right hon. Gentleman said:
"It is because of their behaviour that this Government has stopped all support for trade with Burma and discouraged any tourism to Burma."
22 Nov 1999 : Column 376
There is no consistency there. If we are in favour of trade sanctions to stop human rights abuses, surely that applies to both countries--but it seems that we have a soft spot for left-wing dictatorships.
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