RT HON DAVID MILIBAND, MP, PAUL BERMAN, SHAN MORGAN AND MARTIN SHEARMAN

12 DECEMBER 2007

  Q600  Chairman: Perhaps we could have a note on that to clarify whether there is a difference of meaning, and we can then pursue a correspondence on that.

  David Miliband: That is exactly the issue that we discussed at the beginning of the session.

  Q601  Chairman: If there is a vote, is it possible for you to come back for a further 15 minutes, which would give us an opportunity to ask you about Kosovo?

  David Miliband: I absolutely have to be gone at 4.45 pm, otherwise I will be late for my next meeting.

  Q602  Mr Purchase: At the moment, we have experience of joint control and operations in military matters through NATO and other co-operations, which have not always been desperately successfully because of problems of leadership and so on. In the future, do you think that matters would be made easier if we had moved more towards a Common Foreign and Security Policy in the leadership of any armed intervention or action that we may need to take?

  David Miliband: I do not think so. The system that works is that on ESDP missions, there is a nation in the lead and it provides the infrastructure. When I was at the NATO meeting last week this issue came up in discussion. There has been no suggestion that that national leadership and national provision of an infrastructure, into which other nations can plug, is a problem.

  The issue in Afghanistan is not an ESDP problem. There is a different issue in Afghanistan in that there are 38 countries there, some European and some not. They need better international co-ordination. Double or triple-hatting is being discussed for NATO, the EU and the UN. I do not think that a common European infrastructure is necessary for that. The European problem is not an institutional one, it is to do with capabilities and co-ordination—perhaps partnership would be a better word.

  Mr Purchase: In Europe—

  Chairman: Ladies and Gentlemen, we will take 15 minutes for one Division—hopefully there will be only one.

  Q603  Chairman: Thank you for coming back, Foreign Secretary. I know that you are very pressed. We will ask mainly about Kosovo. Before we do so, there has been a story today about the situation with regard to the British Council in Russia, which we commented on when we published our report three weeks ago. It has not come as a great surprise to us, but I wondered if you had anything to say about what seems to be a concerted attempt by the Russian Federation Government to damage relations with this country and the British Council's work in Russia?

  David Miliband: I know that the Committee takes the work of the Council very seriously and your report rightly highlighted the threats that seemed to be hanging over it. Today, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Moscow announced that Russia has ordered the closure of British Council offices in St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg from 1 January 2008.

  That is a very serious and illegal measure. The 1963 Vienna convention on consular relations and the 1994 UK-Russia agreement on culture confer legal status on the Council's activities throughout Russia. It is a sad fact, but I must point out that there are two countries in which the Council is not allowed to operate: Burma and Iran. I hope that the announcement today from the Russian Government does not signal that Russia is taking steps down that road, because that is deeply unwholesome company to be in. We are in touch with the British Council, and a meeting is taking place in 45 minutes between the Minister for Europe and the British Council about next steps. Our concern is, obviously, for British Council staff, but also for the Council's place as a key institution facilitating dialogue between Britain and Russia, which must be a good thing whatever one's view of different political issues. I have also been talking to European colleagues following the Litvinenko situation, and I shall be talking to them again tomorrow about a European statement on the situation, which I think is deplored throughout the House of Commons.

  Q604  Chairman: Thank you very much. We will no doubt get an update from you and your officials in due course.

  I turn to another area in which Russia plays a significant role—blocking a UN Security Council resolution to succeed resolution 1244 regarding Kosovo. You and the Prime Minister have referred to supervised independence, in line with the Ahtisaari plan. Are you confident that there is an adequate legal basis for implementation of the Ahtisaari plan within Security Council resolution 1244 without a new successor resolution?

  David Miliband: In short, yes, but as I said in my written ministerial statement yesterday, we want to go to the UN. The last four months of dialogue and mediation have taken place in good faith. We have urged all sides—I have done so personally when meeting them—to engage properly to try to bridge the gap between the sides, but as Ahtisaari found, the troika team have also found it impossible to bridge the gap. We think that it is right to go back to the UN, but we think that there is a full force in resolution 1244—NATO Foreign Ministers agreed that last Friday, so NATO forces will stay there—and I think that it provides a sound legal base for the future.

  Q605  Chairman: Would that include the European Union civilian presence there with regard to assistance to the judicial and police authorities? Can that continue without a Security Council resolution?

  David Miliband: There is a Security Council resolution—1244. It provides the foundation for the European Security and Defence Policy mission as well as the KFOR mission.

  Q606  Chairman: Will that view be shared by all your fellow Foreign Ministers at the discussions tomorrow?

  David Miliband: Strikingly large numbers of EU Foreign Ministers have looked carefully at the legal text, and it is much less of an issue between us than before. I do not want to say "all", but a vast majority now accept 1244 as a sound legal basis.

  Q607  Chairman: But it is still possible, is it not, that several EU countries will decide for their own domestic or other reasons that they will not support the implementation of an Ahtisaari plan without the Security Council resolution?

  David Miliband: There are two issues. One is going along with an Ahtisaari plan, and the second is recognising a newly independent country. Different European countries take different views on those two issues. I am not sure whether any European countries will hold out against the use of 1244 as the basis for European action.

  Q608  Chairman: But there will be some that will not recognise an independent Kosovo?

  David Miliband: I think that there will be some that do not recognise an independent Kosovo in the first wave; I do not know whether there are countries that will say that they will never do so.

  Q609  Sir John Stanley: Foreign Secretary, as we know, the writ of the Kosovo Government does not run in the Serbian northern area of the country. In effect, to recognise Kosovo as an independent state on its present boundaries is basically to endorse a Cyprus-type situation. Do you rule out the possibility of partition as a solution?

  David Miliband: Yes. Partition has floated around in discussions during the past two years. It certainly does not have our support, and it has very few supporters elsewhere. People often ask whether an independent Kosovo can make a go of it as a viable country. If that question is asked of Kosovo, it applies in spades to the north of the country around Mitrovica. I do not think that partition offers a way forward. The truth is that the Ahtisaari plan has significant devolved authority for that northern part of Kosovo, rightly, and it is important that the minority rights there are respected, although, as I said in the House yesterday, there are Serb minorities elsewhere in Kosovo and not just in the north.

  Q610  Sir John Stanley: What is your present assessment as to what the repercussions would be in Kosovo at the moment, and indeed in Serbia, if there is effectively a unilateral declaration of independence by the Kosovan Government?

  David Miliband: I think that the best answer is that it depends. If it was unilateral in the sense of being chaotic and unconnected to the international community's response, I think that there would be dangers. If it is carefully done, in a way that recognises and lives by the guarantees that have been made by the Kosovan Government and the Serbian Government to the international authorities with regard to preventing violence, and if it also respects the Ahtisaari plan with regard to minorities, there is a reasonable chance of moving forward, not in a way that everyone would like, but in a way that would preserve the basics of a respect for life and security on all sides.

  Q611  Sir John Stanley: Can we take it as read that the British Government and other European Union members make it very clear in Belgrade that the main prize for Serbia is joining the EU and that it should be very careful about taking any steps that will send that process into reverse?

  David Miliband: That is a really good point; I totally agree with that. I have met the Serbian Foreign Minister three times, and that is an absolutely key point. It is very good to hear it from you and the more that we can all keep making the point, within our different contexts, that this process is not about punishing Serbia but about finding a sustainable way for Serbia to live in the wider region, with its "European vocation", which the Serbian Foreign Minister often talks about, the better.

  Q612  Mr Purchase: The Serbians, however keen they may be not to mess the nest in regard to getting into Europe, are first and foremost Serbians. I do not believe that they will contemplate anything that takes the Kosovo province away from them. You have met the Serbian Foreign Minister; they believe that that could have been done at the time of the Balkan conflict. We could have imposed that if we had wanted to. They now believe that, legally and properly, Kosovo is part of Serbia. I think that there is absolutely no chance of the Russians ever agreeing to anything that the Serbians do not want. What I seek from you today, Foreign Secretary, is a commitment that Britain will not join again with America and invade, taking part in something that may have nothing to do with us at all, unless there is a clear, concise, agreed mandate from the UN.

  David Miliband: We are there now, Ken; 16,000 NATO troops are there now.

  Mr Purchase: I understand that.

  David Miliband: Including 155 British troops. And it is good that we are there now, or that the international community is there now, because it is a huge anchor of stability and a huge bulwark against violence. They are there under UN authority.

  Q613  Mr Purchase: But if it is used to enforce the separation of Kosovo from Serbia, that would be an entirely different matter altogether.

  David Miliband: The "enforcement" is a separate issue. It is up to individual countries to recognise other countries. It will be for every country to make a decision about whether or not it wants to recognise a putative Kosovan state. I think that resolution 1244 set out a political process that did not circumscribe the outcome. It did not prescribe one outcome or another; it left the outcome open. But it did create a political process.

  I do not know if you will agree, but I think that it is important that the UN Secretary-General came to a Contact Group meeting in New York that I chaired in September. He started off by saying that the status quo is unsustainable. That is a very, very important point. It is unsustainable politically, because you have a UN protectorate within a sovereign country; it is unsustainable economically, because no one is investing in Kosovo because they do not know the political status, and it is unsustainable socially, because you have this limbo. You may be right that it is a situation that none of us would have chosen to be in, and certainly no one wanted the tragedies of the 1990s to happen, but we have to deal with the situation as it now.

  Q614  Mr Purchase: I will just say finally, if I may, that I think that the use of forces to prevent the Serbians from controlling and ruling their country would be an absolute disaster.

  David Miliband: Just so that we are clear, the mandate of the NATO forces is to prevent violence against people. That is what they are there for. They are there to protect human life.

  Mr Purchase: Yes.

  Chairman: It is 4.45 and I am conscious, Foreign Secretary, that you said that you absolutely had to leave at quarter to 5. I know that two of my colleagues indicated that they would like to ask questions, but I am sorry. Thank you, and thank you Ms Morgan, Mr Berman and Mr Shearman. No doubt, you will write to us on some other areas if we pursue questions afterwards, but thank you for your time and for answering our questions.

  David Miliband: Thank you.