Sri Lanka and the Commonwealth

My hon. Friend has anticipated my very next sentence, because I was going to highlight the fact that the Indian Foreign Minister has visited Sri Lanka to discuss the humanitarian situation with the President. We continue to talk and work with the Indian Government on the issue. We have also been working with a wide range of multilateral forums. EU Ministers have called for a ceasefire. The key issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden was the Commonwealth, and although Sri Lanka was not on the formal agenda of the Commonwealth ministerial action group meeting this month, it was nevertheless rightly discussed. The issue of our level of representation at that meeting has been raised. It was absolutely right that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs was present. She is the Minister responsible for our relations with the Commonwealth, and I can assure hon. Members that she emphatically articulated the concerns that have been raised. She took the opportunity to brief CMAG and expressed our concerns about the humanitarian situation and the safety of civilians caught up in the fighting. She stressed the need for a humanitarian ceasefire to allow civilians to move to safety and for full access by the international humanitarian agencies. She also called attention to the letter that we had received from 11 hon. Members expressing their concerns about the Government of Sri Lanka and calling for Sri Lanka's suspension from the Commonwealth. CMAG did not call for a suspension, because there has not been an unconstitutional overthrow of democracy—rightly or wrongly, that has been the basis for previous suspensions. Nevertheless, we have rightly raised our concerns in CMAG and directly with the Commonwealth secretariat. The second key bone of contention that has been raised in the debate is the role of the UN. At the Security Council, we have sought discussion and regular briefings about the situation in Sri Lanka. We welcomed the visit to Sri Lanka in February by John Holmes, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. However, if we took a resolution to the Security Council, the reality is that we would not get the nine votes that were necessary or that it would be vetoed. That brings me directly to the criticism from the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), who leads for the Liberal Democrats. He talked about diplomatic weasel words, and if international diplomacy is just about feeling good about ourselves and what we say, that is the point that needs to be made. However, if we actually want to make an impact, we have to take a different course of action. My real concern is that if we went forward with a Security Council resolution and it was vetoed, we would no longer have the status quo, but an even worse situation, because the Sri Lankan Government would simply turn around and say, "The United Nations has agreed with us that no action should be taken."