Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

That would certainly need to be formally or tacitly agreed in some way. We all want all the countries of the western Balkans to be able to join the European Union. As the Foreign Secretary mentioned, another vital issue on which European nations need to work together is that of Iran. I add the Opposition's condemnation of how the locally engaged employees of our Tehran embassy have been treated and express our concern for the fate of Mr. Hossein Rassam. We welcome the solidarity that other European countries have shown on the issue and hope that robust co-ordinated action from EU member states will follow if Iran continues with its harassment of our embassy staff. The dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme is serious, but we must not forget the human rights of Iranians, many of whom are suffering appallingly from the oppression of the Iranian state. It is right that every attempt should be made to coax Iran into a meaningful diplomatic process. As the Foreign Secretary will recall, I have argued for some months that American outreach to Iran had to be backed by EU countries demonstrating to Iranians that if they reject negotiations, European nations will agree on a detailed set of sanctions. That scenario is looking increasingly likely, and we hope that those preparations will now be taken forward in earnest. Given the past difficulty in persuading all EU nations to adopt sanctions as tough as those that the British Government and Opposition have sought, we should be trying to win the argument for such sanctions now, to ensure that no time is lost if their implementation is required. I want to remind the Foreign Secretary that although we understand the immense difficulty in securing agreement to sanctions, the Prime Minister has twice—in November 2007 and again in June 2008—announced sanctions on Iranian oil and gas that have never materialised. The announcement of such pledges and then the failure to deliver on them does not exactly strengthen the hand of the international community. In our view, we are approaching the time when much more serious measures need to be taken by the EU and other nations across the world; otherwise, we will face the calamity of Iran's acquiring a nuclear weapon or the other possibly calamitous event of others taking matters into their own hands and launching a military attack on Iran. The Foreign Secretary spoke of the middle east peace process. Like him, we fully support the Obama Administration's efforts to restart negotiations on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like the Foreign Secretary, we regret that a way forward has not been found and we are also deeply concerned by the announcement last week that 900 new housing units will be built in East Jerusalem. We are also distressed and concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, especially as it seems that the UK has not yet been able to spend any of the funding earmarked for reconstruction there. This is another foreign policy issue on which the Prime Minister has made headlines in the past and then not followed through. He made several commitments in the wake of the Gaza conflict, saying in January:""Britain is prepared to give naval resources so that we can monitor and stop arms traffic and arms getting into Gaza."" However, astonishingly, he made that commitment to stopping arms smuggling without establishing first whether the UK had the capacity to do it, a point that my hon. Friend the shadow Defence Secretary made at the time. All that the Government have to show for that announcement are meetings between officials from various countries to discuss the issues, after which the Government conceded that the tools that the international community has at its disposal are limited and the challenges of interdiction are high. I suggest to Ministers that it undermines the credibility of the UK to pledge assistance but not see it through. This is a consistent pattern in foreign policy statements made by the Prime Minister.