Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), who we on the Foreign Affairs Committee remember as a Minister with a refreshing propensity to deviate from the official brief. The right hon. Gentleman, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and the Front Benchers rightly focused on Afghanistan, and I wish to pay my own tribute to the extraordinary courage and skill of our service personnel there. I wish to devote my time to the situation in the western Balkans, which I visited last month with other members of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In the three most difficult countries, we face a time-critical issue. In Serbia, the bicycle analogy is now something of a cliché, but I think that it is applicable in this case. The reality is that we will probably not maintain the forward-looking Government of President Tadic unless there is continuing momentum towards EU accession. Although the EU has managed to sign up to, but not ratify, the stabilisation and association agreement for Serbia, there is now an impasse created by the Dutch position. We all understand that the Dutch are still transfixed by the passive role played by Dutch UN forces around the time of the Srebrenica massacre. It is still an explosive issue in the Netherlands, and it has already brought down one Dutch Government. However, having recognised the political realities in the Netherlands, I have to say that it is not reasonable to impose on Serbia conditions for making progress with its EU accession that are simply not realisable. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary mentioned the phrase "full co-operation with the ICTY", but the new chief prosecutor for the ICTY, Serge Brammertz, has said that he will not use that phrase, as he believes that it has become politicised. It is not therefore a realistic hurdle to put in front of Serbia. We all want to see Mladic and Hadzic alongside Karadzic in The Hague, but the issue is whether Mladic is still in Serbia. The Serbian Government can deliver only those people within their territories. The key issue will come next week, when we get the next report by Mr. Brammertz. That will be followed by an EU Foreign Ministers meeting the following week. My information is that the Brammertz report is likely to be as favourable as is reasonably possible as far as Serbia is concerned, and in the discussions that we had with Ministers in Belgrade, they were all determined to co-operate fully with the ICTY and to do their best to find Mladic and Hadzic if they were in Serbia. I therefore very much hope that if the ICTY report comes out as I believe it will, the Government and the Foreign Secretary will take the two crucial steps at the forthcoming EU Foreign Ministers meeting that will be necessary to keep Serbia's EU accession going forward. Those steps will be making progress towards unblocking the implementation of the interim agreement under Serbia's SAA, and beginning the EU ratification process for Serbia's SAA. Let me move from discussing Serbia to dealing with the position in Kosovo, where we also have grounds for a reasonable degree of cautious optimism. Among the Serbian municipalities, the municipality elections in Kosovo two years ago were effectively a write-off. There was virtually no turnout at all. In contrast, the elections two years later, which have just been completed—I refer to those south of the Ibar river—have been a remarkable success. The turnout has averaged between 20 and 25 per cent., which is a dramatic improvement and a dramatic increase in the willingness of Kosovo Serbs now to participate in elections organised from Pristina. The critical issue now is what will happen in the elections for the two remaining Serbian municipalities, in particular north Mitrovica. President Sejdiu has wisely deferred those elections for six months, until 15 May next year, to enable the maximum possible time to ensure that they are held on a free and fair basis. That will be a serious challenge in north Mitrovica. The area is dominated by Serb hardliners. Their control is exercised by threat, intimidation, telephone calls threatening actions if people participate and knocks on the door at night. In the past, those intimidatory tactics have had considerable success. A huge responsibility now lies with EULEX, the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo. EULEX is the largest civilian deployment under the European security and defence policy, and something of the ESDP's civilian credibility hangs on its success. EULEX has six months flat to try to create conditions in Kosovo under which the elections can be held on what we hope will be a reasonably free and fair basis in north Mitrovica. If that can be achieved, we shall have moved a long way to maintaining the integration of Kosovo and creating conditions in which its progress towards EU accession can take place. I come finally to Bosnia and Herzegovina. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary was entirely correct in his opening remarks when he referred to the fact that the position in Bosnia and Herzegovina is going backwards. As we are all aware, the constitutional arrangements that are now in place were a brilliant triumph at the point at which they were concluded—in other words, the Dayton peace agreement of 1995, which had the hugely beneficial effect of stopping the terrible bloodshed taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was the most serious violence and bloodshed to have taken place in Europe since the end of world war two. That peace agreement was achieved at a price. The price was a constitution that contains a series of ethnic blocks—blocks at the state level; blocks at the entity level; block after block after block. Although the agreement brought peace, it has not brought a constitution that is viable in terms of a governmental decision process for EU accession. The EU recognises that, the US recognises it, the Bosniaks recognise it and the Bosnian Croatians recognise it. The one group that does not, of course, is the Bosnian Serbs. At the moment, unless they can be persuaded to amend the Dayton constitution and to create a viable governmental structure at the top to deal with EU accession, the impasse will continue. This issue is also time critical. The present EU-US negotiating team will not be in play for ever; it is time limited. Indeed, I would say that it is crucial that progress be made in the next two or three months. I hope that the British Government, along with our EU and US partners, will use all possible influence to prevail on Mr. Dodik, and to make him understand the reality that he is taking the Republika Srpska into a complete cul de sac. There is no future for the people of the Republika Srpska if it is an isolated, supposedly independent, mini-state with no prospect of going anywhere. I do not believe that it will receive material support from Serbia for much longer, if at all, and I do not think that it can hope for very much from the Russians either. It is in a cul de sac, and Mr. Dodik needs to be persuaded that that is the case, so that Bosnia and Herzegovina can make progress. Over the past 15 years, we in the EU, the US and Britain as an individual country have all invested enormous amounts of time, effort, money and resources into the western Balkans. I earnestly believe that, having made that investment, we cannot allow any of those countries to fail.