Libya

My Lords, when one has at some time in one’s career been exposed to classified papers one recognises how little one knows when the stream of classified papers dries up. I have had that experience twice. I did not enjoy it on either occasion but I feel rather naked talking about these matters at a time like this when so much is changing so fast. Two issues are being discussed today. One is whether we should or should not arm the very brave young freedom fighters in Libya. It seems to me that if Mr Gaddafi is to be defeated by military means—that is not the only possibility, of course—we have only two choices: either we arm them or we do it ourselves. I do not detect much appetite among your Lordships for doing it ourselves. Therefore, we need to think very carefully about giving the means to do it to other people. It has been said that we do not know anything about these freedom fighters. I dispute that. I think that we know a great deal about them. First, they are very brave. I am very grateful to the Minister for his remarks about al-Qaeda. He pointed out that through all this turbulence in the Middle East there has been virtually no support for al-Qaeda. People are not shouting in the streets for al-Qaeda, they are shouting for democracy, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech—things they have learnt from us. That is marvellous. From everything I can see, events in the Middle East over the past few weeks have been nothing more than a disaster for al-Qaeda. It has not got very far with its recruiting campaigns among the young men on the streets of Sanaa or Damascus or those battling Gaddafi in Libya. I very much agreed with the comments of my noble friend Lord Soley. I will give him the reference to Edmund Burke later. Burke advised us not to ask what the lawyers tell us we may do but to find out what peace, honour and justice tell us we must do. My noble friend and I, and I am sure a lot of other Members of this House, agree with those sentiments. I will not spend long talking about the military side of this. We have a marvellous opportunity with the arrival of Mr Moussa Koussa. His name sounds like a very bad Greek dessert. No doubt he will have been talking. If he has not been, I suggest that we tell him that we have a seat in a C-130 waiting to take him back to Tripoli as soon as we can get him on board. He would then start to sing quite quickly. We should make a recording of everything that Mr Moussa Koussa says to our interrogators and play it back to Libya. Given the comments that some of his colleagues in Tripoli have made recently, it would be interesting if this came to the ears of Colonel Gaddafi, and it might encourage quite a few others to follow Mr Moussa Koussa as quickly as possible. I will make a couple of more general points. It has been said, not least by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, that Libya is not of vital interest to us. I am sorry that I have the temerity to disagree, but Libya at the moment is of absolutely vital interest to us. If things go wrong there, it will have an appalling effect on the rest of the Middle East, with consequences for our interests as well. I am not suggesting that we change the deployment of forces, but we should concentrate our diplomatic efforts on Mr Moussa Koussa and Libya, to the detriment of other diplomatic activities that we have been engaged in recently. I hate to think what will happen if Libya goes wrong. We have tended to view the situation in Libya too much through the prism of UK interests. We are understandably concerned about the case of policewoman Fletcher and about Lockerbie. However, those issues do not play strongly on the streets of Yemen, Bahrain and Syria. What to them is the loss of one policewoman? What is the loss of 130 people in an aeroplane? It is terrible to us, but they are not as interested because of the number of corpses on their streets every day. My noble friend Lord Robertson said that what is happening in Libya is a wake-up call for the European Community. I heard my noble friend say the same at the time of Kosovo. I do not think that there is a full recognition in this country of the enormity of the military contribution of the United States to what is going on in the Middle East. Two hundred Tomahawk missiles have been launched, with brilliant accuracy. My noble friend said that the only people who had these were us and the United States. He did not point out that we sent three winging through the air while the United States sent 200. It is rather reminiscent of Kosovo, where 85 per cent of the attack missions were flown by American aircraft. What is happening now is that the Americans are using B-2s—a brilliant piece of kit—all the way from Kansas, not Norfolk. We read that other European NATO nations are supplying hundreds of planes, but I have not seen any sign of them in action. I am glad to see my noble friend Lady Turner in her seat. She was very distressed by what happened in Kosovo. She spoke of indiscriminate bombing. I was the Minister responsible for approving every target that we attacked in Kosovo and I assure her that the bombing was not indiscriminate. I am sure that I will not persuade her to my point of view as to its utility, but I assure her that it was far from indiscriminate. I have one question for the Government and I should be very obliged if the Minister would take it on board. With this, we come to political matters. I do not understand why this Government, most of whose activities over Libya I sincerely applaud, are still recognising Gaddafi’s administration. There was an answer to that in another place on 18 March. The Prime Minister said in reply to a question from Mr Chishti, Member for Gillingham and Rainham: "““My hon. Friend asks a good question. As he knows, in this country, we recognise countries rather than Governments””.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/3/11; col. 632.]" I read that sentence countless times and I still do not understand it. What the devil is the difference between a country and a Government? How do you withdraw recognition from Canada or Nigeria? That sentence is absolute gobbledegook. There is no reason whatever why we cannot withdraw recognition. In this country, as I understand it, we recognise who is in control of a country, whether we like them or not. To say ““we recognise countries”” is blithering nonsense. Can the Minister define what the Prime Minister meant and say why on earth we cannot follow the French, the Qataris and many others in giving recognition to the interim council based in Benghazi? I think that that would be a major contribution to isolating Gaddafi in Tripoli even further than he is already.