Order. Before we come to the debate on the Adjournment, I must tell the House that I have imposed a 10-minute limit on speeches between 11.30 am and 1 pm. I hope that I shall receive the same co-operation that I had yesterday regarding speeches outside that time. for which I thank hon. Members very much.

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. The large number of hon. Members in the Chamber today shows the support in all parts of the House for a debate on foreign affairs. There is considerable concern that we do not have more time available. I suggested yesterday that we should continue today until 4 pm.

The terms of the motion are rather narrow and do not allow any debate on the middle east crisis, the position in South Africa or British aid to Pakistan following the flood disaster. We now understand that the debate is to be punctuated by a personal statement by the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor).

Bearing all that in mind, will you, Madam Speaker, display your customary tolerance and understanding if in any interventions—I stress the word "interventions"—the Foreign Secretary is asked for some explanation on the matters that I have raised?

Order. This is an Adjournment debate. Although I would not wish hon. Members to stray too far from the words on the Order Paper, I think that I might agree to a limited question or two on the matters raised by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that hon. Members will understand that and will keep to the procedures that we always uphold in the House.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) on his arrival, if that is the word, to the position of shadow Foreign Secretary. I very much look forward to working opposite him—I am not sure whether with him or against him; only time will tell—for a long time to come.

I apologise to the House for the fact that I cannot stay until the end of the debate. I have two meetings at the United Nations with the Foreign Ministers of China and Iran and neither meeting is routine, as hon. Members may guess. I have already rescheduled them to a later time today, but I fear that I cannot shed them altogether. Indeed, it would be a pity to do so.

Two years ago, the end of the cold war appeared to promise a better world—and for some months all the news appeared to be miraculously good. Matters appeared to have taken a change for the better almost overnight. Now, we see matters differently. The world post-cold war is in many ways a better place, but in others it is more unstable.

International order is threatened by problems left as a result of the cold war—older problems and challenges to the rule of law.

The three subjects identified for debate today—Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia—are, perhaps, the three most tragic examples of that. I want to take stock of developments in all three areas during the summer and to look forward to where we go from here.

Yugoslavia is a crisis in Europe and for Europe. There are few—we have heard a voice or two in the House in the past—who feel that, on the whole, we should pass by on the other side, because our essential interests are not at stake and because our chances of doing anything useful arc slim. I understand that point of view, but I do not agree with it. Many more people inside and outside the House, faced daily with the horror of Yugoslavia as presented in the press and on television, say that something must be done but are not specific about it. We must be specific in government and in the House. The killing and the suffering are on our doorstep and I do not think that we can detach ourselves from a sensible, realistic effort to bring that killing and suffering to an end.

Let us step back for a minute and examine the background. Yugoslavia was created in 1919 to cope with a particular problem—the fact that 12 million people with very different histories were mingled inextricably in the north-west of the Balkans.

It was the common market of its day.

Oh, it was the common market, was it? I look forward to the hon. Gentleman's speech about the common market in 1919, and the creation of Yugoslavia.

For 70 years the problem was not solved, but it was at least dormant—first under the monarchy, then under the communist regime of Marshal Tito. People were not free, but at least during those 70 years—except during the second world war—they were not killing each other. As the communist regime disintegrated, an effort—a worthwhile effort—was made to preserve Yugoslavia by consent. Sadly, that effort failed disastrously. Then the EC was persuaded by others, and by its own instincts, to try to help prevent total civil war and total collapse. The EC, however, is not a military power and it is still not fully equipped for joint action in foreign policy.

How far have we got with that effort? Clearly, not far enough. We have kept at bay the old rivalries between the great powers of western Europe: the rivalries that helped to produce Balkan wars in the first decade of the century and culminated in the bloodiest war in all history—the great war. Now, at least, different European powers are not backing different clients in the Balkans. That is a negative achievement, but nevertheless we have avoided what might have been worse—more killings and more refugees. We have managed so far to prevent the conflict from engaging a wider area than the former Yugoslavia and setting back the clock of history.

As I have said, however, that is a negative achievement. How are we positively helping to achieve peace? I feel that I must put in a realistic word at this point. We cannot dictate peace in Yugoslavia; none of us—Britain, France, Germany, the Community or the United Nations—has been in a position to sweep into the different republics, tell them what their frontiers are, tell them who should govern them and instruct them in how they should behave to each other. We cannot act as a colonial power in eastern Europe. Bosnia will not be a protectorate of the Community.

After the collapse of Yugoslavia, what remained were the six republics. They were the only surviving political entities. Their boundaries were not perfect, but anyone who looks at the map and sees the way in which people live together in that part of the world will know that there cannot be perfect boundaries. That is why the EC, followed by the UN and the London conference, quickly laid down two principles: no alteration of boundaries by force, and established rights for minorities within boundaries.

It was on that basis that Lord Carrington began, on behalf of the Community, his thankless task as a peacemaker. That task was thankless because he and his team constructed ceasefires, and obtained signatures to ceasefires, that were never honoured. Nevertheless, they carried out a good deal of detailed groundwork, which will certainly be the basis for an eventual settlement. Their work is being continued today and I am sure that in the end it will provide the foundations for peace. During that period a fragile peace was established in Croatia, with the deployment of a UN force—UNPROFOR—containing 14,000 men, of which the British component is a field ambulance of 300.

We cannot be assured about the position in Croatia. Some of my hon. Friends have visited the country recently and they will know that it may become increasingly shaky —particularly as the mandate of UNPROFOR nears its term in the early part of next year. That is why we must press ahead in Croatia with local arrangements and confidence-building measures.

When I was in Zagreb in July, President Tudjman of Croatia mentioned to me the importance of securing an agreement that would demilitarise the Prevlaka peninsula and raise the siege of Dubrovnik. I pursued the matter in Belgrade and we arranged discussions and negotiations between the local commanders on board HMS Avenger in the Adriatic. There have been setbacks, but it now looks as if that local arrangement may actually take shape. I cite that as an example of what can be done.

We now have 150 EC monitors throughout Croatia, under a British leader. I have seen for myself, as have other Members of Parliament, how effective those unarmed monitors—mostly young ex-army officers—can be in, for example, establishing confidence between village and village so that people can get back to rebuilding their houses and their lives.

I do not need to tell the House how the storm then shifted to Bosnia. I shall not go into it, because we and our constituents have seen, night by night, that storm blow up into tragedy throughout the summer.

Bosnia was predictable and predicted; Kosovo is still predictable. What is the international community now doing to prevent the tragedy in Bosnia from proceeding into Kosovo?

I am going to mention Kosovo later in my speech. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear with me until then.

Once again, in the summer, ceasefires were called in Bosnia and once again they broke down or were never implemented. The UN and EC therefore decided, with wide international support, to bind their efforts more closely together. That is why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Secretary-General of the United Nations marshalled the support and the machinery of the wider international community in support of the effort.

This was not a once-and-for-all conference. It did not aim at a ceasefire-with immediate effect, because such ceasefires had proved in the past to be illusions. What it did was establish certain agreements and a framework for carrying them into effect. That new process—the international conference on the former Yugoslavia—continues its work, mostly in Geneva, under the co-chairmanship of Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen. I am sure that the House will join me in expressing thanks to those two particularly energetic gentlemen for assuming what is undoubtedly a frustrating but indispensable task.

The conference is not about something abstract or bureaucratic; it is trying to do something humanitarian —to alleviate the suffering of victims of the conflict—and something political—to bring the conflict permanently to an end. Contrary to some predictions by the cynical press, it was agreed by all at the London conference that Bosnia Hercegovina should not be partitioned between neigh-bouring states. It is a country with recognised frontiers and it is entitled to work out within those frontiers how the different communities in Bosnia—Serb, Croat and Muslim —can in future live peaceably together.

A wide range of undertakings were given and published in London, covering such matters as speeding up the delivery of aid, corraling heavy weapons, the cessation of military aggression and the holding of constitutional discussions. There has been some progress in carrying out those undertakings, but it is not adequate.

In such circumstances, diplomacy obviously does not work without pressures. We believe that the main pressures still need to be applied against Serbia and Montenegro. That is not because other participants in the fighting—either the Croats or the Bosnian Muslims—are free from blame for some of the suffering, but, according to both our analysis and that of the international community, it was the Serbs, with encouragement from Belgrade, who started the fighting in Bosnia. It is they who carry the largest responsibility for the continuation of that fighting. That is why, whereas there is an arms embargo against all the republics, the United Nations mandatory trade embargo is directed against Serbia and Montenegro.

The sanctions are having an effect. We believe that industrial production in Serbia has been roughly halved, overall trade is down by 50 to 75 per cent. and oil imports are down by more than 80 per cent. Those sanctions must be comprehensively applied. That is why we have ships in the Adriatic, including HMS Gloucester, which deter sanctions-breaking by sea.

There has been a specific problem along the Danube. The Governments involved have asked for monitors to be stationed along their borders to help them to apply sanctions, which they say that they are determined to do. During the next fortnight, the European Community and the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe will send three teams of experts, including customs officers, to Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania to advise local customs officers, pass on information about any breaches of sanctions to the sanctions committee of the Security Council and, by their presence in key positions, help to deter individuals who might cheat.

As my right hon. Friend said, it has been agreed that the Bosnian state should be upheld and it has been recognised that its existence should be maintained. Is it also right to uphold the rights of the so-called Bosnian Government—predominantly, BosnianMuslim—in their claim to rule the whole of the district?

They are the legitimate Government of the whole region. We urge them to enter discussions with the groups that are not fully represented in the Government, so that out of the discussions taking place in Geneva may come an agreement on how Bosnia can be governed and how the three communities can live together in peace. The Bosnian Government have replied that they can do that only if efforts are made to bring about a cessation of hostilities. Those two issues must be tackled together, as neither will work without the other.

A powerful political debate is under way in Belgrade. I pay tribute to the courage and persistence of Prime Minister Panic in arguing for and taking steps towards a saner policy. I had a long talk with him two evenings ago. I do not doubt his courage and sincerity, but he has an uphill task. I am convinced that we need to maintain and increase the pressures on Serbia and Montenegro until that change of policy is an established fact.

We are also anxious about the position of Kosovo. We accept that it is part of Serbia, but it contains a heavy preponderance of people of Albanian origin whose rights are not properly recognised. We are trying to get people into that part of former Yugoslavia. As the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) knows, the CSCE is in the lead on that and has managed to get some people in. However, I am not at all happy or sanguine about the position.

We have emphasised in Belgrade that the denial of the sort of rights that the Kosovons enjoyed before 1988 creates the danger of another explosion that could set back all the efforts and the progress that is being falteringly made in other parts of former Yugoslavia such as Croatia.

Has the Foreign Secretary seen the Financial Times today? It contains a report that the Croations are seizing territory in the south-west of Bosnia and preparing its partition. The Foreign Secretary has not mentioned that issue—will he comment on it?

I have mentioned the principle, which President Tudjman accepted—at Zagreb when I saw him in July, and in London—that Bosnia Hercegovina is a state with established frontiers. There is Croatian military activity in Hercegovina, just as there is Serbian military activity in other parts of Bosnia. There have been previous stories in the press about partition, but both the Governments involved have ruled that out—it is important that that should be so or we face the prospect of endless civil war in Bosnia.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer the question."] I have answered the question twice. I answered it before the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) asked it and I have now answered it again.

The right hon. Gentleman has made no comment on the malign influence of Greece on the non-recognition of Macedonia. Will he comment on that, as it is another extremely dangerous spot?

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I cannot cover every aspect of the issue, but he is right about the problem of Macedonia. We came to a conclusion at the Lisbon Council, which was obviously welcomed by Greece, but unacceptable to the Government in Skopje, as I found when I went there in July. I have asked one of our former ambassadors, Mr. Robin O'Neill, to try to work out an agreement that is acceptable to everyone by shuttling between Athens and Skopje. That is what is required, and we have not forgotten the problem.

Suggestions have been made for military intervention on a bigger scale and for a different purpose than is now proposed. It is natural that people watching the atrocities on television, seeing the bombardment of Sarajevo and the emaciated figures emerging from the camps, should urge military action by air or land against those responsible.

Personally, I felt and said that such action would have been morally justified if it could have been effective in bringing those atrocities to an end. Air strikes were the option most often put forward, and we and others considered that suggestion more than once. However, given the terrain, the weapons being used for most of the killing—which were not heavy weapons—the way in which civilians and military—Croats, Muslims and Serbs—live side by side and the likelihood that such military action would immediately bring to an end the humanitarian activities of the Red Cross and United Nations agencies, we and our allies and partners have come down against that option each time it has been considered. It would be easy to increase the casualty list without stopping the conflict—something which we must avoid.

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary and I am sorry to interrupt him in the middle of his speech. However, in view of the continuing use of aircraft by the Serbs for attacks on Sarajevo and other defenceless civilian targets, are the Government at least prepared to support the recommendation put forward, I believe, by the Americans that there should be an enforced no-fly zone over the contested territory of Bosnia?

There should be a no-fly zone. One of the undertakings given in London was that there should not be military flights, but there are. We are considering what sort of no-fly zone would make sense. I believe that Lord Owen and Mr. Vance hope to be in Banja Luka today. I certainly agree that the concept of a no-fly zone must be carried forward. It may be—this is Lord Owen's present view—that the best way of ensuring that is to have monitors on the ground, which is a suggestion that we are pursuing.

I do not think that the objective of those who advocated additional military action was to escalate military war in Bosnia. The objective was to hit lines of communications and munitions factories in Serbia, to leave the Serbs in no doubt that any escalation or extension of their activities into neighbouring Kosovo or Montenegro would bring about an instant and harsh reaction from western powers.

That was the specific proposal made by my hon. Friend, with whom I have been in touch on the subject and to whom I am grateful. At present, we are not seeing huge movements of troops or tanks from Serbia to Bosnia. We are seeing in the possession of Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia aircraft and artillery that has been left behind —a different position from that earlier in the year.

In recent weeks there has been some occasional slackening of the level of fighting in Bosnia and Hercegovina. We cannot take much comfort from that, because it has simply allowed the humanitarian problem to emerge in all its bleakness.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has registered more than 1.9 million refugees of the former Yugoslavia. Of those, 1.2 million come from Bosnia Hercegovina. She estimates that there are 700,000 refugees in Bosnia, 600,000 in Croatia and 400,000 in Serbia. Those are merely figures and they do not portray the physical suffering and misery which is being endured and which will worsen rapidly as winter descends.

There has been a discussion and the international community is broadly agreed that refugees should be looked after as close to their homes as possible. That is not a do-nothing policy and it is certainly not a cost-free policy. It is a policy which the agencies, as well as most Governments, consider has the best chance to get people back into their homes to lead normal lives. It is not the absolute and, of course, there are exceptions, as we saw last week with the 68 seriously ill people who were brought to Britain from the camps in Bosnia. In those cases we have to act as swiftly as we can, but in the main we try to help people to stay as close to their homes as possible.

In the past 12 months, Britain has given more than £14 million in bilateral humanitarian help to the former Yugoslavia. Again, that is merely a figure, but the vast majority of medicines being used in Sarajevo hospitals come from supplies sent by Britain. If we add to that figure our help through the European Community, the total figure for British aid to the former Yugoslavia comes to more than £35 million.

However, it is not merely a matter of money and supplies. The main problem has been getting aid through and that is why, after much thought, we have endorsed the extension of the UN forces mandate under Security Council resolution 776. The force now has a mandate to get aid to all the people in Bosnia who need it, and not merely to those in Sarajevo, as in the original mandate. The decision to offer up to 1,800 British troops to help with that task was clearly not an easy decision to take. The British Government should never deploy British troops without careful preparation and assessment of what their role and objectives should be.

That is a humanitarian task to help cope with a humanitarian disaster which will get worse. No one can have seen the pictures from Bosnia of the sieges of Gorazde, Bihac and Tuzla without realising the extent of the suffering and the need, and without realising that some military assistance is needed. For example, while UNHCR was distributing the first consignment of aid to Gorazde the convoy's route back to Sarajevo was mined. French soldiers with blue helmets cleared the path to allow the convoy to complete its mission. It is a sad and a bad thing, but the relief agencies have concluded that they need military help or they will not be able to relieve the disaster. The British contribution will be up to 1,800 strong and that includes about 800 support people.

The Select Committee on Defence has naturally asked questions and received answers this week on the details of the deployment. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will say more when he winds up the debate.

Command and control and the rules of engagement must be got right. That is why we have a military team in Zagreb sorting out those details. The discussions are rightly in the hands of people who understand what soldiers need. Adequate arrangements have to be in place in advance of the arrival of the main party of British troops in early November.

As we have made clear to the UN, the offer is for convoy protection only. We would not allow our forces to be used for other duties not covered by the present mandate without a pause for further reflection, and on the basis of a clear and effective concept of operations.

As my right hon. and learned Friend will elaborate, our forces have to be able to defend themselves. Their guidelines will be clear. The Secretary-General and the Security Council have agreed that, in providing protective support to UN HCR organised convoys, the UNF'ROFOR troops concerned would follow normal peacekeeping rules of engagement. They would thus be authorised to use force in self defence. In this context, self defence is deemed to include situations in which our personnel are attacked by force to prevent UN troops from carrying out their mandate.

Again after much discussion, NATO is providing many of the necessary assets in personnel and logistics to support the operation. Both NATO and the Western European Union have been involved in contingency planning for those operations, and they have co-operated well.

I would not pretend to the House that we have seen the end of trouble in Yugoslavia or even a sure beginning of the end. Once old hatreds have been aroused, they are hard to put to sleep again. Stories of atrocities—some true, many false—enter deep into the consciousness of all concerned and influence actions.

In the European Community we have recently learnt to reconcile differences in western Europe.

Is not the most important thing at this time somehow to stop the shelling of towns and villages? My right hon. Friend is right to say that the people of this country are appalled at watching that night after night, with UN observers doing nothing other than count the shells as they are fired. Are we really saying that no matter what happens in European countries quite close to our own, no matter what atrocities occur, there is no military action that we, the Community or the UN can take to stop the daily carnage taking place under our noses?

I have tried to analyse the military options. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that they have been considered often, not merely by us but by the Americans, by our European partners and by the UN. There are several options and I have not been through them all. I mentioned the possibility of air strikes against the hillsides around Sarajevo or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Waterside (Mr. Colvin) suggested, in Serbia. The difficulty with all the military options, as opposed to the relentless and increasing pressure of sanctions against a country which is not equipped to endure them, is that in such terrain, with the intermingling of military personnel and civilians and of Serbs, Bosnians and Croats, it is hard to work out a practical scheme which would not merely add to the number of people killed without ending the fighting. There is an added difficulty, which has been emphasised to us again and again; if we began to take that course of action, the humanitarian aid, which is now getting through, would stop and could not be continued. That is a damning factor against all those ideas.

I am not saying that those ideas should not be considered from time to time. The position is so bleak that I do not believe that such ideas should be excluded indefinitely, but I have tried to set out the analysis until now. Neither we nor the CSCE nor the UN yet have the aptitude or the powers to sort out problems within central or eastern European countries or the countries of the former Soviet Union, and we must remember that what is happening in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia is being repeated in two or three countries of the former Soviet Union to the east of Europe, where there are no television cameras and only occasional visitors.

rose—

No, I must get on. The tragedy of Yugoslavia came upon the international community just as it was beginning to realise that the end of the cold war did not mean the end of the problems of eastern Europe; it was simply the beginning of a new chapter. As I have tried to say, that does not excuse us from the effort to help, and I have sketched out how our country is responding.

Other, older crises are still with us, and show no signs of final settlement. Two years ago the House was recalled from recess to debate our involvement in the Gulf. There the problem was simpler in many ways. Iraq had occupied Kuwait by force. It was a case of one sovereign state obliterating another and its aggression had to be reversed, which of course was done. Other problems remained and recently have escalated.

Saddam Hussein continues to defy the resolution of the UN. He has obligations under Security Council resolutions; I am thinking of resolution 687, which deals with the inspection and destruction of his weapons. The UN special commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have made significant progress in finding and destroying Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons programmes, but there is much work still to be done and we believe that significant ballistic missile capabilities remain to be discovered. Therefore, we shall press ahead with those inspections under resolution 687.

Saddam Hussein continues to repress his own population. Here again, there is a Security Council resolution—No. 688. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed concern and been effective in helping with the humanitarian problems in both north and south Iraq. If I single out one hon. Member I do not mean to be invidious, but I should like to pay tribute to the tireless efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson), especially in the south.

I shall return to that subject soon, but I do not wish to leave out the personal tragedies which have befallen two British citizens—Paul Ride and Michael Wainwright—who have been given grotesquely severe prison sentences for minor immigration offences. As far as I know, there was no suggestion at either trial that the men were being accused of anything more than immigration offences—entering Iraq irregularly by mistake. The sentences imposed are out of proportion.

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his remarks about the prisoner Michael Wainwright who, in my opinion, is being held disgracefully. My colleague the MEP Dr. Barry Seal met the EC ambassador and I raised the matter with the Foreign Secretary when I met him with Michael Wainwright's family. Apparently, nothing will be done about the two men unless we release some assets. Is it possible that funds for the purchase of medicines could be released to the Iraqis so as to allow some form of negotiation for the release of the two men and end the torment of their families?

The hon. Lady made that point when she came to see me with Michael Wainwright's family. There is no problem about sending food and medicines to Iraq. As the House knows those are outside the UN sanctions. However, the problem about releasing assets is that there are many claims on those assets, and we might get into severe trouble if we started authorising the release of assets on which there are British claims. That is a difficult road to tread.

Regardless of that, I believe that the House will condemn the way in which the Iraqis have behaved. They will not shift our policy by such action against individuals. That was ascertained and established during the Gulf war. None the less, we are doing everything possible to secure the men's release in different ways. I explained some of those ways to the hon. Lady, but there have been others since I saw her. We are especially grateful to the Russians who, through their embassy in Baghdad, have visited Paul Ride and Michael Wainwright in prison during the past few days and have established that, although the men are unhappy, they are not in poor physical shape.

Is my right hon. Friend aware of the extraordinary humanitarian gesture made by my constituent Phil Ride, the brother of Paul Ride, who has offered to change places with his brother, because of his medical condition? Is he also aware of the family's deep gratitude to Her Majesty's Government and to the Russians, for the access visits, which have considerably reassured them about the conditions in which the men are being held?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend; I know of his keen interest in the matter. Those concerned will have no great cause to be grateful either to us or to the Russians until the men are out of prison. That is our aim, and we shall seek to achieve it.

The British have not been singled out for such treatment. Similar grotesque sentences have been imposed on three Swedish citizens who should also be released.

rose—

No, I am sorry. I must press on.

We continue, with our coalition partners, to keep up the pressure on Iraq to carry out in full the resolutions of the Security Council. Where it seems sensible we back up pressure with action. That is why on 27 August, with our American and French partners, we set up a no-fly zone in southern Iraq. That was clearly necessary because of the risk of a serious humanitarian emergency among the civilian people there. Although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West has said on the radio, the no-fly zone is not a complete answer, we shall continue to operate it as long as it is required. At least it inhibits the air attacks on the Shias in the south which have done so much harm in the past. Six RAF Tornados are operating over southern Iraq as part of the no-fly zone exercise. Our business is to monitor what is happening there. We shall not take further action to build on that without returning to the Security Council, but we shall return there if it becomes clear that Iraq has not stopped its campaign of repression. So far, Iraq has not challenged the imposition of the no-fly zone, and so far there have been no incidents. So far, firm action seems to be achieving results. The underlying message that I am sure the House would want to leave is that Iraq, like every other country, must comply with all the Security Council resolutions which bite.

Last but not least, I shall speak about Somalia. All right hon. and hon. Members who have visited that country in recent weeks have come back feeling strongly that what they have seen there is unique, even among all the horrors of a disorderly world. Although I was in Somalia for only a short time, I am glad that I, with the other two EC Foreign Ministers, went there.

The city of Mogadishu shows that it has lived through a war, with rubbish and rubble on most streets, no electricity or other power, no water and no police. Makeshift graves are being dug in open spaces far too close to the wells; people are digging graves all the time. We were in Mogadishu where the conditions are the best, not the worst. Large numbers of children have been fed there for many weeks now. The city is the centre of heroic efforts by many agencies. We were told everywhere that what was happening in the interior, further up land, was far worse. My right hon. and noble Friend the Minister for Overseas Development and many other right hon. and hon. Members have been up land and seen worse.

In Somalia we see the collapse of a state and of a society —a collapse of all the services that we take for granted. In that situation the UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross and all the myriad other non-governmental organisations are doing an herioc job. They are very hard pressed. We spoke to the representatives of those organisations, who talked about the situation elsewhere in Somalia. For example, they told us of the situation in the north, with which Britain has particular historical links. We have already provided help to Somalia's second city, Hargeisa, in the north, which was systematically destroyed and mined by Siad Barre's forces in 1988.

What is happening in Somalia is to some extent a natural disaster shared throughout the Horn of Africa and all the areas of sub-Saharan Africa affected by the drought. However, what makes the plight of the Somali people so tragic is the behaviour of their so-called political leaders, who connive at the murder of their fellow citizens and the looting of their food and property.

The Foreign Secretary seems to be sleep-walking the House through three ghastly crises. Time and again I am reminded of a senior civil servant giving a report, not a world statesman who has the power to do something about the situation. When will the Foreign Secretary show some leadership and do something about ethnic cleansing and about the tragedy in the Horn of Africa?

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has just come in, but he cannot have listened to what I have said. I have explained to the House what is being done in terms of money and men. I have been talking about hundreds and thousands of British people who, with our encouragement, are in all three of the countries which I have mentioned. Volunteers, Army officers and humanitarian workers are implementing the help provided by this country with money supplied by the House. In all three countries that represents a very substantial effort, undertaken with others. I have set out in full the details of what we are doing.

Of course the tragedies persist. If the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) believes that suddenly, by voting extra money or sending extra men, we shall solve all those problems in all those territories, it is he who is sleep walking. I set out at some length—and I hope that I have not wearied the House—what we are actually doing in terms not of declarations, words or speeches but by people on the ground, on our behalf. The hon. Gentleman's intervention is not worthy of the Opposition Benches.

Faced with the collapse of a society, it was right for the Security Council to set aside all the traditional arguments against intervening in the internal affairs of a country and to authorise the dispatch of UN forces to protect the distribution of relief supplies. We make it clear that the warlords who impede those efforts cannot be regarded any of them—as representing the legitimate authority in Somalia.

We have been providing emergency help for Somalia ever since the fall of its former president—long before tjhe situation came to the attention of the media. Since January 1991, British aid has been worth more than £31 million, including our contributions to EC activities and the additional £7.5 million announced by my noble Friend Lady Chalker on 14 September. We were among the first to provide aid. Others have been equally forthcoming. The EC collectively is much the biggest supplier of food, and has made available more than 200,000 tonnes and 15 million ecu in non-food aid this year.

The right hon. Gentleman gave the clearest indication of the recognition by the British Government of our special relationship with the north-west, and that is welcome. Earlier, the right hon. Gentleman referred to other parts of the world, where lack of television coverage means that things remain hidden. Will he give the reassurance that is hoped for by Somalis in Britain and throughout the world that the British Government will give special recognition to our special relationship with the north, and that the right hon. Gentleman will take a personal interest in ensuring that the Republic of Somaliland is not allowed to decline into the situation that exists in the south?

I am conscious of the force of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. I do not want to give the people who live in the north of Somalia—in what used to be the colony of British Somaliland—the idea that we favour the country's partition. That is a different point, and not an easy one. As to ensuring that the help given by the international community, including our own, does not forget the people in the north simply because television coverage is centred on Mogadishu, I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I undertake to keep a personal eye on that aspect.

I was speaking about the arrival of UN security forces. I welcome the arrival in Somalia of the first detachment of UN troops—Pakistanis—to secure the port and the airport. Securing the port is crucial, because the volume of supplies that can be taken in by air, however well publicised, is small compared to that which can be taken in by sea if the port is functioning properly, when it is all in harbour. The trouble is that the goods are looted on the dockside, and to some extent the port has been in the hands of protection gangs. I hope that the arrival of the UN's Pakistani forces will bring that situation to an end.

To those who say that it is simply a matter of bringing in a lot of UN forces as soon as possible—the Security Council has voted for an extra 3,000 troops to go—and of their fighting their way in, I point out that that would completely interrupt the humanitarian effort. That is why it is necessary to introduce more forces into other parts of the country than Mogadishu. I do not doubt that, but it must be done in a way that enables humanitarian efforts to continue rather than disrupt them. That point was strongly made to me by Ambassador Sahnoun, who is the Secretary-General's representative in Mogadishu. In my view, he is a wholly remarkable man—brave and wise. His judgment of what is happening in the country is one to which we must always pay close attention.

I do not doubt, not just because of the collapse of the state but of the whole system and society in Somalia, that the task of rebuilding the country—not just of feeding the children—after the crisis has passed will rest with the international community for some years to come.

I have spoken too long, and I apologise to the House. I have tried to deal with interventions, but I will now cut short my remaining remarks, except to say this. In all such situations, people look to the UN and occasionally to regional agencies and to others that can help, such as the European Community. The UN is seriously at risk of overloading. Its Secretary-General made that clear, and it is obvious from much that has been going on in New York this week. That is because of the impulse that everyone feels that something must be done. The implications are huge.

The best way of preventing demands on the UN from getting out of hand—whether one is talking of peacekeeping forces, demands on member states, or money—is to practise preventive diplomacy. I hope that one day the CSCE will be effective in the prevention of conflict throughout Europe, but the UN will still be crucial. Preventive diplomacy is quicker, and brings more help to people about to be embroiled in conflict than the most successful peacekeeping or peacemaking operation that follows the outbreak of violence. That is why I encourage the UN Secretary-General to make more use of the powers given to him in article 99 of the charter.

The international community must get involved earlier as crises develop. We must make more far-sighted efforts to avert crises—and if that fails, to prevent a crisis from escalating and spreading. The international community must learn to be more coherent and serious. That is why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister called a summit meeting of the Security Council in January. The solving of problems that have their roots in centuries past is a slow, frustrating and dangerous business. We do not have all that time when crises arise. We must learn fast and absorb new lessons quickly. As the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Madden) said in his point of order, this subject, in all its aspects, is one to which the House will return from time to time. I know of no subject more important.

I thank the Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs for his kind remarks about my appointment. I hope that he does not find himself this afternoon appointed as Secretary of State for National Heritage.

There is an old adage about diplomats, in which they are described as honest men who are sent abroad to lie for their countries. That description cannot be applied to the Secretary of State—though I might apply the first half of it to him, if not the second. I would describe the right hon. Gentleman as a man who can effectively and comprehensively tell one to go to hell and make one look forward to the journey. That was reflected in the right hon. Gentleman's speech to the House today.

It is a privilege for me to hold my present responsibilities and to speak for Labour on foreign and commonwealth affairs. My present role takes me back to where I began in the early 1970s, when I worked in a modest capacity for James Callaghan—first in opposition and then in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. When he became Prime Minister in 1976, I was fortunate to work for him at 10 Downing street, before joining my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) at the Department of Energy, which also involved many European and wider international issues.

I value all that experience. Although much has changed since those days, I was surprised that many of the younger people around at that time are now in senior positions in Britain and in other countries. I was surprised also to receive many letters containing good wishes from them, following my appointment to the shadow Cabinet by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition. It is clearly somewhat easier to make progress to the top in the diplomatic world than it is in the world of politics.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) also gave me some advice in a tour d'horizon, courtesy of The Independent, for which I thank him. I realise that my appointment is a great challenge and that I have much to learn. In my work during the 1970s with the United Nations on Cyprus and in central and southern Africa—Zimbabwe and Namibia—I found that there are no easy solutions to complex and endemic international difficulties of the kind that the Secretary of State described this morning. There are no easy ends to conflicts or brutal civil wars. I believe profoundly—I know my view is shared by my right hon. and hon. Friends—that we live in an ever more interdependent world in which not just continental but intercontinental, indeed global, co-operation is essential for peace, security and more effective and more equitable relations between north and south.

Events being debated in the House today illustrate graphically the need for improved policies and arrangements, particularly, as the Foreign Secretary said, in respect of the United Nations. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has had some interesting and rather surprising things to say about the UN recently. I shall return to them later. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I shall deal first with events in the territories of the former Yugoslavia. I understand that, for good reasons, the Prime Minister is anxious to leave the Chamber. He was kind enough to write to me to tell me that he would have to leave and I take no offence at his departure.

The appalling series of human conflicts, human degradation, deceit—there has been much deceit—and racial and religious hatred in the republics of the former Yugoslavia continue to shock Europe and the rest of the world. I acknowledge that there are difficulties, but I have to observe that events have not always been handled well by the EC or, indeed, by the Foreign Secretary in his role as president during the past few months.

We support the aims and conclusions of the London peace conference, although the appointment of Lord Owen was regarded as somewhat eccentric by my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself—he is known for many qualities, but not as a mediator. Indeed, he has balkanised a few political parties himself, but of course we wish him well. We realise that, in his work with Cyrus Vance, he has an important role to play.

We support the deployment of British troops under UN auspices. They have our good wishes in the difficult and dangerous tasks before them and our good wishes for a safe eventual return home.

We support the excellent work of Mrs. Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in tackling the largest refugee crisis in Europe for decades. We support wholeheartedly the mandatory United Nations sanctions against Serbia. Those commitments do not mean, however, that we endorse the Government's record or that we are uncritical of the Government.

The EC has not been evenhanded in its response to requests for recognition by the republics. The premature recognition of Croatia, in which Britain acquiesced following pressure from Germany, was and remains in marked contrast to the refusal to recognise Macedonia. That was despite the fact that the Badinter commission found that, while Macedonia and Slovenia met the requirements for recognition, Croatia did not. The repercussions of these confused decisions also led to uncertainty about the security of Bosnia, of which the Serbs and Croatians took ruthless advantage. They continue to do so. We have learnt from the press today that President Tudjman's forces have consolidated their hold over parts of independent Bosnia. We condemn that without reservation. We condemn the continuing violence in Bosnia and the appalling practice of ethnic cleansing.

The joint United Nations and EC London peace conference in August agreed a framework for a negotiated peaceful settlement, which is more urgent now than ever. We support the objectives of that agreement. The Foreign Secretary rightly ruled out military solutions to these complex problems, at least for the moment, but he and his European colleagues have got us into the worst of all possible worlds. The only realistic alternative to military intervention is effective implementation of the United Nations mandatory sanctions, particularly against Serbia and, perhaps, in the developing circumstances, against Croatia. We all know that the Community has been lax when giving effect to United Nations decisions about sanctions. It is weeks since the Romanian ambassador told us on the BBC of the Danube being an open waterway to Serbia. We know that convoys cross the Greek frontier carrying supplies into Serbia. It was with sadness that we learnt recently—I do not know whether it is verifiable, but it was widely reported—that the Iranians, under the guise of humanitarian aid, are flying armaments into Bosnia.

If we are to resolve such problems or to have some significant effect on them without resorting to military intervention, sanctions have to be made to work. We need much more effort from the Foreign Secretary in his role as president in the Community and from the Community as a whole to give effect to UN decisions. We support the call for a cessation of armed conflict in Bosnia, the immediate lifting of the sieges of towns and cities, the international supervision of heavy weapons, a ban on all military flights and the identification of all armed units. We want a massive increase in humanitarian aid and more effective delivery of it. We want all detention camps to be closed at the earliest practical opportunity.

My hon. Friend will recall that, during the recess, he met my constituent Mr. Abdul Malida and a delegation of community represen-tatives from the midlands who gave him a copy of a video recording Mr. Malida had taken of horrific scenes in Bosnia. My hon. Friend knows that Mr. Malida took £30,000-worth of goods to Bosnia to distribute to people in real need. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should put much greater emphasis on how humanitarian aid is being co-ordinated to save constituents such as Mr. Malida the risk to their lives of flying to the area to disperse aid themselves?

I accept my hon. Friend's point, but I am sure that humanitarian aid is welcome from wherever it comes. My hon. Friend's constituent has made an effective and practical contribution. I, too, was horrified by the scenes on the video tape made during his stay in Bosnia.

We want the mandatory sanctions against Serbia to be enforced rigorously by more effective monitoring of river traffic on the Danube and by more effective monitoring of the states bordering Serbia. The Government and the Community have failed properly to implement those decisions and they have just to work harder at it.

It is clear that fighting has continued on all sides. The UN peace conference must assert its aims more strongly. An enduring and peaceful solution must ensure that internationally recognised borders are fully respected and that no gain can be achieved by force. Any solution must be based on human rights and ethnic and religious pluralism, not some division of Bosnia which is a state in its own right, recognised and a member of the UN. Its integrity must be upheld.

It is vital that peace be established before the belligerents extend their war into Kosovo and perhaps even into Macedonia which, as some of my hon. Friends have said, might happen. Europe again—the British presidency, the Foreign Secretary acting through the United Nations and with the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and NATO—must do all in its power to end the potentially explosive circumstances that prevail in Kosovo and Macedonia.

Macedonia is surely entitled to recognition by, and guarantees of its integrity from, the international community. I know that there is a dispute and that Greece is, apparently, blocking this in the European Community because of a dispute about the name, but we are surely not going to let an argument about the name of a territory lead to our allowing the situation to descend into conflict and war, which could spread throughout the Balkans. It would be outrageous if that were allowed to happen. Therefore, I urge the right hon. Gentleman to act in his role as president to resolve the problems about the recognition of Macedonia.

I share the concern about the situation in Kosovo. The United Nations and the European Community should get monitors into Kosovo now. As the late John F. Kennedy once said:

"Lofty words cannot construct alliances or maintain them. Only concrete deeds can do that."

If we are to resolve the dangerous circumstances that exist in Kosovo and Macedonia, we need action now. I urge that upon the Secretary of State. Mr. Panic should be committeed to guarantees for the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo now. The record shows, sadly, that President Milosevic is unlikely to give such guarantees. The majority Albanian population, for example, has not been able to attend schools and universities for more than a year. Autonomy for Kosovo has been severely eroded. The United Nations and the European Community should intervene now to prevent conflict, which would inevitably send refugees into Albania and Macedonia, countries which could not remotely cope with an influx of people. Further serious unrest could easily involve Greece.

In May, the United Nations voted for mandatory economic sanctions. I emphasise yet again, before I move on to other matters, that the Secretary of State and the British Government, in the role of presidency, have a major responsibility in the European context to see that that United Nations resolution is given real effect. I understand that some people are calling for a relaxation of sanctions against Serbia. I say that there should be no such relaxation until the Serbians use their undoubted influence in Bosnia to help to bring about a ceasefire.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that in all three of the tragic cases that we are discussing this morning, there are individuals—the so-called political and military leaders—who have committed grave crimes against humanity in the name of state policy? Is it not time that the United Nations conferred criminal jurisdiction on the International Court of Justice so that these individuals will know that if and when they are caught they will be brought to justice and personally punished for their crimes?

We certainly support moves through the United Nations to establish war crimes procedures so that people acting in the barbaric and inhman ways to which the hon. Gentleman refers are held to account when they are brought to book.

Will the Secretary of State persuade his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in the coming round of inevitable cuts following the crisis in our economy not to cut our aid programme or to reduce support, in particular for the aid work that is going on not only in Bosnia but in Iraq, which I shall come to later, and certainly not in Somalia? Will he ensure that the programme that Mrs. Ogata is developing to deal with the huge refugee crisis will have the full support of Her Majesty's Government? And will the Government respond generously to any further requests for cash and material aid that Mrs. Ogata may make? I understand that she is likely to do just that. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will respond effectively and generously on behalf of Britain. Again I say that we have a particular responsibility in these matters during the term of our presidency of the European Community.

I believe that Parliament should have been recalled some weeks ago to discuss these issues. In particular we wanted to discuss the decision to deploy British troops. Some important questions need clarification. It is interesting that there have been, I believe, 17 occasions since 1939 when the House has been recalled to discuss emergencies or crises of one kind or another and that eight of those occasions have involved foreign affairs. It was remiss of the Government to postpone or, at first, to reject the request of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition for the recall of Parliament before now.

What are the objectives of the United Nations in the deployment of our troops? The right hon. Gentleman had something to say about that. I hope that his right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence does indeed keep to the commitment that he will expand upon it when he replies to the debate. Will the operation, in effect, be under NATO control? Who will be in command? Who will take overall charge? There certainly appears to have been considerable confusion so far about the current deployment, under United Nations auspices, in Bosnia. Are the rules of engagement absolutely clear to our commanders? My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) will wish to go into more detail about these matters before the Secretary of State for Defence replies to the debate. Nevertheless, I hope that we shall have very clear replies to these important questions.

My hon. Friend mentioned the use of NATO forces. The Foreign Secretary also mentioned the use of certain NATO forces. Does my hon. Friend agree that the deployment of NATO forces outwith the territories defined in the North Atlantic treaty would be a grave violation of articles 4 and 5 of that treaty and that such a radically rearranged role would require the sanction, the support, of all the member state Parliaments?

It is for clarification of these questions that I am asking the Secretary of State to reply. I do not know the answer to my hon. Friend's question and I am not going to pretend that I do, but I know that it is an important question to ask. That is why I have asked it. I understand that although these forces will be from NATO, they will be under the command of the United Nations, but we need to have that question clearly answered in the course of this debate.

I emphasise again our absolute support for all British personnel involved, and our hopes and good wishes for peace and a safe return home, but the reality is—again I quote the late President John F. Kennedy—that

"Peace does not rest in charters or covenants. It lies in the hearts and minds of people."

Sadly, it does not yet lie in the hearts and minds of many people in war-torn Bosnia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia. Nor, indeed, does peace lie in the hearts and minds of the people of Somalia, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said. We have historic links, particularly with the north of that country.

I support the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) in seeking an assurance, which I was pleased to see the Secretary of State give, that people in the north of Somalia will not be ignored as the humanitarian aid programme develops. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) has just returned from Somalia. An earlier visit was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington). Their graphic reports of a lawless, broken country make desperate reading. Their praise for the heroic work of the non-governmental organisations is unstinting and their condemnation of the failure of the international community to act much earlier in the case of Somalia is, frankly, damning.

There is considerable feeling in Britain and beyond that the European Community and the United Nations have been far too slow to respond to the developing tragedy in Somalia. Even now, their efforts are insufficient to make a significant or early impact on the nature and scale of the problems. Hundreds of people die daily while food that is already in Mogadishu cannot be more effectively distributed because of armed clans and the complete absence of government at any level. The United Nations must deploy more troops in Somalia and more aid and support for non-governmental organisations, especially for the International Red Cross, should be urgently provided.

In the Horn of Africa, including Somalia, 23 million people face severe food shortages and starvation. In southern Africa the worst drought in living memory has devastated crops, affecting a further 18 million people. Given the huge need, it is a matter of grave concern that the European Community, of which Britain holds the presidency, and the Government are threatening cuts in next year's aid budget. As Oxfam and others have said, while African nations continue to be drained to pay off their debts, the G7, the IMF and the World bank again recently failed to agree measures to help write off some or all of that debt. For years, Europe's leaders have been promising to do something to tackle the problems of the third world and poverty, but somehow there always seems to be something more important to do. There is a widespread fear that if action is not taken soon to relieve debt and increase aid many more lives will be at risk and Africa will face decades of instability.

We should have a quite separate debate in Government time as soon as possible after the House resumes to discuss more fully aid and development, poverty, drought and famine, especially in Africa but elsewhere in the world. While the world must continue to bend its efforts to end the local wars which cause mass starvation in Somalia and elsewhere in Africa, we must look to South Africa's progress because that will eventually provide the key to progress and development throughout that continent. While the undoubted energy and resources of South Africa's people and its land remain locked in internal political struggle, they cannot be unleashed to thrust the economy forward. In that comparatively rich region of the continent, economic prospects are plummeting as the welcome political developments of two years ago regress into ever-greater violence.

The Government of South Africa were internationally applauded, too quickly by this Government, for their modest early conciliation, but they now simply demand too much from the still disenfranchised majority of black Africans. There is good news today about talks between the state president and Nelson Mandela. Those welcome talks are crucial to the multi-party Convention for a Democratic South Africa. For the ANC, Nelson Mandela is asking for movement on three key points. They are the release of people who are still in prison for alleged political offences, the fencing and securing of the hostels from which single migrant workers from the cities emerged to wreak violence on their neighbours, and the early banning of the carrying of dangerous weapons. He seeks that movement, and especially on the latter two matters, to prevent any repetition of what happened in Boipatong and Ciskei.

The hon. Gentleman has strayed on to South Africa. I do not criticise him for that, but I did not do it because I thought that it would be out of order. However, as he is in that territory I can tell him that I share his pleasure about today's news. Yesterday, I spoke on the telephone to Nelson Mandela and the South African Foreign Minister. Each explained the narrow difference between them at that stage on the issue of political prisoners. I am delighted that it has been resolved. We are backing the peace accords and the work of Mr. Goldstone, with whom I had a long talk in South Africa a few weeks ago, by sending people from this country and other European countries as monitors to support the peace accords and the new peace structures on the ground in the townships.

I am grateful for that intervention. It is clear that the right hon. Gentleman is actively involved and we appreciate that and applaud it. The Government have many channels through which to urge President de Klerk to move more swiftly on these crucial matters and I am pleased to learn that the channels are being used.

I shall now deal with the situation in the Gulf. I thank the Foreign Secretary for his letter about Paul Ride and Michael Wainwright and for his quick response to the representations by my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) about those two unfortunate gentlemen. I urge the Foreign Secretary to continue to do all in his power to seek their early release.

When I wrote to the Foreign Secretary in August, I expressed Labour's support for an air exclusion zone over southern Iraq with the object of giving some protection to the Shia Muslim communities of the marshes. I reiterate that support. The air exclusion zone introduced last year to protect the Kurds in northern Iraq was justified and successful. It had the authority of UN Security Council resolution 688 as well as the justification of general humanitarian protection. The zone was rightly given wide all-party support and, as the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner recently stated in his report that a major further series of threats to the Shias was imminent, the same action is clearly in order.

I also make clear our position about any proposed military attacks on ground targets in Iraq. Such attacks cannot be justified and should not be made unless and until the United Nations Security Council has considered and approved them in advance—if they are necessary at all. We certainly make it clear to the House and to the United States of America that we will not support any adventurism in Iraq by President Bush in aid of his re-election.

Finally, I shall deal briefly with what the Foreign Secretary said about the United Nations. It is clear that the UN is overloaded and that Britain is nowhere near meeting the United Nations target for aid programmes. It is also clear that the Conservative Government's contributions to many multilateral agencies of the United Nations are lower in real terms now than they were in 1979. Hopes of a new world order have not been fulfilled and many people, including the Opposition, place more and more demands on the United Nations.

The Foreign Secretary said that the UN should have an imperial role. No phrase could be more calculated to offend the non-aligned countries of the third world. He quickly changed the phrase and spoke instead about good old-fashioned diplomacy when he spoke at the UN. He should have used such diplomacy much earlier this summer in his relations with Dr. Boutros-Ghali, and if he had perhaps an unseemly and unhelpful row could have been avoided. The United Nations needs restructuring, but, above all, it needs more finance and more personnel. Many millions of dollars are outstanding in contributions, principally, I regret to say, from the United States. If the Foreign Secretary wants the UN to work more effectively, as we do, he should ensure that it has adequate resources and should give it more support and help so that it can more effectively tackle the important tasks that we are discussing.

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Long after the circumstances that give rise to the personal statement that is to be made are forgotten, people will surely ask how, on Monday, Pitchford hall, an almost unique 16th century timber-framed house, was allowed to come under Christies' hammer. During this personal statement, may we have a personal explanation of why—

Order. The hon. Gentleman should wait until we have heard the statement. I have taken his point.

Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I have attended many personal statements; explanations are in order. Why was the advice of Lord Rothschild and of the National Trust—

Order. I respect the hon. Gentleman as a longstanding Member of the House, but he must respect the views of the House, too. He is not putting a point of order to me; he is simply making a statement, and I cannot hear it. The House and I are ready to hear the personal statement.

rose—

Order. I am asking the hon. Gentleman to let the House proceed and to hear the personal statement.

rose—

Order. I am on my feet. I ask the hon. Gentleman to respect the Chair and the views of the House.

I should like to thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for your courtesy in permitting me to make a personal statement. I apologise to those who are engaged in a serious debate on real tragedies in the world for interposing my altogether rather smaller matter, but I thought it right, having resigned, to give an account of myself to the House, rather than doing a round of press conferences.

I want to make it clear to my colleagues and Members of the House that, while I have my regrets, this is not a sad moment for me. After what my family and I have been through over the past two months, it is with almost a sense of relief that I make this statement. There were times during that period when one wondered whether one was living in Ceausescu's Romania rather than John Major's Britain, with bugged telephone calls and the other things that came out.

I want to make it clear to the House that I resigned for what I hope the House will agree was the best of reasons. I could not expect my colleagues in government or Parliament to put up with more of the ceaseless flow of stories about me in the tabloid press. Having grown heartily sick of my private life myself. I could hardly expect others to take a more charitable view.

When the first of this stuff started to appear in July, I made it clear that I was willing to resign from the Government. The Prime Minister, who has been a constant friend and has shown his personal qualities to the full throughout, decided not to accept my resignation, and that was the view of my colleagues. That offered me the opportunity to do two further months in my Department —an opportunity which I shall never regret having—in which we were able to do some important work on the Green Paper on the BBC, preparation for the national lottery Bill and so on. From then on, I regarded myself as, in effect, the servant of the Government and of the party and believed that if the time came when my presence was an embarrassment, that was the time to go, and the time to go was yesterday.

To those who think that I could have resigned sooner, I say that it was legitimate for the Prime Minister and other senior colleagues to take the view that in this day and age—sorry and distressed though I was at the revelations of this affair, and despite how cheap and sordid it must have looked—this was not a reason for a Cabinet Minister to resign.

Inevitably, there were other stories as it became clear that this matter would not be allowed to rest. I am glad to be able to leave office with its having been made clear that there has been no breach of ministerial rules. That is not to say that people are not entitled to challenge my judgment on the other issues that have been raised. I have to accept that, in the jobs that we do, one has to take a view and I do not resent the fact that some say that they would have taken a different view, just as others, in the same situation, would have done the same as me. It is clear that there is no question of impropriety, and I hope that I can leave office with that fact clearly established.

It will be for others to decide the rights and wrongs of this business. I certainly was the author of my own misfortune, which permits me to make this statement today. Perhaps of all the many good, bad and indifferent things that have been said to me, the one comment that I prefer was from the friend who said to me, "There is no self-pity". We make our decisions and must accept responsibility for what we do, and I can assure colleagues that there is no more heavy responsibility than laying down a burden of office that one enjoys in order to take responsibility for one's actions.

It will be for others to decide the role of the media. I have always been very relaxed about the media and have never taken the view that statutory interventions would be the answer. To be fair, most journalists and newspapers have behaved in the professional manner that one would expect in the circumstances in which they found themselves. Some hon. Members have been through the experiences that I and my family—who have been a tower of strength throughout all this, particularly my wife—have been through, but it has been an illuminating episode for me. Endless hordes of people appeared not only outside my home but outside the homes of relatives, friends and acquaintances. Extraordinarily offensive things were said in the context of those visits, and a lack of respect was shown for age and infirmity when pressing the point home. Legions of cameramen took 10 or 12 pictures knowing that none would appear and rushed around as if they were in a Rambo film, banging against the side of the car, and even stayed outside our house last night until the wee small hours, long after it was obvious that all we were trying to do was get a good night's sleep.

Perhaps that is the way in which an alternative criminal justice system, run by the media, should work, but when the criminal justice system, which we have all played our part in creating, was established, it had checks and balances and principles of fairness. Some will want to reflect on chequebooks being waved for stories, however lurid, on people being offered at the beginning of a conversation, "We would like to talk to you; we will make it worth your while", and on bugged telephone calls, which we now have to accept. That does not apply only to me. I should not play any part in that because I would be parti pris. I was determined on leaving office, just as when I held it, never to allow my own experiences to interpose themselves, but I think that they are relevant and interesting.

It is a paradox that, as the BBC said today, some tabloids—and it is only some—have expressed unre-strained glee at what has happened because of the sense that they have exercised power, but the issue is whether they exercise power with responsibility. The paradox is that the only basis on which this could be justified is that a greater public good is thereby being served. But can anyone explain the paradox that in serving a greater public good one is entitled to bug and buy and abuse and use methods that are, therefore, themselves amoral or at best morally neutral? At some point the House will have to consider that issue.

I do not want to detain the House much longer, but I have two or three further points. The first is that I have had 11 years as a Minister. I have thoroughly enjoyed them. I have been fortunate in that I have served in many interesting Departments, some of them in the cockpit of party-political debate and some of the more interesting ones giving me the opportunity to work with colleagues in all parts of the House on legislation that was important, relevant and non-partisan. I think of the Broadcasting Act 1990, the Children Act 1989 and the work on the misuse of drugs. I shall treasure these 11 years. My great sadness is that having had the opportunity to establish the Department of National Heritage, I will not now have the chance to carry on with that task, but I blame no one but myself for that.

Amidst the welter of charge and counter-charge, the one thing this morning that is of great comfort to me is the extraordinarily nice things that have been said by the people who have worked with me in my Department and by the interest groups that I have tried to serve. There is no doubt that I have had a genuine passion for what we have been trying to do in the Department, and, although it is entirely my own fault, I deeply regret that I shall not be able to carry on that work. In one of his last songs John Lennon wrote the following line which is always relevant to all of us:

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

As to the future, I hope and intend to be an active Member of the House. I intend to continue to serve the interests of my constituents. The people of Putney have been kind enough to increase my majority at each of the past four elections. They have stuck by me through this sorry mess, and I owe it to them at least to redouble my efforts on their behalf. That is what I shall endeavour to do as I try to fit in with the life and work of the House as best I can.

I should like to tell colleagues and friends here that last night, coming into the Division Lobbies to vote, I was offered tremendous acts of friendship by Members on both sides of the House. The House is at its best on these occasions, and that certainly made me feel a lot better about myself after what has happened.

Finally, as I leave the warmth of Government for the icy wastes of the Back Benches I want everyone to know that there is precedent for this: Captain Oates was born and raised in my constituency.

I call Mr. King—[Interruption.] Order. I ask hon. Members who are leaving to be kind enough to do so more quietly so that we can hear the next speaker.

I rise to speak for the first time in 17 years from the Back Benches in these rather extraordinary circumstances. It is traditional not to intervene in personal statements, but I should like to add, as a former colleague of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), that it was with the greatest sadness that I heard the news of the past 24 hours. I entirely endorse his comments on the exceptional tributes that have been paid to him by many in the arts world for the work he was seeking to do. These may be icy wastes, but there are some friendly faces here on the Back Benches and I assure him that the journey that he is about to make is not an entirely disastrous one.

The motion on the Adjournment concerns British support for the United Nations in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia. I am surely not the only hon. Member who believes that that list is capable of significant extension in the months and years ahead. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said in his important review, we have arrived at the end of the cold war, a period in which the super-powers imposed discipline on their client states using both acceptable and unacceptable means. Those client states made up a considerable sector of the world. All that has now gone. The Soviet Union has imploded into separate republics, and the whole system of client states that it supported has disappeared. It is no coincidence that we are debating some of its former client states today. All of them depended to some extent on Soviet support in the past.

As this system of client states has collapsed, the United States has understandably imposed a limit on its willingness to become involved—it has no desire to become the world's policeman. That, in turn, has introduced a role for the United Nations—a role formerly inhibited by veto throughout our life times but now, since Iraq and due to subsequent developments, full of new responsibilities.

What should the UN's role be in future? What should our contribution to it be? The United Nations can authorise and support internal intervention in the affairs of disorderly countries, but when it does so, how should it be done and who will carry it out?

I was involved to some degree in discussions of the possible military intervention in Iraq and subsequently in Yugoslavia. Such military intervention, if contemplated, must always be seen as the last resort. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is always the first to emphasise the essential and demanding role of diplomacy, since such conflicts must if possible be solved without military intervention. One of the less welcome by-products of the superb professionalism displayed by the military in the Gulf war was that the skill, speed and success of the liberation of Kuwait and the ending of Iraqi aggression encouraged in some minds too ready a feeling that we can always call on the military to solve our problems. The Ministry of Defence is just across Whitehall—it can deal with the problem. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was always sympathetic to my warnings against such a view.

Today we again face the difficult decision whether to put young men and women, to use President Bush's phrase from the Gulf war, in harm's way. About 30,000 of our fellow citizens, men and women, are in Northern Ireland helping to protect the community, to keep the peace and to prevent the success of terrorism.

Two years ago we sent 45,000 of our young men and women into Iraq as our contribution to the United Nations effort there. Subsequently I had the opportunity, with my hon. Friend the Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay), to see at first hand the remarkable humanitarian effort carried out by 1,000 Royal Marines, providing air cover and helicopter support in Operation Haven. I am proud that that effort saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kurds who would not be alive today had we not been prepared to take the difficult decision to do something against which many arguments could have been advanced. It stands to the eternal credit of our country that we played such a positive part in that operation.

We all take pride in the success of Operation Haven. It is a sombring and interesting thought that our Jaguar aircraft have now flown for more than a year from the Incirlik air base in Turkey. They are continuing to provide that air cover and to impose a no-fly zone in northern Iraq, as undoubtedly they should. Although the situation is far from perfect, we have, in a real sense, created, through the removal of Saddam Hussein's additional asset, a more level playing field in northern Iraq from which the Peshmerga can more readily defend their Kurdish countrymen. I welcome also what is, for obvious reasons, no longer called Operation Southern Comfort but Operation Jural—the sending of the Tornados to the south similar to Operation Provide Comfort in the north. This is helping with the problems of the Shias in the marshes and I welcome the Opposition's support for that.

Those have been welcome interventions. They continue and they have no fixed time limit. I could not advise the House with such knowledge as I have when those efforts may be withdrawn. The great difficulty in such peacekeeping activities is whether one can ever get out; all peacekeeping activities involve such a warning.

By any military standards, the situation in the former Yugoslavia is a textbook example of what Britain should not become involved in. It is difficult to imagine a more appallingly difficult situation. There are no clear objectives. There is every prospect of getting sucked into an open-ended commitment, starting with humanitarian aid and the escorting of convoys and released prisoners from the detention camps—all the most worthy and desirable objectives. Yet there is the greatest risk of a spread of the conflict.

In 1964 we went into Cyprus and we are still there. The history of the United Nations peacekeeping forces in different corners of the world, whether still on the peaceline in Korea, whether the UN interim force in Lebanon or in Sinai and across its other activities, shows the great difficulty of withdrawal. An understandable intervention in this debate has been the warning that after Bosnia, what next? Reference was made to the predictable and the predicted Bosnian conflict and now Kosovo, then the real risk of an implosion in Macedonia involving Serbia, Albania, Greece and Bulgaria. We know that the potential risk is great.

We also run the real risk, as we know sadly all too well, not just from Northern Ireland, of being accused of taking sides, of going in for one purpose and then finding that our purposes are disbelieved—

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I would rather not. I understand why the hon. Gentleman seeks to intervene, but I want to be brief and not to abuse my situation.

There is also the clearest possible risk of casualties. To use another analogy with Northern Ireland—the House has been horrified at the suffering and the real tragedy of Northern Ireland—it is a sobering thought that already in what was Yugoslavia within six months three times more people have died that in 25 years of trouble in Northern Ireland. The scale of the viciousness and fanatical hatred has been there on our television sets for all of us to see. The sad news today of four more injuries to the UNPROFOR is a clear warning of the dangers that are run. As the Opposition spokesman said, we see in United Nations activity the risk of potential confusion of command, the difficulty of establishing clear rules of engagement and, as casualties happen, as sadly I fear they will, the difficulty of presenting them to the country to explain what national interest there is in our involvement.

There is also the difficulty in explaining why there are so many abstainers from the initiative. Germany's situation is understood. The problem of its constitution and its past involvement in the territories make this a particularly difficult matter. The United States, we know, does not feel that this is an area in which to make a contribution of the same significance at this time.

Those were my views, which I sought to ensure were represented clear in government. I was clear, on the advice that I received, of the great dangers that we faced. Yet I always said that there could come a time when we could no longer walk by on the other side. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary used precisely that phrase in his speech.

The scale of man's inhumanity to man that we have witnessed in the appalling incidents introduces an element in which it is no longer acceptable for us as a leading member of the European Community, holding the presidency at the present time, as a permanent member of the Security Council and with our role in the United Nations to say that we shall simply stand back and do nothing.

It can be argued, perhaps some of my right hon. and hon. Friends will do so, that all the disadvantages that I have clearly rehearsed, of which I am not unaware—I know that my right hon. Friends are acutely aware of them —should not be overlooked. But government is about taking difficult decisions and taking responsibility, no matter how difficult and awkward that may be.

I believe that there is a national interest. Obviously there is a clear national interest by virtue of the role of the United Nations and the importance of the United Nations making a contribution and our being a willing and strong supporter of the United Nations in its work. But there must come a time when the conflicts spread, when we see the risk of the brush fire that has spread already from the initial problems of Serbia and Croatia, then involving Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, and the problems in the ex-Soviet republics, when we see the risks of this involving Slav and Muslim, Turk and Greek, when our past history shows that we will inevitably at some stage be sucked in, that we still have a national interest in trying to intervene in any way that we can, first, because there is a moral case for humanitarian aid, but, above all, to do everything that we can to try to prevent further conflict.

rose—

Will the hon. Gentleman excuse me? I want to make progress.

If we ask our young men and women to stand in harm's way, we must insist on certain conditions. The first is that it must be right that we work under United Nations auspices and authority. We have a duty to see that we have the clearest possible rules of engagement that are fair to our forces. They must have the authority and the opportunity, without qualification, for self-defence, and self-defence interpreted not in the most immediate and narrow way of whether a weapon is being fired at them, but a sensible and flexible approach to the problem. We must ensure that they have the right scope. My right hon. Friend's decision, put to Cabinet, was to send a self-contained unit of some 1,800 men, with the Cheshires, the Warrior armoured personnel carriers and their own logistics. They would be self-contained with the very real intention that if the worst came to the worst they could look after themselves and would not be dependent on other, perhaps less adequate, elements of what may be a United Nations force.

There must be in that force the maximum contribution from the maximum number of nations. I have already referred to the abstainers—the no-shows in this situation. I note that we are proposing to send 1,800 men and I support the reasons for deciding on that figure. I note that the Canadians form the next largest force with 1,200, then the French with 1,100. The Benelux countries are sending smaller contributions. There must be maximum contribu-tions from the maximum number of countries. There must also be some rules about, or some opportunity to set, a time limit on the contributions of individual countries, and certainly of individual units.

I welcome the announcement in today's newspapers of the proposal to use, wherever possible, NATO structures and logistic systems that are already in place and operational. We owe it to our forces to ensure that they have the best possible support that we can give them. Above all, we owe it to them to accept that in no sense can we pretend that this is the solution. In asking them to undertake such a very dangerous task, we owe it to them to ensure that they go there in the knowledge that every possible effort is being made in the political and diplomatic areas to find a solution. I warmly support what the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said about sanctions. We must make those levers that are not military work in support of our forces.

It is as difficult a decision as Ministers could ever be asked to make. It is a sombre position. I do not think that any hon. Member is under any illusion about the dangers and the difficulties. We have all seen television pictures of the terrible horrors. In my judgment that we cannot simply stand by, I am also influenced by the fact that no one could fail to have been impressed by the fortitude of the people of Sarajevo and the many suffering such appalling hardships. This debate is taking place at the end of September and we know that, in the months ahead, those people face the prospect of falling temperatures, no water, probably no power and no heat. The risks to life, the possibility of death, the casualties and the suffering could be enormous.

Against that background, and within Europe, we have a responsibility to play our part. We must do what we can, but we must do it with the world. As we take this decision we pray for our forces as they undertake a challenging and vital task.

rose—

Order. I remind hon. Members that there is a 10-minute limit on speeches between now and 1 pm.

Like the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), I find this a timely debate. Like the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on his courtesy, although I cannot commend him on his brevity.

The debate is basically about the future role of the United Nations and the extent to which, in the new position, post-cold war, it can enable the international community to set standards of human rights and to move from peacekeeping to peacemaking by direct intervention in regional and national conflicts throughout the world. The Liberal Democrats are quite clear that we want the United Nations to develop such an interventionist role. As I have said a number of times in the House, we are also clear that the old precepts of non-interference in domestic affairs and the inviolability of borders must, in certain cases, be overridden in the interests of justice.

I shall begin with Somalia. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel), the former Liberal leader, was yesterday at a refugee camp on the northern Kenyan border with Somalia. It held about 45,000 people—about the population of Inverness, to put it in context. He was full of praise for the activities of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, which had gained control over a position which, until June, was horrific and involved countless deaths. Even in June they ran at about 60 a week, but now the figure is down to about 10. A corrugated iron hospital has been constructed to replace the tents.

My right hon. Friend reiterated our view that earlier intervention, post-President Barre, would have prevented a large-scale tragedy. It is impossible enough to handle the drought; it is even more difficult to handle the drought and the civil war. My right hon. Friend stressed the need to organise the purchase of arms from bandit groups in return for food and/or money, an approach which I commend to the Foreign Secretary. He even found a man with a British passport issued in 1957 in British Somaliland, which highlights the historical responsibility for the area that we share with the Italians.

It is tragic, but the appalling position in Somalia is only the beginning. The hon. Member for Copeland mentioned that. Civil war, drought and ecological disaster are resulting in famine not just in Somalia but in the whole of south-eastern Africa. In the Horn of Africa alone, 23 million people face severe food shortages. In addition to famine, drought and an enormous debt crisis, almost the whole of central and southern Africa faces a devastating AIDS epidemic, which will reach such a level that hardly a family will be unaffected by the end of the century.

Again, we agree with the hon. Member for Copeland that it is both wrong and shocking that, in the midst of all those crises, the Government are reportedly threatening to cut overseas aid still further. At a time when the United Kingdom holds the presidency of the European Community, there is a proposal to cut the Community's aid budget by £200 million. That would destroy the possibility of creating a much-needed emergency aid reserve to cope with disasters. Quite frankly, it is a scandal that during the 1980s the United Kingdom's aid disbursements have declined both absolutely and relatively. Our overseas aid should be approaching—or at least should be committed to reaching—0.7 per cent. of gross national product, rather than standing at just 0.27 per cent. More than anything, Somalia needs food and the European Community stores should be opened to it, together with active intervention to ensure distribution.

As the winter approaches in Iraq, the suffering of the Kurds and of the Shia Muslims in the south will become intolerable if there is not United Nations intervention. Again, for any aid programme to be successful a considerable increase in funding will be required. The Foreign Secretary may say that there are limits, and that is true—but it is a problem that we must all face. If we expect the United Nations to do more, the advanced countries must pay it more.

The international community's approach to events in what was Yugoslavia has been in marked contrast with its action in Iraq. As we heard from the right hon. Member for Bridgwater, attitudes are different. The House is aware that my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) and I went to the Serbian-controlled area of Bosnia last month at the invitation of the Bosnian Serbian leader, Dr. Radovan Karadzic. He invited us because he felt that we had been unfair in criticising the Serbs as the principal aggressors—although not the only aggressors —in the bloody war in Bosnia. We had said that they had used heavy weapons such as guns, tanks and rockets, which the Yugoslav national army had left them, to kill people indiscriminately in the great city of Sarajevo and also in Gorazde and Bihac. Our visit coincided with the revelations of the existence of appalling prison camps. We also saw a ghastly refugee collection point—it could not be called a camp—where men and women thrown out, or perhaps I should say cleansed out, of their homes gathered in the open without cover, sanitation or effective medical arrangements. I do not think that we have been unfair. We were on the heights above Sarajevo and we saw the guns.

We have been making those points for some time, as the Foreign Secretary knows. I shall quote again from a letter that I wrote to The Times in November 1991:

"At different times over the past months I have asked Douglas Hurd to consider urging the countries of the Western European Union. if they were unwilling, which I understand, to commit land forces"—

—the same problem was touched on today by the right hon. Member for Bridgwater—

"to consider a naval and aerial blockade. In the time scale, economic sanctions are both useless and as harmful to the attacked as to the attacker. He has refused. I think the time has come to think again…If I were in a decision-making position, I would say to the Serbs, 'We want a cease fire by midday tomorrow and if it doesn't happen aircraft will attack your positions round Osijek.'"

I think that action should have been taken then. It was certainly possible; indeed, it is still possible, although I accept that it would now be much more difficult. If action has been taken, Milosevic and the Serbs would have been compelled to comply. They rightly felt that no one had the will to stand up to them. We continually said that we would not use force, and anyone who tells a bully, "I shall never use force" allows him to let rip.

I was astonished to hear the hon. Member for Copeland refer to the over-early recognition of Croatia. I do not think that there was any alternative to the recognition of Croatia at the time.

Of course there was.

I do not agree.

The hon. Gentleman voted for it.

Yes, I did. As I have just said, I did not think that there was any alternative.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I only have three minutes left. Normally I would give way to the hon. Gentleman.

When my right hon. Friend and I returned from Bosnia and Serbia, we both wrote to Dr. Karadzic. He replied:

"We have undersigned the agreement with the UNPROFOR on the supervision of our heavy artillery. We have been taking many other steps to establish and reinforce the cease-fire and end this war."

We all know what has happened since: the war has not ended.

I have not much time left. Let me ask four quick questions. First, how safe is the UNPROFOR mandate? I am told that Tudjman is against extending it beyond the timetable. Secondly, Serb aircraft were flying this week. The Foreign Secretary said that no-fly zones were being considered, although only five or six weeks ago the Prime Minister said that the idea was impractical. What is going to happen?

Thirdly, little has been said about refugees. Will Britain reconsider its rejection of the quota arrangements, which are not fair to the countries nearest to the former Yugoslavia? Fourthly, like the hon. Member for Copeland and others, we are most concerned about the rules governing the involvement of our troops. I hope that the Secretary of State for Defence will make it clear what the rules of engagement are.

If we are to develop a global emergency system to anticipate and prevent conflicts such as those that we are now witnessing in Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia, we must develop the institutions within the United Nations to organise rapid negotiations and take rapid action. We need a global enforcement arrangement setting out clear rules for sanctions and, if necessary, military enforcement. We need the reinstatement of the United Nations military staff committee, which will require a good deal of money.

Those are large, difficult and costly objectives, but if we are to have a realistic new world order—which I am sure is the aim of hon. Members on both sides of the House—they are the objectives which we must pursue.

I accept immediately what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said in his peroration. He suggested that a common theme could be found in the tragic circumstances affecting Iraq, Somalia and Yugoslavia: the role of the United Nations in facing the challenges involved.

What are those challenges? I believe that they can be summed up in three areas of the work to which the UN is dedicated—preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and disaster relief. I feel that, in the countries we are discussing, preventive diplomacy must inevitably be seen as something which has been sadly missed in the past and to which we must now turn in seeking to prevent future tragedies on a similarly appalling scale elsewhere.

My concern is that the UN has been hampered, and is still being hampered, in its work in these countries, especially in peacekeeping and—above all—disaster relief. I believe that, in the past, there has been a failure to recognise the convergence of those two challenges. The evidence is clear. In Somalia we have 3,500 armed troops to protect essential supplies. The no-fly zone in Iraq is there to protect the Kurds, in implementing UN resolutions and in response to the report of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In Yugoslavia, the convoys of food and medical supplies and the work of the UN protection force in Bosnia show again the interrelationship between the military presence and disaster relief.

What can Parliaments do in such circumstances? I use the plural advisedly, and I refer to the work of Parliaments as well as to that of Governments. I know that the House will understand if I draw on consultations undertaken by Parliaments this month on a wide scale. Earlier this month, the IPU conference in Stockholm was dominated by the debate on the role of Parliaments in enhancing the work of the UN. I am also able to draw on the deliberations of the AIPO regional conference of ASEAN Parliaments, which was skilfully hosted by Indonesia and involved fellow-members from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand—as well as many other observer countries. The conference continues this week, and I returned from it yesterday, thanks to advice that I received from the pairing Whip.

At these conferences, important opportunities have been provided for many parliamentarians to take part in appropriate debate. It was interesting in this regard to note that 33 members of the European Parliament were active on this subject during the conference that is still proceeding in Indonesia.

I do not claim that I can speak for more than 100 Parliaments, but I can claim to have heard from their representatives, and I believe that there is widespread agreement on common themes. They can be summarised as follows. The first is the necessity for the United Nations to adapt and change in a new world situation. Those who have met the UN Secretary-General in recent months recognise the remarkable efforts that he has made to make the structure more effective. That has led to some difficult decisions, which have had a painful effect on, in many cases, long-serving members of the United Nations staff. However, it has also provided an opportunity to move away from some of the worst aspects of the bad old days, when, for example, communist trusties were appointed to the UN as part of the "Buggins' turn" principle. The new Secretary-General is clearly in the business of appointing those who are best qualified to carry out the work. In that regard, he deserves—and, I believe, is receiving—the support of the House and the Government.

Let me also say, on a personal level, that I much appreciate the Secretary-General's clear commitment to a strengthened relationship with parliamentarians. He is a former parliamentarian, and he understands the advantage of bringing a wider constituency to the work of the UN. Many of those who have spoken recognise that, in the matter of financial resources, Parliaments around the world have a key role to play.

It follows, therefore, that I strongly support what the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said about direct support for the UN, in the form of both finance and other resources. I want to add my voice to those that urge the debtors to pay their $1.8 billion dues, and I welcome the sharing of the load in regard to resources on the ground as evidenced recently by Japanese military support and by President Bush's commitment in his speech to the UN earlier this week to increase the UN peacekeeping role in consultation with NATO.

I also strongly support the general thrust of the Secretary-General's proposals in the new agenda for the UN—an agenda which covers preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and disaster relief. It follows the initiative taken by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in the Security Council summit in January. We should now consider how we can seek to implement the agenda. It is in that area of implementation that I must express some of my final anxieties. I am glad to see my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence in his place, because some of my chief concerns lie in his area of responsibility.

It is no secret that UN resources are stretched almost to breaking point. If I concentrate on disaster relief and mention it in a military context, it will not be news to my right hon. and learned Friend, who knows of the concern felt by many of us about how we can bring resources to bear earlier in the process. The history of recent events shows time and again that, in addition to its peacekeeping role, the military is inevitably drawn into disaster relief. I am anxious to trigger that process much earlier in the piece.

The United Nations has decreed that the 1990s should be the international decade for national disaster reduction. Recent events have shown that there is a convergence in which distinctions between natural and man-made disasters, and between peacekeeping and disaster relief are meaningless in the face of massive cries for help. The United Nations Secretary-General has invoked chapter 8 of the charter in urging geopolitical groups to provide military resources for peacekeeping and, by extension, for disaster relief on a regional basis. It is clear that much remains to be done if there is to be international agreement on the large-scale earmarking required to take full advantage of not only the military command structures, but the key infrastructure that they can provide, involving transport, telecommunications and medical resources—nobody does it better.

Surely, the time has come to set aside the old parrot cries about internal intervention and the presence of foreign troops. The presence of UN forces in blue berets, supported by Parliaments and Governments such as ours, should be universally welcomed in the fight for human survival. There has been a reluctance to do so in the past. Those who have tried to encourage that process have found a structural problem in terms of NATO, national resources and the UN command structures. I recognise some of the work that has been done to break down such problems, but there are still difficulties and a time lag. In addition, many people who already serve in our armed forces have written to me to say that they thirst to be involved in the new peacekeeping oppportunity and disaster relief work which is there for all to share. Outside, in a changing world there are many ex-military personnel, such as those who in their former communist role gave service to their state, who can be deployed to work to the world's mutual advantage.

I hope that we can seek further support for the breaking down of the various demarcations that make it difficult for us to respond, as I know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary would wish. It is not always easy. When resources are to be committed, budgetary considerations apply. But the scale of the human tragedy that we are discussing today—which is not confined merely to three areas—is huge. There is a potential threat in Angola and Cambodia, where the electoral process and the electoral observation required of United Nations are trembling on the brink of events that require the support and protection of the United Nations, and the support and resources from the House and the country. Therefore, I urge my right hon. Friend to throw his weight behind the process in which we can play a vital part.

The hon. Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) identified, as does the Order Paper, one of the common factors in the otherwise disparate societies of Bosnia, Iraq and Somalia —the vital new role expected of the United Nations. There is another common factor to all three completely different societies: guns and weapons. The level of arms has become part and parcel of the problems in each of the three territories. The other factor common to all three is the huge number of arms and weapons available to promote the conflict, alongside the terrible natural droughts and disasters facing societies such as Somalia.

I hope that the House will not mind if I take a trip down memory lane to when I was a Foreign Office Minister directly involved in the re-establishment and restoration of our diplomatic relations with Somalia after a breach of more than a decade in the 1960s and 1970s. Somalia does not fit into the concept of a nation state; it is a society of nomads who cross boundaries and whose views on life and society have not been traditionally confined by territorial lines. I do not know whether this is still true, but the Somali Government laid claim to territory in almost every one of its neighbours as a result of the historic, nomadic movements of its people.

In the 1960s and 1970s, some of the Somali leaders such as Siad Barre were caught up in the east-west rivalries. There was a scramble for Africa in the 19th century, and in the 20th century a new one emerged. It was a scramble for influence played out by the super-powers and east-west rivalries, of which Siad Barre and Somalia were part and parcel.

Somalia had become a client state of the Soviet Union, which built naval bases at Berbera and enthusiastically embraced the internal security system. Unfortunately for Siad Barre, the Soviet Union found another client next door, Mengistu in Ethiopia. The tragic consequence of that was that the most hated rivals of the Somalis became the neighbouring Ethiopians. Any society that neglects the hatreds of history does so at its peril. Such hatreds form the third factor common to all three territories under discussion today.

Siad Barre turned and sought to release himself from the power of the Soviet Union. He turned west and, in a variety of ways, sought to replace his relationship with the Soviet Union by his relationship with the west. He came to Britain and other countries but, sadly, he did not ask us for aid to replace the comprehensive aid programmes of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s—which were almost Cuban-style in the way that they helped to provide goods and then bought them. Instead, when the Soviet Union was thrown out, the production lines were stopped in their tracks. I visited a factory where the cans were still on the production lines, such was the speed and ruthlessness of the change. Siad Barre did not ask us for aid or support, but for more and more arms. We flirted with the policy as part and parcel of the drama and horrible excitement of re-establishing western influence in a territory formerly dominated by Soviet influence.

We are now wringing our hands in the House about the tragedy of a mixture of drought, war, bitterness and violence in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Somalia. However, those are the harvests reaped by indiscriminate arms sales through the international community. The western world sold arms to the Shah in the 1970s and to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. I understand that the Bosnian conflict is capable of being sustained irrespective of arms embargoes, due to the supply of huge quantities of arms to Yugoslavia before it fell apart.

The sale of arms is the oldest trade in the world, and nations and companies are inevitably part of it. We all know that it creates jobs and money, and provides influence. No one pretends that we can wave a magic wand and solve the problem. However, we should try to learn a couple of lessons from such a horrifying experience. The indiscriminate selling of arms by successive eastern and western Governments in the post-war world, leads to disasters as drastic as those that we are discussing today. We should work out how to apply the lesson that we have learnt.

One exciting factor of the way that the United Nations has been involved in Iraq is that it has sought, through the power and support of the international community, to dismantle the nuclear capacity of Saddam Hussein. It was one of the most vital breakthroughs in the concept of a United Nations role.

Again, we are struggling in Bosnia to try to corral the arms, which is how I think that the Secretary of State described it. Like everyone else, I find it difficult to watch helpless as people bombard the UN headquarters in Sarajevo. Something has to happen, something more has to be done and we could try to make this debate mean something more.

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of meeting Bishop Dinis of Mozambique. He is an Anglican bishop who has played a significant part in brokering what might be a ceasefire—as the churches in Mozambique have done—in another country which faces the terrible problems of drought and the most violent and evil of civil wars. I asked him what would happen if a ceasefire occurred and expected him to say that they would want more aid, seeds and so forth. He said, "Help us to get the guns in." He asked why we could not offer incentives for people to bring guns to be destroyed on the spot and to be given money and seeds in return. I told him that I could think of a thousand good ministerial reasons why that was not possible. I can well imagine the Overseas Development Administration funding the purchase of guns in Mozambique and can envisage the minutes flying back and forth. I thought that it was a hopeless concept.

However, if there were a ceasefire perhaps one could give incentives to people to stop carrying guns as a means of getting food—as the Secretary of State said—and to offer them an incentive to grow food in return for their guns and thus restore the natural activities of the countryside and villages. Perhaps a dramatic gesture—turning guns into ploughshares—is a meaningful solution in Somalia or Mozambique. That policy will only work if we can stem the flow of arms. That is the great lesson which we all must learn from the three territories that we are debating. All three have been the subject of some form of arms race during the past 20 years. We must try to establish a new international order, and part of that should surely include some control on the arms race and arms sales, which the world has so flagrantly abused with the result that we are reaping such a terrible harvest.

The House is considering three of the major catastrophe areas of the world, areas to which we shall have to pay great attention if disaster is not to occur. Each merits a speech, each merits a debate, but I am mindful of the 10-minutes rule and therefore propose to focus my few, brief remarks on Bosnia and on what is happening in the ex-Yugoslav republics. They probably present the greatest dangers of the three areas that we are considering and I welcome the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, when he said that this is a crisis for Europe and in Europe.

There has been a temptation for us to sit back and wash our hands of what is happening in Yugoslavia. Because it was a communist state for about 40 years and because it was different from the rest of Europe, there was a temptation for us to ignore it and to feel that we were sufficiently apart not to have to take an active role in events there. That would be abject folly. Yugoslavia is close to the heart of Europe, both geographically and historically. There is no question of our being able to ignore it, or being able to allow the appalling suffering being inflicted on its peoples without taking some part in bringing matters to a satisfactory and peaceful conclusion.

We have to do everything in our power to alleviate the suffering in Yugoslavia. We must ensure that United Nations relief aid supplies get through to the people who are besieged in so many parts of Bosnia Hercegovina. I agree with everything said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King). We must avoid the temptation to be dragged into a military peacekeeping role, which would lead to our troops becoming a target for the Croats, Serbs and Muslims. There is no question of our being able to take any party role for any one of those groups within Bosnia.

As hon. Members will recall, Bosnia consists of about 43 per cent. Serbs, 34 per cent. Croats and about 17 per cent. Muslims. All those people have an equal right to live in Bosnia, and many have been there for generations. The ethnic rivalry between the groups is hundreds of years old and no attempt at creating a unified country has yet succeeded or could succeed—except under Marshal Tito, who imposed it by force for about 40 years. It would be a grave error if the United Kingdom, the European Community or even the United Nations were to send a military force of such size or intent that we were also attempting to impose a military solution on the problems in Yugoslavia.

However, the crimes being committed against humanity in that country by all groups, not overwhelmingly by any one group—crimes against the hapless civilian population —cannot be allowed to pass without comment and censure by the international community. Nor do I believe that they can go unpunished in the long term. It will be difficult to bring those responsible to justice, but it must be a prime purpose for the Government and for the UN to ensure that at some time those responsible for perpetrating the outrages that we have seen on our televisions and in the video sent to hon. Members are brought to justice.

Many hon. Members may not have watched the video. It is a painful experience. To pick out one of the nastier scenes, a woman and her unborn baby, which has been ripped from her womb, have been left lying in the street and have bled to death. The story that goes with it is that a group of Serbian soldiers had had a bet on the sex of the baby, had ripped the mother open to find out and left the mother and child to die when the bet had been solved satisfactorily. The picture showed a mother and baby recently dead and having bled to death; I have no reason to disbelieve the story that went with it. It is one of countless horror stories coming from that part of the world. No pretence by the European Community to be able to impose and continue a civilised society can stand silent and aside in the face of such horror.

I welcome the military support being given to the aid convoys in Yugoslavia, without which I have no doubt that they would be unable to proceed. How much military aid can be given is a matter of balance. It is a question of how much can be given without running the risk that I mentioned of again turning the Balkans into a catalyst of European conflict and international involvement on a wider scale. My hon. Friends in the Government have got that balance about right. It will be a matter for constant review.

The Select Committee on Defence, which I have the honour to chair, met on Tuesday and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces and a team of advisers gave us answers to our questions. I am glad to be able to tell the House that that resolved many of the anxieties that I and my colleagues felt about what is happening in Yugoslavia. There remain problems to be solved, and I know that my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench are as conscious of the dangers that those problems present as I am.

The main problem that concerned us was over the terms of engagement and we received a good answer from my right hon. Friend the Minister. He assured the Committee that our troops would be able to defend themselves and that they would not be contained to returning like with like in so doing. If someone snipes at them they can use heavier return fire, if necessary, to secure their safety and that of their convoys. That is essential. It is not usual United Nations procedure and it is of vital importance that that freedom of action is given to the troops that we have sent.

I am keeping an eye on the clock, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I must share with the House several other outstanding problems to which I hope my right hon. Friend will turn his attention. The first is the great difficulties that we shall face because of the area that we have been given to cover —an area which contains two towns, Tuzla and Doboj, which are among the most dangerous parts of Bosnia being covered by United Nations aid. Last week United Nations representatives had still not made contact with the guerrilla leaders in that area. Doboj is Serb-held and Muslim attacked; Tuzla is Muslim-held and Serbian and Croatian attacked. For our troops to get the convoys through they will have to pass through not one but two war zones and will have to deal with a complex network of leaders both of Serbian forces and guerrilla forces at work. That will be a major diplomatic problem for the United Nations observers assisting us and for our military leaders there. I hope that we shall make certain that all necessary advance work is done before we commit any convoys into that area.

Secondly, the roads into that area are used by all the warring forces, and are likely to come under attack and be mined—not as a deliberate attack on United Nations representatives but as part of the internal struggle. Our people are bound to become involved in the differences of opinion between the warring factions. I fear that we shall find ourselves increasingly unpopular with all those involved in the fight.

I am worried, too, that the artillery available to the warring factions could be turned on our troops, and that we may not be adequately armed. We have mortars, Milan, and 30mm. cannon on the Scimitar. The fact remains that under heavy artillery attack we have no back-up or additional means of response. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence will keep closely in mind the need for adequate reserve forces to bring our people out if they get trapped under such an attack. I should like him to consider the possibility of sending to somewhere in the region a detachment of RAF or Royal Navy air command fighter planes, so that we could at least put in some kind of air cover if our people were pinned down and unable to get out.

We have been assured in evidence given to the Committee that the training given to the Cheshires and to the 9th/12th Lancers has been adequate—and I have no doubt that it was, but it was short and rushed, and I doubt whether it will bring them up to the level of ability that I should like to see in an ideal world. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will make certain—

Order.

It is all too clear that post-cold war talk of a new world order was premature, to say the least. Indeed, this debate, brought about by events in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia, and by the world's continuing difficulties in dealing effectively and promptly with them, is a fair measure of the precarious and complex nature of any such operation.

Yet at the Rio Earth summit and the new world order seminar in Tunisia, which I attended, it was clear that many in the third world see the opportunity for positive change. They look to the developed world for commitments to advance peace and security, development, respect for international law and human rights. The question remains: are we living up to their, and our own, expectations?

Let there be no misunderstanding. If the United Nations is to take an enhanced role in world affairs—an even-handed role sensitive to the needs of both the rich and poor nations and one which commands genuine respect and support, both political and financial—the part that the UN and its member states play in events in Iraq, Somalia and the former Yugoslavia will be a major factor in achieving that.

Throughout the crisis in Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina and Croatia, the Government have shown incompetence and prevarication. Holding the presidency of the EC, they could and should have been leading efforts to tackle the problems. Furthermore, the initial efforts of the EC and the UN at sanctions against Serbia were accorded insufficient importance. At no time has there been adequate monitoring of their implementation. Allegation after allegation has come to light regarding sanctions busting. Supplies, including oil, have been regularly transported by the Danube to Serbia; the former Soviet Union has been a source of supply throughout the conflict. According to The Guardian's investigations, over $10 million worth of trade has entered Serbia through Cyprus, including food, lorries and machinery.

Where are the results of the monitoring announced by the Foreign Secretary this afternoon? Perhaps he will tell us how effective the monitoring has been on the Danube. How many times has there been intervention which has stopped supplies getting through to Serbia?

It is widely acknowledged that the UN relief agencies are buckling under the strain of responding to the Balkan tragedy. The costs of this and any UN operation must be met in full by UN member states. The Foreign Secretary claims that British medicines are supplying hospitals in Sarajevo, but nightly television pictures show a gross lack of provision of medical care. That is something else that the Government have to tell us; they must explain the gap between what is claimed to have been provided and what we see on our television screens each night.

If the developed world ever needed a chance to prove to its poor and suffering neighbours that its commitment to the new world order is real and deep-seated, Somalia should be the proving ground. It has become literally impossible to deliver aid to the millions facing starvation and death without the permission of the warlords and the paid protection of their henchmen.

The super-powers' failure with Somalia is shown not only by the masses of dumped weaponry which feeds the clan feuds, but by the manipulation of tyrannical leaders for short-term political aims. Most importantly, it is shown by the failure to realise some time ago that the situation in Somalia was deeply wrong and was destined to bring about civil war and massive famine.

It would be pointless to delve now into the corrupt political mess in Somalia to seek solutions. Independent international action is desperately required. The Somalis cannot solve their problems alone. However, all the aid agencies working there are constrained by the lack of an overall plan for relief action. The United Nations humanitarian operation remains at the level of general statements and pious plans.

The reason is simple enough. In an area of such deprivation, food and medicine have become strategic weapons. Until the UN and non-governmental organisations have sorted out proper attitudes to humanitarian aid they will struggle against impossible odds. It is clear that there is a greater role to be played by the UN. Indeed, if the new world order is to be effective it must be interventionist.

The crisis offers the United Nations an opportunity to develop new ways of bringing decency and security to all parts of the world. The present limited mandate for UN forces is insufficient. If the UN could put large numbers of forces into the former Yugoslavia to aid the suffering population there is no moral argument for refraining from similar action in Somalia. A United Nations military presence, with the same rules of engagement as in the Balkans, will deprive the warring factions of the opportunity to steal relief food and medicines. At the same time, all parties could be encouraged to the negotiating table and pressured into seeking a peaceful solution to their arguments.

The Foreign Secretary spoke recently of an "imperial" role for the United Nations. Indeed, there is a possible problem of UN military intervention seeming like an invasion, but therein lies the true acid test of the new world order. Nations such as Britain, the United States and Russia, which espouse humanitarian ideals and have the financial means to pay for their extension to poor and afflicted nations, should take the lead and ensure that that freedom is extended. Instead of reneging on aid payments and United Nations debts, they should carry their fair share of financial burden.

As was said recently in The Independent, with insight and will it may be possible to develop a new pattern of intervention in the humanitarian nightmares of the world, with the aim of bringing relief to people who are victims of their Government's neglect or oppression.

The debate allows us to speak in favour of such a commitment as we had when it was decided to deal with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It was decided that with the end of the cold war there could be a new world order, and that the UN could begin to play the role which those who brought it into being sought, and agreed that it should have. However, that will come only if we accept that the structure of the UN itself has to change. We must re-examine the make-up of the Security Council and those who hold millions of pounds who seek financial short cuts to compensate for deficits owed to them. The United Nations has a chance, particularly in Somalia, to play a major role in ensuring that we are not seen to be attempting to impose some form of colonial intervention on the affairs of other countries. In fact, we are responding to the real needs of real people.

Anyone who has watched the television coverage of Somalia must be concerned that now that the rains have started, the aid effort will naturally be slowed and even more young children are likely to die in the days ahead. The situation demands more than just hot air from this Chamber. We must start to play the role that we have described—of wanting to be part of a new world order. We must start to make that a reality. I hope that what has been said today will be the beginning of genuine concern and a determination to make the United Nations perform the role that it should have played from the very start.

As I was a chairman of the advisory committee of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), perhaps the House will permit me to express good wishes for the future, following his moving address to the House just over one hour ago.

I will concentrate my remarks on the former Yugoslavia. I begin by expressing genuine respect and admiration for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and his ministerial colleagues for all that they have sought to do. At the same time, I make it plain that I have for months been haunted by the words of Edmund Burke, who said that nothing was necessary for the triumph of evil but that good men do nothing.

I am not suggesting that good men have done nothing —far from it—but we are certainly seeing the triumph of evil because good men have not done enough. Anyone who doubts that should view the video to which reference has already been made. Tabloid newspapers are not exactly the flavour of the month at the moment, and I confess that I have never read the Daily Sport. However, I watched the video that the editor sent to every Member of Parliament. Any right hon. or hon. Member who has not watched that video should do so as soon as possible. It makes dreadfully tragic viewing, but it brings home just what is being done to snuff out all humanity and humane values in that part of the world.

My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor) referred to one appalling incident. In another, one sees someone carrying a tray of young men's genitals that were hacked off by Serbian soldiers. I will not go on, but I urge right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House to watch that video and to ponder it.

Day after day, week after week, and month after month for the past year or so we have seen some of the most unspeakable atrocities committed—first in Croatia and then in Bosnia—since the end of the second world war. In fact, they are among the most unspeakable atrocities ever committed in Europe. Let no one doubt that. I do not for a minute believe that all the atrocities have been committed by one group against another, but it is plain —as the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) emphasised in his speech—that the aggressor for the most part is the Serbian, and Serbia is responsible for the majority of the carnage.

When Dubrovnik was being shelled and Vukovar was raised to the ground, I was one of those who urged that we should take some action—air strikes into Serbia. We seem to be perfectly willing to wound by sanctions but reluctant to strike. I understand why, but this is not a civil war, because we in the west decreed that the countries involved are nation states. One can argue about the wisdom of whether that status should have been recognised. I believe that it was right to recognise Croatia, although I was not so persuaded about Bosnia. The fact remains that they are now recognised as independent states, yet they have been denied the means of effective self-defence and the benefit of a defensive alliance.

We are all involved because what is being torn apart are the values and decencies on which European civilisation and democracy are based. At risk is the credibility of the United Nations and of the European Community, and if that is not maintained, we will become even more aware of the two spectres that haunt the region. There is the spectre of an all-out Balkan war. Kosovo has been mentioned several times. One has only to reflect on the scenes on television this week, showing children being barred from school and teachers locked out, and on the consistent repression of the Albanian majority within Kosovo.

Macedonia was also mentioned. Whatever the Greeks may say about names and titles, a guarantee should be given. What would happen if Albania, Bulgaria, and Greece and Turkey—two NATO members—were drawn in on opposing sides? The other spectre is that of Muslim fundamentalism. Last month, I addressed a rally in Trafalgar square, and it was a shattering experience. The hon. Members for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clywd) and for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) also spoke. We were loudly abused by a group of Muslim fundamentalists merely because we made some acknowledgement of what the British Government are seeking to do in trying to recognise some of the difficulties. It is a sobering thought that Muslim fundamentalism might soon be on the march in the heart of Europe.

I do not doubt the good intentions and good will of the Government, the European Community, or the leaders of the United Nations and I do not underestimate the difficulties. I certainly do not want to see British troops drawn into a ground war. That, however, is a real danger. I wish Lord Owen every possible success in taking on the labours of my noble Friend Lord Carrington, to whom I also pay tribute. There is no point in bemoaning lost opportunities.

If action had been taken last November or December we might not be having this debate, but it is still not too late for ultimatums to be issued to Serbia and to give the decent people in Serbia, of whom there are many, an opportunity to get away from their appalling communist dictator. We are prepared to take further action in Iraq, and we are right to do so. Why the double standards? I regret that we did not finish the job in Iraq, but that is another story.

On trial are the point and purpose of the United Nations and the EC's effectiveness in maintaining the first objective of its founders, which was to ensure that war would never again tear Europe apart. Part of Europe is tearing apart and we must contain the conflict. If what is now being done by Lord Owen and Cyrus Vance does not lead to a fairly early and proper ceasefire, I urge my right hon. Friends—once again—to consider an air strike into Serbia itself.

I know that my right hon. Friend will forgive me if I end on a slightly parochial point. It has been said that the Cheshires are going to the region. I am delighted about that because they are a fine regiment but I hope that my right hon. Friend will note that this is yet another example of the need to have infantry which is well trained, easily deployed and of adequate size.

Because I am deeply worried about the proposed merger of the Cheshires and the Staffords and because I believe that merger could undermine the effectiveness of the British Army, in which we all take such pride, I urge my right hon. Friend to think again about numbers and deployments.

Less than three weeks ago, I was in Yugoslavia and managed to have two hours of talks with Slobodan Milosevic and one hour of talks with the president of the new federal Government of Serbia and Montenegro—the rump Yugoslavia as we might call it. I was able also to meet some of the Hungarian minority leaders in Vojvodina and to see the refugee camp in Palic, which houses 540 inmates, most of whom are Bosnian Muslims.

The hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) described what has happened during the past year. Some of the horrendous things that have happened have made me despair of any solution, but I now believe that I can see a glimmer of hope. I made the same journey last year. At that time, the federal Government seemed impotent, although interesting to talk to. They seemed to be on the fade and President Milosevic of Serbia and Tudjman—whom I also met last year—of Croatia were on the up and up. I now feel that there is buoyancy in the leadership in Belgrade. The Foreign Secretary said that Prime Minister Panic should be encouraged. We should give every possible assistance to Mr. Panic—he is the Prime Minister of the new state of Serbia and Montenegro and seems to have overwhelming popular support.

I travelled to Yugoslavia on my own. I notified the Foreign Office, but I did not receive any assistance and I was not contacted by the embassy in Belgrade although I appeared on television. I was able to wander the streets and talk to ordinary people. I know that Mr. Panic has the support of people in Belgrade and there is no reason to believe that that support does not extend beyond the capital. We need to support him, but how? I challenge the idea that increasing sanctions on Serbia will help him in his combat with the more extreme nationalists in Serbia. One must bear in mind that Mr. Panic recently survived a vote of confidence in the Assembly in Belgrade when he was under attack from the Šešel radicals, the group that is sometimes referred to as the Chetniks, who are the extremists. They may still be a danger because they could come to power in the rump Yugoslavia, if we do not establish and assist Mr. Panic in the next few months. Mr. Panic has done a number of things that we should all admire him for. He has abandoned the policy of all Serbs being in one state, which was undoubtedly Milosvic's policy last year, but even Milosevic seems now to have abandoned it. In the talks that I had with Mr. Panic I noticed one change. Whereas last year he talked about the Serbs in Krajina expressing their self-determination by being able to remain in the old Yugoslavia, he is now talking about the Krajina Serbs being part of Croatia, provided that human rights are extended to them on the same basis as they are extended to every other citizen in Croatia. That is important.

Moreover, at the London conference Mr. Panic recognised the boundaries of Croatia—that they should be inviolable and could be changed only by peaceful negotiation, not by military means. It was Mr. Panic who called for early elections in November. That is why many of the deputies, who stand to lose their seats in the Yugoslav Parliament in November, oppose him. That is the reason for the motion of no confidence in him. In addition, Mr. Panic is the man who dismissed Mihalj Kertes, the hardline deputy security service Minister and deputy interior Minister, from the Government. A close colleague of the Serbian President was dismissed by Panic. We do not help Panic by increasing the sanctions on Serbia.

If, indeed, the arms were coming from Serbia into Bosnia and an army were invading across the border, that might be a different matter. However, in his speech, the Foreign Secretary intimated that the attacks were coming from inside Bosnia—that it was Bosnian Serbs who were involved in these attacks. It would be an odd way of rewarding Mr. Panic for his efforts, particularly for his efforts at the recent London conference, if we attempted to undermine him. That is the warning that I gave this year. I gave a warning last year: that we should not have recognised Croatia. Despite what the hon. Members for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) and for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) said, those people who looked into what had happened in Croatia last year, on behalf of Lord Carrington, came to the conclusion that Croatia was not ready for recognition. Why? Because human rights were still not being recognised there.

And they have still not been recognised there.

That is right. Serbs, who had lived as Yugoslav citizens for 40 years in parts of Croatia, are now foreigners in their own country. It is as though we were to say that all Scotsmen who live in England should no longer be given the same rights as English people. If that happened, we should say that that was totally wrong. Not enough pressure is being put on Croatia. The Croats are not innocent. People, I acknowledge, have said that it is not all one-sided. I deplore the actions of the Serbs, particularly the irregulars who are involved in Bosnia, and I deplore the atrocities. Likewise, I deplore the atrocities that have been committed by the other side.

Until last January the Government adopted an even-handed approach, but I reproach them for the fact that that approach has ceased, simply because, in my view, they needed German support over Maastricht. Be that as it may, it was wrong; it was an error. The hon. Member for Staffordshire, South is wrong in believing that military attacks on bases in Serbia would have anything other than a counterproductive effect—that of undermining the very people in Belgrade whom we want to continue in power and whom, to use a phrase that the previous Prime Minister used about Mr. Gorbachev, we can do business with. We must be careful about the policies that we adopt and ask ourselves a few questions about them.

The Foreign Secretary said he regretted that the old Yugoslavia fell apart. But we played our part in that because when Yugoslavia appealed more than two years ago for membership of the Council of Europe, it was ignored. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Fry) and I tabled an early-day motion and wrote to the Foreign Secretary asking for the know-how fund to be extended to the old Yugoslavia, but we were told that it was not democratic enough.

Three years ago Yugoslavia was given guest membership of the Council of Europe.

But that was a belated approach and more should have been done to uphold the integrity of the old Yugoslavia. The Foreign Secretary said that he would not go into how the storm in Bosnia began. The EC played its part in that by its early recognition of —

Order. I call Mr. Churchill.

About 24 years ago British troops were deployed in Northern Ireland. Tragically, they are still there. The Yugoslav conflict is on an even greater scale. The terrain is infinitely more difficult and the viciousness of the conflict far surpasses the one in Northern Ireland. I hope that we are not blundering into a situation that will prove to be a costly can of worms.

British troops respond admirably when they have a clear-cut objective. Examples of that are retaking the Falkland Islands in 1982 and, along with our coalition partners, driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait last year. Bosnia is different, but the mountains there are not unknown to the British Army. While serving as the Member for Preston my late father fought in the Bosnian fastnesses alongside our erstwhile colleague Sir Fitzroy Maclean. The objective in Bosnia now is much less clear cut and our forces will be under instructions to escort convoys of humanitarian aid.

In giving evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, the Minister for the Armed Forces said earlier this week that it was hoped to negotiate safe passage for the British protected convoys. But we have seen with what alacrity both sides have broken previous agreements, and it would be a dereliction of duty not to be prepared for the worst. The Select Committee on Defence was reassured by the positive statement of the Minister for the Armed Forces that British forces would be authorised to return fire "with all they have got." But will what they have got be enough?

We are told that if a British escorted convoy comes under attack from heavy weapons the commander is under instructions somewhat ingloriously to adopt the time-honoured tactics of British Sunday journalists—to make an excuse and leave. It is plain that 1,800 British troops cannot possibly hope to fight their way through an area which 30 Nazi divisions failed to control in the second world war.

The desperate plight of the civilian population has been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence, and by my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack). The atrocities in the conflict are unspeakable, but apart from those atrocities civilians are in a desperate plight and suffer from a lack of food, water, shelter and fuel, and the problems will intensify in the coming winter.

I do not dispute the Government's decision to try to get food and medicines through, but our overriding concern must be to ensure that British casualties—there will inevitably be British casualties—are kept to an absolute minimum. Only this morning, four further United Nations casualties were recorded when their armoured personnel carrier was blown up by Serbian forces.

I have three concerns about the deployment of the Cheshire regiment, of which I can say as a Member representing part of Cheshire, we are very proud indeed. I should be grateful for the Secretary of State's assurance that it will be considered. First and foremost, is there a chain of command in which Ministers and our soldiers can have confidence? Grave concerns have been expressed about that. Secondly, is it prudent to rely on the good faith of the warring factions rather than providing any airborne reconnaissance capability that would warn our forces of an ambush? I understand the decision not to use helicopters because, as my right hon. Friend the Minister made clear, it would place our pilots at unnecessary risk from shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, but what about unmanned airborne vehicles, which are known as drones? There is a proposal before the Ministry to make such equipment available within a short time on a short lease. I hope that that will at least be considered.

Thirdly, what if our forces come under heavy weapons fire? They will have no means of pinpointing the source of the fire, let alone of retaliation. Would not it at least be sensible to deploy an Invincible class carrier to the Adriatic as a precautionary measure so that if one of our convoys gets into trouble, is ambushed or has its withdrawal blocked it knows that, within 30 minutes, it can summon an air strike? Alternatively, that could be achieved by deploying fixed-wing aircraft in Italy. I favour the air exclusion zone over Bosnia that the United States has proposed.

If this debate were being held next year, the Government would be unable to send the Cheshire regiment. I call on the Secretary of State urgently to review the "Options for Change" cuts proposed for the infantry. Our armed forces are experiencing severe overstretch, with the gap between tours in Northern Ireland being reduced from 24 months to only 15 months. By general consent, that is an unacceptably short respite between tours. Surely it is clear to all but the most blinkered friend of the Treasury that we need at least five more infantry battalions than are envisaged in the present plans. The cost would be a mere £75 million, which, in the sum total of Government expenditure, is but a drop in the bucket. That could, however, give a great deal of flexibility to the Army. It would relieve much of the overstretch and many of the human problems that go with it for our forces and their families. Perhaps my right hon. and learned Friend would care to make a start by reprieving the Cheshires.

I am the third member of the Defence Select Committee to speak this morning. Defence Ministers will be appearing before us so frequently in the next few months talking about this very subject that they may come to think of themselves as members of that Committee, too.

It was right to recall the House to debate these serious issues, but one wonders whether, if the Mr. Panics of the Conservative party had not messed up the economy, we would have been able to hitch a ride on the back of the economic debate to discuss foreign affairs. Whatever the rationale for this debate, however, it is right to discuss the crucial issues involved in foreign affairs and defence, and I am pleased that the Defence Select Committee has already met to try to elicit more information than has hitherto been made public.

It might seem perverse to view the cold war as anything other than a negative phenomenon, but in many ways it was simple. Not only did soldiers know who the enemy was; they knew which dug-out they would be fighting in, and they probably knew the name of the tank commander who would come against them. In those days policy makers did not need to think much. The world was a simpler and stable place. All those conditions have changed, not always for the better.

The turbulent, volatile and conflict-ridden world in which we now live surely requires much more thinking —fresh ideas are needed. One thing is certain: anyone who believes that we are entering a wonderful new era without war, in which armed forces can be reduced to negligible levels, is deluding himself. Such aspirations will be thwarted.

History offers us little comfort for the idea that war can be banished. There have been major defining treaties in the past. The 1990 charter of Paris was intended to create an orderly Europe, and it failed. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) has spoken of armaments being passed around the world. We read in the press only today that Russia is selling diesel submarines to Iran. Then there is the problem of the haemorrhaging of nuclear capability. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in a recent publication identified 30 conflicts around the world today. So we need forces commensurate with our national interests, alliances, and obligations, such as our obligation to the United Nations.

For Bosnia this has been a period of tragedy beyond words. For us it has been a case study of the sort of a war that we shall see more of. It has consumed Croatians and Bosnians and it threatens to escalate dramatically to engulf the wider Balkan region. We can now assess the effect of the international community's mediation and intervention in the conflict so far. I regret to say that the roles of the UN, the EC, the Western European Union, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, NATO and various national Governments have been far from encouraging; indeed, usually they have been dispiriting. I hope that that experience will serve to quash the idea that Europe is capable of looking after its own security, let alone anyone else's.

Yugoslavia is a test bed for the international community's ability to formulate policy to deal with such conflicts. So far the international community has responded with a paralysing lack of adaptability and co-ordination. The conflict has proceeded almost unchecked. The Secretary of State spoke of "occasional slackening" in the fighting. That leads to the depressing conclusion that unless we react diplomatically, politically and economically, war will spread. There has been a lack of political objectives and the insertion of military forces in the absence of clear political objectives is a recipe for political and military catastrophe. The decision to send British forces, although worthy and limited, seems to have been designed more to placate domestic opinion than to achieve any real solution to the problem.

There is a recognisable lack of enthusiasm on the part of many military analysts on matters such as the nature of the problems facing our forces. To me it appears rather humiliating when forces are inserted and they have to argue their way through warlords' domains. If the warlords say that they cannot go through, they cannot. If the warloads decide that they have had enough of the British presence, all they need do is to kill some British soldiers and, according to information that we have been given, we shall depart.

The force that we have sent is, to use the words of the last Sir Winston Churchill in describing the name of a colleague of his, Bossom, neither one thing nor the other. I suspect that our forces are similarly designed. According to a good friend of mine, Paul Beaver of "Jane's", three main alliance patterns are emerging in the Balkans. The first includes Croatia and Hungary, the second Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and Romania and the third Albania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Those regional alliances being postulated could have obvious repercussions for the EC and NATO. Unless we are exceedingly careful and show greater imagination than in the past, the third Balkan war may well erupt.

There is a reasonable possibility of preventing that course of action. There is nothing automatic about a third Balkan war, but much will depend on the outcome of the current war in Bosnia. If Serbia is weakened by war and UN sanctions, and if Serbia concedes the principles of a united Bosnia, underpinned by international guarantees and a UN presence, possibly a trusteeship, as Christopher Cviic of Chatham House has argued, the way could be clear for an eventual non-violent settlement of the Kosovo and Macedonia issues.

A few years ago we were subjected to the Government's rethinking in what was called "Options for Change". As earlier speakers have argued, the concept of "Options for Change" was designed during the euphoric period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, in the two years subsequently, the Gulf war and many other wars should have led to some degree of reappraisal. To reduce our infantry battalions from 55 to 37 is dangerous. We have an enormous commitment in Northern Ireland, to home defence, the ACE rapid reaction corps, the Falklands and the residue of empire. Now we have superimposed on that the problems of committing resources to the former Yugoslavia and the possibility of conflict increasing and escalating in the Persian Gulf again. That will overstretch our resources to such a level that options available to a Secretary of State will diminish.

As was said earlier, the 24-month interval between tours of duty in Northern Ireland has been breached. I understand that the battalion put on standby to replace the Cheshires was in Northern Ireland as recently as May. That makes even the 15-month interval that the Select Committee on Defence was told about seem absurdly long.

We are experiencing overstretch in our Army. We are reaching the stage where the Government should be reconsidering the mergers. I shall not repeat the arguments that I have used a number of times in the past, simply arguing for my local regiment to survive.

Perhaps during the Gulf war it was believed that high-tech warfare was the model of warfare for the future and therefore the poor infantry, the unspectacular guard that does the bread-and-butter job, was less important. Surely subsequent to the Gulf war, the increase in the activity of the United Nations and the likelihood of an increase in low-intensity conflict mean that the case for the retention of the infantry is overwhelming. I hope that the Government will reconsider the decision that they made two years ago.

Following the end of the Gulf war, the Kurds rose up in the north of Iraq and the Shi'ites in the south. On our television screens, we saw the tragedy of the Kurds spilling over the mountains, and the west reacted. We sent in humanitarian aid. We did not see the southern tragedy but we heard the stories.

In April 1991, a month after the uprising, the UN Security Council passed resolution 688, to insist

"that Iraq allow immediate access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq and to make available all necessary facilities for their operations".

Nothing has happened in the south of Iraq to implement that resolution.

Towards the end of July, this year, spurred by continuing stories of unhappiness and misery, the House formed the all-party parliamentary group for Iraqi Shias of which I am the chairman. Our task is to bring the plight of the suffering Iraqi Shias to the notice of the world. I believe that the Chamber needs no videos and no television stories; it has the imagination, the knowledge and perception to understand what is going on in the south of Iraq without the visual aids that others need.

The Secretary of State reacted at once. We tabled parliamentary questions and an early-day motion. The Secretary of State knows well that resolution 688 has not been implemented. I pay tribute here to the excellence and thoughtfulness of the help provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, particularly the middle east desk and its staff, including David Reddaway, our chargé d'affaires in Tehran, Iran. They have worked wonders, as has the Secretary of State himself. Helped by our knowledge and the efforts of the British Prime Minister, he persuaded our American allies and the French to introduce the no-fly zone.

This week I visited Iraq and Iran for the sixth or seventh time. Let me make a brief report on the situation in southern Iraq since the implementation of the no-fly zone. I have to tell the House that the situation is now critical. The skies above the marshes are clear, which is wonderful: I pay tribute to the bravery of the pilots who are keeping them clear. The leaflets are there and the people can see what is happening. They have been dropped with a short message in Arabic, with a picture on the other side of our aircraft and of Saddam Hussein's airships, both fixed-wing and helicopters. How could the allies have allowed him to keep those helicopters? I believe that it was a mistaken decision by the United States, which believed that they would be used for humanitarian purposes. Did they not know the beast with whom they were dealing?

The skies are clear; but on the ground, in revenge for our actions in trying to monitor the non-implementation of resolution 688, Saddam Hussein has now put half his entire military forces into the marshes. The dangers are considerably heightened. The results can be seen even just inside the Iraqi border. There are great black, smoking areas, stretching into the water where one or more missiles landed perhaps an hour earlier. The black zones are 300 metres long: if the missiles had landed in the town they would have demolished about 20,000 houses. They would have gone up in flames.

Food stocks have been removed and taken north of the 32nd parallel. That is the first thing that Saddam did when he invaded Kuwait: he took out all the food. The farms have been burnt, including the small rice farms in the marshes. The villagers are no longer self-sufficient in food, yet they are blockaded, so that they cannot get out to the towns to try to find food on the black market. The towns are filled with soldiers.

Tank divisions, each containing 45 tanks, are based in different towns in the marshes. I have the names of those towns. missiles and missile launchers make nonsense of the claim that it is impossible to bomb the towns and villages from the ground. Assault boats carrying 30 to 40 armed men—the boats in which I travel carry a maximum of four or five people—assault the towns and villages each day.

The troops are stationed 30 km outside the marshes. They have been beaten off a little, but they come back in every day and carry out their remorseless attacks—burning, shooting and killing defenceless people, and destroying whole villages and towns. I talked to a man in a hostel for the wounded in Ahwaz who came out of Iraq on Monday with his hand blown off. He was a young farmer, only 20 years old. In the towns and villages around his area lived 25,000 people; five days ago, the area was emptied by 20,000 armed men. That is what has happened since the introduction of the no-fly zone.

Sewage dumping has further contaminated the drinking water—containerised and brought in from cities around the marshes, such as Basra. I saw the evidence of the drainage of the marshes of which we have heard in recent weeks. The water level has been reduced; the roots of the papyri show.

I have already described the physical evidence of attacks. Clergy are at risk in the wake of the death of the Grand Ayatollah Al Khoei. There has been no medication in the marshes for many years. Medicine is not available and there are no doctors. There is a grave shortage in the supply of food and the water buffalo have almost disappeared through lack of water. The muddy fish, stinking water and malarial air are all that is left for people to live on. If that is not genocide, the word means nothing.

In my humanitarian work this time I have been able to obtain much new military data on the Saddam Hussein marsh attacks, drawn from the evidence that people have given to me. It is compelling; it is difficult and dangerous to obtain, but it exists. I have brought back tapes, photographs and videos taken at great risk of life and limb by people deep inside the heart of the marshes. I have many written statements from personal interviews within and outside the marshes that desperate people—men, women and children—have given me. I shall give those reports to the Secretary of State for Defence and the Foreign Secretary.

Thousands of people have escaped. It becomes ever more difficult to do so as the front line of Saddam Husssein's army gets closer to the border of Iran. People become trapped as their villages are assaulted. They run towards the safe haven of Iran but cannot get through. Eight families died in mined waters near the border two days before I sailed there. There are many thousands of people in the camps in Iran—a country which has reacted with hospitality and support. Iran now has 3.5 million refugees in camps and on the borders. The country gives free right of passage to all refugees and offers a real safe haven.

Has the official aid worked in Iraq and should sanctions now be lifted? The United Nations methods of distributing aid in southern Iraq—the district which I know—has been faulty and misapplied. The food aid that has come in and which the United Nations has been given to distribute in the past 18 months was given to officials in southern Iraq. Who are those officials? They belong to the Saddam Hussein regime. The food was then given to the Saddam Hussein army. I have no faith in the United Nations as a distribution agency in southern Iraq. The United Nations Development Programme officials in Iran have been sitting in the most expensive hotel, day in day out, week in week out, for more than a year. They seem to have achieved little.

Should economic sanctions against Iraq be lifted to help the people? To do so would presuppose a beneficent Government aiming to carry out good actions on behalf of the people. That is not on offer. We are dealing with a despotic regime headed by a tyrant of demonic proportions—a man who lacks the normal human feelings and sensitivities and whose documented cruelty stretches back 20 years or more. His half brother, Barzal al Takriti, a murderer, is the Iraqi United Nations delegate to Geneva. That is what we have allowed to happen.

Public and private funding has come from the Government's Overseas Development Administration, from the European Community and from the British public. It is that money which I have been spending. I pay tribute to the many Iranians and Iraqis who have formed seven committees to help me work for the good of the Iraqi people throughout Iran and on the borders. There is now an aid committee in the marshes to deliver food. The danger is acute. One man was lost delivering food—our EC aid—three weeks ago.

I pay tribute to the Persian Gulf department of the Iranian Foreign Ministry—in particular, the first secretary, Mr. Vahid Farmand and his colleagues, to the Interior Ministry, to the governor of Khozestan and to his staff and to the governor of Shustar and his office, to the Iraqi Opposition, the Supreme Council of the Revolution in Iraq, to Ayatollah al Hakim, to Yousif al Khoei and his grandfather's foundation, and to the many other Iraqi groups and individuals who have done so much to help. Both Iran and Iraq have come together with myself to make that humanitarian aid—dangerous, arduous and sensitive work—effective. We can deliver a little food, but it is not enough.

I call upon the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to do all that he can to secure the new Security Council draft resolution—the revised assets resolution—to incorporate aid to the Shi'ites. It does not incorporate such aid. There is no mention of the Shi'ites. I call upon him to provide food from the air and to think hard whether one could in some way achieve, not full military intervention immediately, but perhaps a massing of troops on the border. For if we cannot push Saddam Hussein's troops north of the 32nd parallel soon there will be no marsh Arabs left and few Shi'ite Iraqis either. The Tigris and Euphrates great marshes of history will have gone, we shall have failed and Saddam Hussein will have won.

I remind the House that we have come to the end of the time governed by a 10-minute limit on speeches, but many hon. Members want to catch my eye. I should be grateful if hon. Members would bear that in mind and, as far as possible, make their speeches short.

I have listened with great care to hon. Members from both sides of the House talk with great passion about the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. There does not seem to be any consistency in the approach to tackling that massive problem. That is one reason why the conflict has escalated into Bosnia. If there had been concerted and clear action by the United Nations and the European Community at an early stage— whatever that action should have been—I think that it would have sent a clear message to the Serbs, who have committed most of the atrocities.

It is almost 12 months since the fall of Vukovar, after a three-month seige by Serbian forces. We all recall the awful bloodshed, the senseless killings and the massive artillery attacks perpetrated by the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army. That shocked the world. We deplored the loss of life, the destruction of communities, homes and possessions, the destruction of an ancient culture and the dislocation of the peaceful co-existence between the Serbs and Croats.

Yet our response was disjointed in the sense that there was no concerted action. By the time that United Nations peacekeeping forces had been deployed, the map of Croatia had effectively been redrawn, to the benefit of Serbia, and the land held by the Serbs became part of the drive for a greater Serbia. It is not as though Serbia had no right to be concerned about the future of 600,000 of its countrymen remaining within the borders of an independent Croatia. We all recall with horror the atrocities committed during the second world war, which surely would have allowed the Serbians to consider whether it was safe for their fellow countrymen to remain in Croatia without any protection, but that in no way condones the way in which Serbia acted in Croatia. Rather than securing guarantees for the Serbian population, the Serbs were driven by the desire to lay claim to Croatian territory and that was totally unacceptable.

Due to the lack of concerted action in the Croatian crisis we now have a crisis in Bosnia Hercegovina. Ethnic conflict is not new in that part of the world, as we know to our cost from the earlier part of this century. Some people will point to historical precedents to prevent direct military intervention, but, because there has been no other course of action, and after the past 12 months of inaction, when ceasefire after ceasefire was breached with monotonous regularity, it could at least be argued that Serbia thought that a venture into Bosnia would not be challenged.

Bosnia is now a recognised state, in which 44 per cent. of the population is Muslim, yet Serbia controls two thirds of that country and Croatia has also taken a share. By the time of the conference in London in August the map of Bosnia had virtually been redrawn and the prospect of greater Serbian domination was much closer. I echo the sentiments voiced in some parts of the House today that if sanctions are to he effective they must be as watertight as possible. If we allow them to be breached, the Serbs will continue to drive into Bosnia and to control as much of the country as possible. It is clear that any intervention at this stage would appear to be too late to save the awful tragedy that has shattered the region, but limited western military action in a joint United Nations and European Community initiative is now essential to drive a path for humanitarian aid and for food and medical supplies to the beseiged city of Sarajevo and other places.

When we have committed ourselves to that course of action, the rules of engagement for troops deployed in the region must allow them to protect themselves, with the freedom of action that that implies. Neil Ascherson, in a recent article in The Independent on Sunday, described ethnic cleansing as "a foul expression". How apt that description is. That cruel method of driving people away from their homes, shattering communities and destroying people's lives should galvanise others into action. It is oppressive nationalism of the worst kind, fuelled by belief in the pure race. Let us reject it completely, and let us say publicly that we do so. Let us act in a way consistent with our belief that driving people from their homes and casting them away in inhuman conditions deserves international condemnation and action.

The Balkan conflict has led to the displacement of more than 2 million people. It has caused the greatest European refugee crisis since the second world war. Most of the refugees remain within the six republics that made up Yugoslavia, but I am afraid that the response of some western countries to the crisis has been painfully inadequate. Of course, I understand why some people say that refugees should be kept as close as possible to their homes—but many do not have homes to go to. Their homes have been razed to the ground. They have nowhere to go, no shelter and no food. The United Kingdom should play a greater part in the acceptance of refugees from that war-torn country.

Africa, too, faces famine, war and death. Forty million people are facing starvation and there is a real danger of instability in vast parts of the continent. One in six Somalis is a refugee outside the country and, inside the country, especially in the south, there is a massive problem of starvation and malnutrition. Twenty-five per cent. of all children under five are reported to have starved to death. One aid worker reported having seen 40 babies die overnight in one of the feeding centres. As journalists and aid workers penetrate towns and villages, they encounter horror after horror.

We know that the United Nations is now planning massive food aid and that humanitarian aid workers are dedicated to the immediate relief of the suffering. However, that is happening against a backdrop of a real cut in overseas aid, as we have already heard today.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No. I am sorry, but I have only a minute left.

Even when the immediate problems are alleviated, massive problems will remain concerning the restructuring of the country. As we alleviate famine, which we must, we must also remember that the west has an overseas aid obligation. The prospect of a decrease rather than an increase in aid is to be deplored. The United Kingdom currently holds the presidency of the EC Council of Ministers, which has proposed a £200 million cut in the Community's 1993 budget for development and co-operation.

African countries owe massive debts to western Governments, the International Monetary Fund, the World bank and commercial banks. I urge the Government to give an assurance that the United Kingdom will give the lead by increasing, not cutting, its aid budget and by calling for a meeting of G7 Ministers. They must agree to reduce Africa's total debt burden by implementing the original Trinidad terms as the first step to completing debt write-off. They must agree also to reduce the level of commercial debts owed to banks. That will help to rebuild the economy of that shattered continent, so that its peoples can have real hope for their future.

I will never forget marching into Londonderry in 1969, when I was 19, from a troop ship in the River Foyle, together with 600 other British troops. We were sent to prevent civil disorder degenerating into civil war. It will not surprise the House if I say that I have every sympathy with the Cheshire regiment and the support troops sent to the former republic of Yugoslavia. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence on his robust statements about the rules of engagement for British troops. A lesson has been learnt, because when we went to Northern Ireland, our feeling was that if we used our rifles, we would be court martialled. There was a feeling of great insecurity among British forces there in 1969. It is essential that any British troops sent to Bosnia have the right to shoot back.

As there is a strong possibility that some British soldiers will be wounded or worse, I am in favour of some sort of air exclusion zone. We have air superiority and we should use it. My hon. Friend the Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) pleaded for an aircraft carrier to be sent as a reserve, and that must be right when one considers the exclusion zone in north Iraq and the efforts that we are making to help the Shias in the marshes in the south in the same way, which have been a huge success.

We should note also what hapened to the Ukranian battalion in Sarajevo that has been supporting the UN's efforts. It was shelled and several of its members killed. Last week, I was privileged to hear Mr. Zlenko, the Foreign Minister of the Ukraine, speak passionately and movingly about his country's commitment and how deeply the Ukrainians feel about the troops that they lost. We must not allow British troops to become en laagered—battened down and sitting ducks. We must have a plan for withdrawing British troops if the circumstances suggest that Bosnia is sliding into a hopeless civil war.

There are three clear and related objectives. The first is the resolution of the conflict in Bosnia. I strongly support the sanctions against Serbia, but I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), who served in Yugoslavia during the second world war, and who did so much as chairman of the all-party Yugoslav group, and to his remarks about Prime Minister Panic. There must be a case for throwing that man a lifeline and for easing sanctions. We must be rigid about sanction-busting along the Danube, but we should also build up Mr. Panic if we can.

Our second objective must be to be restrict the conflict to Bosnia and Croatia. Many eyes are watching what is happening there—not least those of the Transylvanian Hungarians in Romania.

I went to Cluj last year. It is a tinderbox. Mr. Zlenko referred to the problems of Moldova on the Romanian-Ukranian border. There are dozens of small enclaves—of Germans, Tartars and Kazaks, for example—throughout the Russian Federation all the way to Vladivostok. We have to contain the fighting. If it goes south to Kosovo and Macedonia, we will have NATO fighting NATO—the Greeks and Turks at loggerheads. And Bulgaria, one of the most stable of the newly liberated countries in eastern Europe, is terrified. I spoke to a senior Bulgarian diplomat the other day who was terrified that Bulgaria will be drawn into the conflict about Macedonia because Bulgaria lost of lot of land to the Macedonian province of the former Yugoslavia.

The third objective must be to save lives in Sarajevo, Gorazde and Tuzla. The winter is coming upon us. This is not just a humanitarian tragedy; we may face a political disaster too. As the people in those cities are mostly Muslims, we have a larger foreign policy issue at stake here. We are trying to do things in the middle east and need support in that region. If we are seen to do nothing to stop Muslims starving, I fear for the future. If we fail, we shall create a huge political problem the like of which we have not seen before. It will affect our middle east policy and it will be devastating. We must not send the wrong signals. We may have to relieve those cities by force. They must not starve.

In summary, an air exclusion zone, which can be demonstrated to be a success, can be imposed. The Chetniks are cowards. Are we really saying that we cannot hit the gun emplacements around Sarajevo with our modern weaponry?

Finally, today's debate is also about Somalia. We may be entering a new era in foreign policy thinking. The United Nations is stretched as more demands are being made of it. We have a unique situation in Somalia, where warlords do not care about the population and use a mass of arms to damage them. There may come a point at which we have to intervene in a nation's affairs to save that nation. There may be a case for seizing the port in Somalia. The prospect is, therefore, of a new world where, in the not-too-distant future, we may have to use force in the best interests of a country's population, regardless of its leaders.

The hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) will forgive me if I do not devote much of the time available to me to what he said, although his speech deserves to be taken seriously. He may agree that the Somali experience demonstrates the evil of uncontrolled trade in cut-price ordnance. I fear that disarmament will result in weapons being sold to third world countries that can ill afford what the rest of the world should not allow them to use.

The debate is about the exercise of international authority. I was delighted with what the Foreign Secretary said about the United Nations. I am pleased to see my hon.

Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) as our principal spokesman on foreign affairs. He commenced his speech by emphasising the same important case. We must recognise that, in the guise of the UN, international authority is not in a particularly robust condition. The hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) provided us with further evidence of that.

I am reminded of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe assembly that some of us attended as representatives of this country. I had the good fortune in July to lead my party's delegation. I have never been to a more ramshackle hotchpotch of disorganised chaos in all my life. If it had not been particularly for members of the staff of this House, it would have degenerated into a confused muddle. Those hon. Members who had the good fortune, or misfortune, to take part in the proceedings of that assembly may share my assessment and also share my gratitude for the fact that the right hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling) helped to bring some order out of chaos.

If the United Nations is in such a condition. it gives cause for anxiety and distress. It might lead some people to say, "A plague on all your houses; they can't run anything; it's a complete farce. We'll stay on our own beaches and ignore the international cause." I am sometimes tempted to take that view.

Just before the killing started in Yugoslavia, the Council of Europe—which has some influence at the margin, at least—decided to bring the leaders of all the Yugoslav republics to Strasbourg. Quite a lot of us attended the meeting. Each of the leaders made a speech. During the speech of the leader of the Serbs, the aide to the Croatian leader, sitting beside him, spent his time making gestures which even this House, at its most childish, would find surprising—gestures of insult and obscenity. The leader of the Serbs on two or three occasions acted rather foolishly by seeking the protection of the chair when a more Anglo-Saxon remedy might have been more appropriate.

Against that background, the parliamentary assembly then rushed to a call for the immediate recognition of Croatia, despite the fact that I had asked that Croatian leader one very important question. I asked him whether he would be prepared to agree that before the international community recognised Croatia it should, with the other Yugoslav republics that had not yet been officially established, accept that, while the world understood that the state of Yugoslavia was finished and had no future, transitional confederative arrangements should be made that would allow mechanisms to protect minority rights to be put in place before international recognition was conferred.

I spoke in the debate—I believe it took place the next day—on behalf of my political group and put that case. I suggested that recognition should not be immediately conferred. Unfortunately, that view was narrowly defeated. Without wishing to be rude to Conservative Members, perhaps I could say that it was a dreadful pity that the chairman of the assembly at that time was the leader of the Conservative group. It left his group rather like headless chickens. Some of them voted with me while some of them voted against, along with the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston). That is one reason why I disagreed with his assessment during his speech.

Those same people spoke to me a few days ago, in meetings connected with the Western European Union and the Council of Europe, and told me, "Of course we can't give Croatia full membership because it does not comply with the rules." They said that because there is no freedom, because there is aggression, because the majority in Croatia have a position of privilege that is denied to the rest. It is a great pity that wisdom was not applied earlier. But I do not believe that there is a great deal of wisdom about. During the Gulf war I spoke in favour of that war. Later I made it clear that as far as I was concerned it finished 48 hours too soon. During the Gulf war, however, Britain properly played a part. At the end of that conflict, I was astonished by the triumphalist report presented to the Western European Union. Members from almost every country flocked to speak and only two British Members were scheduled to speak at the end of the debate. At that assembly in Paris, I made an unpopular speech. Member after Member from other Parliaments spoke in a triumphalist and self-congratulatory way about the victory in the Gulf. I said that some member states had sent more parliamentarians to speak in the debate than they sent personnel to serve in the Gulf.

We are now preparing for military intervention in Bosnia. For two years I have listened to people in Europe calling for military intervention and some of those calls have been very jingoistic. But Britain, which was, prudently, the most cautious of all, is now sending the largest contingent. Some Conservative Members are making a considerable mistake by saying only that our troops must shoot back if someone shoots or prepares to shoot at them. Can soldiers shoot at a sniper who is firing from 1,000 yards or more or at those who are lobbing mortars from wooded terrain at an armoured convoy?

The Government must be careful. I am not suggesting that we should not put our forces behind the United Nations, but if we are not careful, a situation of inextricable complexity and embarrassment will develop and that will place an unfair responsibility on our platoon commanders in the Cheshire and other regiments.

There should be an air exclusion zone, but we must face the fact that sooner or later the air exclusion force may be used to strike at locations from which mortars, bombs and shells are raining down upon the United Nations convoys. We must think the matter through. However, effecting the air exclusion zone does not present a great difficulty.

Along with the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) I have the good fortune presently to be attached to the Royal Air Force and yesterday morning I flew in a GR1 with one of the young men who served so bravely in the Gulf. I also spoke to his colleagues, many of whom shared his experience. They do not know precisely when, but they know that shortly they will be expected to reinforce or replace the pilots who are currently serving with distinction over Iraq. Those pilots, who are highly intelligent young men, have enormous skill and will carry out the function that the Government will lay upon their shoulders. They have demonstrated upside down, sideways and in every other way that they are capable of operating an air exclusion zone over Yugoslavia in the same way as they operate one over Iraq.

But once again, we shall be called upon to provide an unfair share of the burden because some member states which are eager to make calls are not good at making a military contribution. International authority must be made efficient and strong, and we must persuade the British people that the burdens that they will bear and the losses that they may feel are justified. They will not be justified unless there is a rather more positive approach from the Government.

The Government's view was prudent and cautious, but they appear to have dropped prudence and surrendered caution and the House and the country have not yet been given an adequate explanation. If we are to be less prudent and less cautious, we are entitled to say to our European partners and friends that it is time that they stopped making claims, demands and calls that are not matched by adequate contributions.

The House sends off a British contingent to the United Nations protection force with encouragement and pride but not a little anxiety. That force has the clear objective of escorting humanitarian convoys—a worthwhile objective. However, if it is limited to that, we shall be shoring up a crumbling edifice and bogging ourselves down in an unending process. We should then be treating the symptoms but not the causes of the illness.

The causes are the classic hatreds, which have been exacerbated by recent events, between Serbs, Croats and Muslims. The worst examples are in Bosnia Hercegovina —provinces artificially created by the Hapsburgs in the last century. Is it our objective to shore up that artificial edifice, which itself has been pounded to rubble by its own inhabitants? Through the auspices of the United Nations or the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe perhaps we should be taking positive steps to enforce peace in the area by the imposition and enforcement of a no-fly zone and by the isolation of artillery, armour and other weapons; indeed, by the implementation of the agreement reached at the London conference.

If we allow the situation to fester, the violence will spread like a cancer through the Balkans and northwards into central and eastern Europe.

Europe is a tinder-box of national emnities that are now thawing after the 50 years deep frost of communism. Some 77 per cent. of the population of Kosovo are Albanians, who have been subjected to repression, which is now getting worse, from the ruling Serbs, inspired by their 14th century historic battle. Macedonia, likewise, has a major ethnic group that has been long under Serbian control from Yugoslavia, which has a destabilising effect on Greece and Bulgaria. Not only is Yugoslavia, a creation of Versailles, in collapse but so is Czechoslovakia. In the wake of its collapse we shall encounter a rekindling interest in the Sudetenland, now dominated by the Czech authorities. The Sudetens in Bavaria and elsewhere in Germany see an opportunity in this redefining of states in that area. The large Hungarian minority in Slovakia may call for self-determination, as, indeed, might the Slovak minority in Hungary. Any of these may progress from dissent to violence and war.

In Poland, many people in Silesia and Pomerania have rediscovered their German identity. There is a destabilis-ing phenomenon in the Kaliningrad enclave, formerly east Prussia, which is populated by Russians and is now a dumping ground for Volga Germans. Newly liberated Lithuania is ignoring its own experience and is repressing Poles in the south of the state. Moldova Ruthenia, Crimea and many other nationalities throughout the former Soviet Union, such as the Tatars and Cossacks, are all stirring. We must prepare ourselves in the United Nations and in Europe to cope with those problems.

Despite the collapse of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, we must take lessons from the process. Buried deep in the recollection of the House are names that have long been forgotten: Schleswig, Allenstein, Marienwerder, Upper Silesia, Klagenfurt, Vilna and Teschen, which all had large national groupings whose destiny was unclear. The treaties created international commissions, with the participation of interested parties, but with disinterested chairmanship, which carried out plebiscites that determined the destiny of the territories concerned. In almost all cases, the belligerent armed forces withdrew. Allied forces kept the peace for the duration of the plebiscites and allied diplomats ran the plebiscites. British forces and diplomats participated in most of these. The commissions allocated territories according to the result—by zone, as in the Schleswig case, to Denmark and Germany, or by county or district, as in the cases of Allenstein or Vilna. This plebiscitary process should be reconsidered to see whether there are lessons to be learned in the case of Bosnia and Hercegovina. We currently run the risk of letting these problems fester. We should ensure that our technical capacities are in order, and we must find a mechanism to consider these solutions and how to enforce them.

I do not wish to understate the importance of the issues facing us, but, in the interests of the House, I must speak briefly. The Ministry of Defence is well aware of my interest in the Cheshire regiment. I thank the Minister of State for the Armed Forces for his co-operation in what was to have been a visit to the regiment in Germany last week—it had to be called off because of the far more important work of the regiment preparing for its visit to a difficult zone.

It is a curious fact that under "Options for Change" a regiment so suited to the UN's requirement is due to be merged with the Staffordshire regiment. Perhaps the Ministry of Defence will reflect on the logic of that and give the troops the present of a reprieve when they return home.

In my view and that of many of the military personnel to whom I have spoken—they are far more qualified than I to speak about the strategic issues—these small county infantry regiments have a place in modern United Nations peacekeeping operations. I should like to discuss that in the context of other parts of the world, but I have no time today to do so.

My one criticism of the Ministry of Defence so far is that the Government have failed to provide me and other Members representing Cheshire with detailed information with which we can respond to understandable constituency fears. Discussions have taken place today about the precise rules of engagement and the chain of command, not to mention the risks faced by members of the regiment. The length of the commitment into which the regiment is entering is a subject close to the hearts of the families concerned. I hope that the Secretary of State will note that point and ensure that all hon. Members are kept abreast of what is happening so that we can offer support to these families.

I recognise that we cannot gaze into the crystal ball, but I urge the Government to go no further than using the troops to assist convoys of humanitarian aid. Obviously the troops must be adequately equipped to defend themselves in extremely difficult circumstances. Several hon. Members have commented wisely on that. I do not often find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill), but he made some pertinent points which I am sure the Defence Secretary will have noted.

On the ground, command may have to be given to people with a degree of control to deal with these difficult circumstances. We cannot possibly recall the House to decide each time a soldier needs to defend himself. He clearly needs the right to defend himself and must be properly equipped so to do, but that does not mean that the House should authorise the regiment to embark on anything beyond protecting its own personnel and helping the people whom it has gone to assist by means of the convoys. It is important that the House sees that in its right perspective.

I have severe doubts about the potential structure of the negotiating table, as it is currently envisaged, around which it is hoped that a more long-term solution will be found. Nevertheless, we must give it the best opportunity possible if we are to develop moves towards a lasting peace in what is an extremely difficult and fraught situation.

I finish by reiterating the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) who said that our hopes and good wishes go not just to the people in war-torn Yugoslavia but to our own troops and their families in helping to resolve the situation.

First, I declare a personal interest. My mother is Serbian. She was born in Belgrade. In common with many Yugoslavs, I also have relations who are Croatian.

This tragic war has torn all the Serbian people apart. Those who have been able to get hold of the correct news, despite the censored television in Serbia, have been appalled at the atrocities and have wholeheartedly supported Panic's efforts to distance himself from Milosevic who is clearly an evil man, an expansionist.

It is important now that we should look forward. It has been interesting to hear hon. Members ask how we can throw a lifeline to the opposition, the Free Democratic Movement, so that it can oust Milosevic who controls the army, which in turn supports the militia.

There is a way that that can be done. There will be federal elections in November. It is important not only that we should wholeheartedly support Panic, as hon. Members have said, but that we should do so much more publicly and explain to the public that Panic has clearly distanced himself and condemned the atrocities.

In addition, we should follow the pattern of Poland. People there supported the Solidarity movement by sending it money and giving moral support. In that way the Polish people were finally able to gain real freedom.

Milosevic is a former communist, a socialist. He wants to control the country at all costs. If, in the forthcoming elections, we can create the oxygen for democracy really to breathe, in the long term that will be the most constructive way to bring the fighting to an end, to snuff it out.

But there are difficulties. The Free Democratic Movement of Serbia, DEPOS, needs help. It needs moral support and financial help. There is a bank account for it in London. I call on the House to give those I call genuine freedom fighters the freedom to bring real democracy and the toppling of Milosevic.

The war in Belgrade, in Yugoslavia, has brought tremendous heartache but also much appreciation for the fact that Britain has decided to contribute troops to the humanitarian force. I agree with some comments that have been made in the House and I confess that if I had had my choice we would have done that sooner. One can hope that the Government's diplomatic initiative will succeed, and I do not underestimate that, but that cannot be done at the expense of fast humanitarian aid. Therefore, I welcome the entry of the troops.

However, I have one or two caveats. We must not only ensure that, as we have already agreed, there must be good liaison with the local warlords but our troops must be accompanied by proper Serbo-Croat speakers. There is also benefit, which has not been mentioned today: the presence of those troops will give heart, encouragement and a degree of stability to the civilians who crave peace. I also believe that they can cramp the style of the militias. Those troops—the Cheshires and Lancers—are brave men, who, I think, enjoy the wholehearted support of the British people. They are professional soldiers who have never ducked a responsibility or a duty, and I know that they have our wholehearted backing.

Of course, there could be a price for that dedication. There will be casualties. It may be worse: there may even be deaths. It is tremendously important for us to tell the families of those soldiers that this is a price worth paying for the sake of humanity. More than that, what I hear from the people of Serbia tells me that they appreciate this proffered generous sacrifice.

Contrary to what an American academic said a few years ago, history is not dead; it is back with a vengeance. What we see in the former Yugoslavia is due to historic animosities and feuds, but I regret to say that it has also been contributed to by the mistakes of a number of countries in Europe and internationally.

I want the Minister to explain why, if 11 European Community countries are against recognition and one is in favour, a state is recognised; while if 11 are in favour and one against, the state is not recognised. A series of tragic mistakes have been made over the past two years, which have encouraged disintegration and prompted fanatics on all sides to sweep away the secular, democratic and pluralistic forces. As a result, it is now very difficult for democratic socialists of any kind in the former Yugoslavia to obtain a hearing anywhere. Religious fundamentalism and ethnic hatred are the dominant forces in all the republics.

We should also condemn the Governments, including our own, who knew what was going on in Kosovo three or four years ago but did nothing about it. It is all very well to talk about Kosovo today, but people were coming to this country two or three years ago—sometimes on visits funded by the Foreign Office—explaining what was happening in Pristina. They described how university departments were being closed and how people were being kicked out of their jobs. And what did we do? We did nothing.

The tragedy of much of Africa, among other issues, is almost being ignored except when—as in Somalia—it becomes so bad that people are forced to talk about it. A war has been raging in Mozambique for a long time. We hope that there will be an agreement and democratic elections there in the near future, but we should be talking far more about that today. No one has mentioned it.

It is very unfortunate that, for whatever reason, today's debate was interrupted. The headlines in tomorrow morning's newspapers—and, no doubt, on television tonight—will not be about the tragic plight of the Shias in the marshes of Iraq, or that of the Somali people who are suffering at the hands of the mafia gangs who are destroying their society, or that of the peoples of the different parts of Yugoslavia. Instead, they will be all about what a particular Chelsea football supporter did or did not do on a particular day.

It is important to draw attention to the way forward and to learn some lessons from these international crises. The United Nations Secretary-General's report, "An Agenda for Peace", presents the important concept of peace enforcement, as opposed to peacemaking or peacekeeping. I believe that our Government should be doing far more to support the Secretary-General and his efforts to strengthen the role of the United Nations. Perhaps we should also consider whether there is a role for United Nation trusteeship as a means to resolve some of the disputes.

If we are able to secure peace in the former Yugoslavia, I am not sure whether we shall be able to replace all the pieces. I hope that we can, but I fear that the animosities and fueds will be so deep that the situation will need outside intervention for many years.

I worry when I see the reported remarks of the Minister to the Select Committee on Defence stating that he has no idea how long British forces will be deployed. I think that it is an honest answer, but I worry—

It is better than a dishonest one.

Yes, I prefer an honest answer to a dishonest answer. But there must be clear monitoring of the situation so that we know the facts and can have a full debate in the House before we go down the slippery slope of 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 or 100,000 British troops being deployed as part of the massive force that might be needed to contain the conflict.

We have today witnessed a good and useful debate which has well justified Parliamen's recall. I only wish that Parliament had been recalled earlier and that we could have spoken longer. The contributions from both sides of the House have been positive. Hon. Members have talked of their experiences —often gained during visits to various parts of the world in the summer months. Such contributions have enhanced the quality of the debate. Right hon. and hon. Members have posed a number of pertinent questions and made a number of useful suggestions. I hope that the Secretary of State will deal with as many as possible, without jeopardising the safety of our troops involved.

Although the motion refers specifically to Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia, in view of the limited time at my disposal I shall concentrate on the position in Bosnia, as that is where our ground troops are to be committed in the near future and where a number of detailed issues are of concern to hon. Members and our constituents. However, I stress that my decision in no way reflects the relative importance Opposition Members attach to Somalia and Iraq which, like many other places in the world, we regard as vital. One message that has come, certainly from the Opposition and, I suggest, from Conservative Members, is a welcome for the new, enhanced role of the United Nations.

Before we discuss the detailed, military aspects of the operation in Bosnia it is well to remind ourselves that, when talking of the use of the military, we are accepting that our own trade, profession and art has failed. Politics and political action have broken down and we are having to resort to force to try to maintain a standard of humanitarian decency.

However, no one should doubt that there must be a political resolution of the problem in Bosnia, Iraq and throughout the world. The use of the military is merely the means to an end—we should never forget that objective. I associate the Opposition with the thanks given to Lord Carrington for his sterling, valiant efforts to resolve the problems in the past, and we wish his successors well in the future. We hope that they will be able, against all the odds, to find some sort of resolution before we deploy troops. We still cling to that hope.

We do not demur from the Government's decision to involve British troops in Bosnia. Indeed, we called for such action early in August. If the United Nations considers it appropriate to deploy troops to support humanitarian convoys in their efforts to get vital food and medicine through to beseiged citizens and to protect the released detainees, the Labour party believes that we should do so. As a permanent member of the Security Council, we have a responsibility to ensure that British troops play that part, although I emphasise that that has to be under the aegis of the United Nations and has to be limited to the protection of convoys.

In no way can we give the Government a blank cheque for further escalation. To extend military participation further would be extremely dangerous, if not foolhardy. The terrain is ideal for hit-and-run attacks. The old Yugoslavian army, many of whose remnants are now fighting in Bosnia, was trained specifically for that task and we simply must not get drawn into a conflict on one of the various sides. British military involvement must not be allowed to escalate into such a quagmire, and we do not believe that escalation is inevitable.

Having said that, we realise that we are placing the lives of our troops at risk; they really are laying their lives on the line. In so doing, we must remember that most military opinion is against such an initiative. There are too many unknowns and too many uncertainties for justification of intervention on military grounds alone. The truth is that the mission can be justified only on humanitarian grounds. In a sense, that is the essence of our involvement and that makes our responsibility as politicians doubly onerous.

We must ensure that our ground troops out there have a clear guide to their role and a clear list of instructions of what they can and cannot do.

I have heard many hon. Members raise issues along those lines today. I should like to press the Secretary of State further. Clearly, the command structure is one of the most important aspects. For example, are we certain that the structure, as envisaged—with a supreme commander commanding a force comprising 16 nations, operating miles apart and performing different functions—is the right structure? As the Secretary of State knows, there have been criticisms of the present operation, and it is vital that we get the lines of communication and of command clear.

That leads us to the next major question asked by several hon. Members from both sides of the House—what is the precise role of the troops? That may seem a silly question. The Minister of State for the Armed Services has led us to believe that the troops will be protecting convoys, travelling with them as they make their way to the besieged areas. However, the French deputy commander of the United Nations protection force, Major General Philippe Morillon, who I understand is in charge of all European forces there, was quoted in The Times on 23 September as saying that the aim of the operation is to break the blockade of various named Bosnian towns, by creating safe corridors to each, along which supplies of humanitarian aid could travel, and which could be policed by United Nations checkpoints. That is very different from what we understood the situation to be, and what I understood to be the British Government's position, as explained by the armed forces Minister. We need to know what the position is. Is it to protect convoys or to create land corridors? The two are distinctly different.

Various right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned the rules of engagement. Have the rules been clarified? I read what the Armed Forces Minister said in his evidence to the Defence Select Committee on Tuesday—that United Kingdom troops would have the right of reply.

I very much welcome the Select Committee's work and the fact that it held that important meeting, because it allowed hon. Members from both sides of the House to ascertain the precise position and made it much easier to stage this debate.

However, the ambiguities remain. Various hon. Members have asked whether the troops can reply only with armour or whether they can use heavier fire power if necessary. Different reports are emerging.

There is even further confusion on that narrow but vital question. The Minister of State for the Armed Forces, in evidence to the Defence Select Committee, confirmed the status of the rules of engagement when he said:

"Yes, we agree our rules of engagement with the UN and we are quite happy that the rules of engagement are no more restrictive than ours."

With that in mind, I draw the Secretary of State's attention to the official pronouncement from the UN Secretary-General's report of 10 September, paragraph 8 of which says:

"Operational decisions relating to a protected convoy, including action to be taken in the event that the convoy encountered obstacles, would be the responsibility of the commander of the UNPROFOR escort, who would, where possible, consult the senior UNHCR representative in the convoy before taking such decisions."

I appreciate that the words "where possible" are there, but I suggest nevertheless that that description is a recipe for confusion and possible disaster. Only one decision can be taken under fire, and it is silly and dangerous to pretend otherwise. That point must be clarified.

I shall explore that subject a little further in the light of General Wheeler's evidence to the Select Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam) asked the General:

"Is it possible for whoever is in command of the convoy to respond with force without reference to higher authority?"

General Wheeler replied:

"It probably"—

I stress the word "probably"—

"will be the case providing we can talk it through with the UN people on the spot."

That is not good enough. We do not want "possibly" and "probably", and "talking it through later". We need to have everything sorted out now, before our troops go, so that they know where they stand, know the rules of engagement and have the responsibility to follow them. We need specific answers from Ministers to those questions.

I ask the Secretary of State again about appropriate equipment. The Government have been open on the subject, and clearly everything has not gone according to plan. It was not a happy situation when our engineers were sent to Sarajevo airport with only soft-skinned vehicles to transport them round the airport. As soon as the Government heard about it the matter was put right, but we cannot afford to make such mistakes. Fortunately, there were only very slight casualties, but there could have been fatalities. We cannot afford such decisions. We must have the right back-up and equipment.

For example, I understand that there is a chemicals plant in the Tuzla region. Will our troops take equipment to protect them from possible chemical contamination? That could be a vital consideration.

As we have already heard today, our troops in the corridor will have to pass through two separate war zones. I understand all the difficulties involved with air cover, but is the Secretary of State aware that most infantrymen feel uncomfortable about going into such action without air support and air cover? Is it not possible for us to have a helicopter back-up for reconnaissance, or even for alerting base about ambushes, and so on? I know that there have been problems with civilian helicopters attached to the military, but it seems sensible to provide some helicopter back-up. That was certainly the view of the French at the Council of Ministers meeting on 28 August, when they offered a helicopter detatchment. Are we not able to offer similar back-up?

It is important that the Secretary of State does everything in his power to keep Members of Parliament informed about what is happening. During the Gulf conflict regular, often daily, bulletins were deposited in the Library. We appreciate the sensitivities involved and the confidential nature of many actions, but right hon. and hon. Members have responsibilities to their constituents —many of whom will be involved in the struggle or have dear ones who will be. I hope that the Secretary of State will follow the precedent followed during the Gulf war in that respect.

We ask those questions in the hope that the Secretary of State will be able to provide further information. We pose them in a supportive manner. We want to ensure that our troops have the clearest understanding of their role and responsibilities. We are very conscious of the dangerous mission that we are asking them to undertake. They are performing a vital task in saving the lives of civilians in a terrible civil war. We wish them every success. They have our blessing, and I trust that every single one of them will return home unscathed.

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) on his first speech from Labour's Front Bench as his party's principal defence spokesman. He has been a defence spokesman in the past and therefore comes to the Opposition Dispatch Box with considerable experience.

It is a significant indicator of the times in which we live that in a debate on Yugoslavia and Iraq it is considered necessary and appropriate that not only foreign affairs spokesmen but defence spokesmen should participate. It has been said that ambassadors are people who can be disarming, especially when their countries are not. The facts that confront us at present suggest that a necessary contribution can be made by the defence forces of various countries in helping to achieve United Nations objectives.

Today's debate has been disparate in addressing the problems of countries as far apart as Bosnia and Somalia. One common thread has been influenced by the ending of the cold war. That has not brought a period of international harmony but an extraordinary outburst of some of the most cruel and vicious conflicts—including the first on our own European continent—since the end of the second world war.

Another common thread was mentioned by the hon. Member for South Shields. I refer to the extraordinary increase in the authority of the United Nations and its ability to take action to help resolve difficulties. With the ending of the cold war, the Security Council now finds it possible to reach agreement on a series of initiatives. As a consequence, the pressures on the UN are greater than they have been for many years. The armed forces of many western and other countries—including our own—are increasingly asked to fulfil new roles of a humanitarian or peacekeeping nature.

I will comment first on Iraq. I returned 24 hours ago from a visit to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other parts of the Gulf, where I was able to meet Royal Air Force personnel involved in the enforcement of the no-fly zone in southern Iraq. I pay tribute to the extraordinary and professional work that they are doing in difficult circumstances. It is extremely hot and dusty, and they are presented with a considerable amount of potential danger, yet they approach their task with the cheerfulness that we expect, and which the RAF has always shown.

My hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) made an extraordinarily powerful speech about the situation in the marshlands of southern Iraq. It would have convinced anyone who needed convincing why it was necessary to impose the no-fly zone. Since August in particular, there has been increasing evidence of growing acts of repression by the Iraqi Government against their own people in southern Iraq, and increasing information to suggest that fixed-wing aircraft were being used to assist those acts of repression.

The United States, France and ourselves now have aircraft in that region to impose the no-fly zone, and that initiative has been achieved with tremendous success. No Iraqi aircraft have been operating in southern Iraq, which is helping to reduce the level of repression against the people of that area. Sometimes, I am asked when that exercise will be ended. It can be concluded only when there is convincing and satisfactory evidence that the Iraqi Government and Saddam Hussein in particular are willing to comply with UN resolutions and to cease to oppress people in that region.

Was not the point of the speech that my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) made that the no-fly zone is not securing the safety of the marsh dwellers?

I believe that the no-fly zone is making an important contribution in that direction. A number of the military acts of aggression in the past few months have had the support of aircraft, because of the difficulties of communication in the area. There are few roads there. It is difficult to penetrate the marshlands, so the ability to use air cover to support Iraqi forces will have been important. The zone cannot solve the problem alone, but it is making an important contribution.

I shall now deal with the powerful speeches right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have made about the former Yugoslavia. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) and my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor) and others described the difficulty of reaching a judgment about whether it is right to deploy British forces in that quarter. The hon. Member for South Shields asked me to state the precise purpose of British soldiers' going to Bosnia-Hercegovena. They will escort convoys which may deliver the medical and food supplies that will increasingly be needed as winter approaches and hardship intensifies. They may occasionally escort detainees who have been released from the camps and wish to go elsewhere in the country or abroad.

The hon. Member for South Shields asked whether we would want forces to be used to escort convoys or to impose safe corridors. They will not do the latter. If we were to impose a safe corridor, we would need a much greater deployment than is currently contemplated and it would imply a far more substantial and worrying military commitment than it would be appropriate to make now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) and others asked about the command structure that is to be applied and whether it is satisfactory. The hon. Member for South Shields also asked that perfectly reasonable question. The command structure will always be difficult when forces from a large number of countries are involved in an operation of this type. Now that the UN is considering a substantial increase in the amount of military activity in the former Yugoslavia, it is necessary in our judgment and that of others that the command system should represent the new role. It is therefore proposed that under General Nambiar, the overall commander of the military forces, there should be a new two-star headquarters. General Morillon will be commander of that headquarters. He will have a British chief of staff. There will be a number of other British personnel in important positions in that command, which is likely to have responsibility in the Bosnia area.

The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) asked whether this was to be a NATO headquarters or a NATO contribution. It would not be appropriate to describe it in those terms. It will not be a NATO force or headquarters, but there have been discussions about whether it would be appropriate to use many of the elements of an existing NATO headquarters because of common habits, practice and experience and the valuable assets that will be of great use when these matters are taken forward. That is highly desirable.

Several hon. Members asked about the rules of engagement. That is a crucial aspect of the matter. As my right hon. Friend the Minister of State said in evidence to the Defence Select Committee, there can be no question but that British forces must have the right to use the means necessary to defend their lives and the lives of those for whom they are responsible. We are determined to ensure that the rules of engagement will reflect that fact. The convoys that will be carrying goods to various parts of the former Yugoslavia will, of course, be armed convoys. It is an armoured battalion that is going. They will have not only personal weapons but Warrior armoured personnel carriers which have their own cannon and their own guns. Mortars will be carried within their vehicles. If the circumstances required it, in order to protect life, it is appropriate that the rules of engagement should allow persons to take such action as is necessary for that purpose.

Clearly, the precise wording of the rules of engagement is currently under discussion. It would not normally be our practice to go into the precise detail of rules of engagement, because one would not want a potential assailant to be aware of the circumstances in which the troops would respond with fire. I hope, therefore, that the House will forgive me if I do not go into precise detail, but to the particular assurances that were sought I can give a positive and unqualified answer. In particular, it is not our belief that it should be necessary to consult headquarters many miles away if, by doing so, there would be any enhanced risk to the life or safety of the individuals concerned. Of course there may be occasions when that will be possible without risk, but if there were risk—and that must be in the judgment of the person on the spot —it would be appropriate that they should take whatever action is necessary.

None of us knows what level of danger is going to be faced, but so far as the British Government are concerned, we have no doubt that it is appropriate for these military convoys to proceed only if they have reason to assume in advance that they will be able to make safe passage. If I can give an example: we have had for some time the Hercules aircraft which have been carrying humanitarian supplies to Sarajevo. They have made a very important contribution towards the relief of suffering in that city. Sadly, a few weeks ago, an Italian aircraft carrying out a similar function was shot down. It is clear beyond any misunderstanding that that aircraft was shot down by hostile fire from irregular forces on the ground, probably using hand-held missiles. As a result of that, these aspects of our humanitarian activities have been suspended. The Hercules have not been flying for several weeks, nor have the aircraft of a number of other countries, but consideration is being given to whether those flights should be resumed. However, both we and others have made it quite clear that only when we are satisfied that the pilots and the crew who are responsible for flying these aircraft will not be exposed to dangers against which they have no defence—only at that stage—would it be appropriate to review the situation.

My right hon. and learned Friend will recall that at the London conference the Bosnian Serbs agreed to notify the United Nations of the positions of all heavy weaponry and also agreed to put it under the supervision of the United Nations. Has that been done?

I am afraid there has been a very poor response by those who gave that pledge. What has happened so far is that a very small number of pieces of artillery have been collected together, but I must add the qualification that those who were in control of those weapons before are still in control of them and are still firing with them. All that the United Nations has been allowed to do is to monitor that particular operation. I cannot believe that that is an honouring of the spirit of the promise that was given by those who felt it appropriate to make that commitment.

Clearly, the time when our forces are deployed will depend, as we were asked to ensure that it would, on when we have sufficient information as to exactly how they will be used, where they will go and what their precise responsibilities will be. Since the United Nations accepted our offer of reinforcements, we have had a reconnaissance party in Bosnia seeking to identify the precise routes that any convoys might go in order to carry out their responsibilities. There are difficulties being experienced in ensuring that there could be reasonable safe passage to Tuzla or Doboj, which are the two towns that have been identified as possible towns for relief to be provided by British-escorted convoys. A reconaissance party is in Bosnia at the present time. Only when it recommends that it is satisfied that we could expect these supplies to get through without unreasonable difficulty—only when that has been established—will it be appropriate for the deployment to take place. We hope that the forces will be available and deployed by early November, but it is a major operation. About 1,800 men, just over 1,000 vehicles and an estimated 600 tonnes of stores will have to be sent to Bosnia. That takes a considerable time and it is appropriate for these matters to be dealt with carefully.

I thank the House and all parties represented in it for their support for the Government. That support is appreciated by the Government and will be enormously welcomed by those brave men and women who will be active in Bosnia. The fact that they know that they have the united support of the House will be a tremendous uplift to their morale and will ensure that they are able to achieve their contribution.