Halifax Summit

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:31 pm on 19 June 1995.

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Photo of Mr John Major Mr John Major , Huntingdon 3:31, 19 June 1995

Again, let me take the right hon. Gentleman's points in order. On gold, yes, we shall continue to press and I shall be happy to have the right hon. Gentleman's support and that of other hon. Members. It is the right way forward. Pledging the gold will certainly make an improvement, but we think that outright sales of gold would have been better.

On speculation, we did not specifically refer to the Tobin proposals, but we did discuss matters such as the imposition of taxes and exchange controls. However, we agreed without dissent that either the reimposition of exchange controls or new taxes on financial transactions would be counterproductive. We did consider those proposals, but there was unanimous agreement among the G7 that that was not the direction in which we wished to go.

On Bosnia, I think that the first half of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks was inaccurate, in the sense that the responsibility for the fact that the United States is unprepared to contribute lies not with the United Nations, the Bosnians or the American Administration, but with Congress itself. I very much hope that that will be able to be corrected. As I indicated to my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Sir P. Hordern) a moment ago, we must wait and see whether that is the case.

I did say that, if the United Nations protection force were forced to withdraw, I feared that one of the outcomes would be a massacre. That is a position that I have held to for a long time; it is why I remain rigorously opposed to the withdrawal of the United Nations protection forces unless and until it becomes transparently clear that it is no longer safe or prudent for us to leave our troops there. So I very much wish them to remain. Were the United Nations protection force to leave, I think that it is very likely that the arms embargo would be lifted.