Middle East — Motion to Take Note

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 2:09 pm on 16 March 2012.

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Photo of Lord Williams of Baglan Lord Williams of Baglan Crossbench 2:09, 16 March 2012

My Lords, I strongly welcome this debate, initiated by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I should declare an interest, as I was until last October a UN under-secretary-general in the Middle East and based in Beirut, from where I was able to witness the extraordinary political tumult we now call the Arab awakening, sweeping the region from the Maghreb to the Gulf. It is a wave of democratic fervour akin to that which swept eastern Europe in 1989. Lest we forget, that struggle for democracy also faced many difficulties-in Romania but, above all, in the former Yugoslavia.

In the Arab world, repressive regimes that failed to heed the voice of their peoples have fallen in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, whose rulers had governed between them for more than 120 years. The path ahead may be difficult, but the demonstrators in Tahrir Square have, I believe, captured the mood of the Arab peoples. That spirit is now strongest in Syria, the eye of the storm. The outcome of the struggle for freedom there may well determine the future of the Middle East.

I welcome the appointment, albeit late in the day, by the Secretary-General of his predecessor Kofi Annan as the joint envoy of the Arab League and the United Nations. Having accompanied Mr Annan and Ban Ki-Moon in many meetings in the past with President Assad, I know how difficult that task will be. President Assad is not likely to go gently into the night. Mr Annan's endeavours are focused on securing a ceasefire, which is unlikely to be straightforward. We must be conscious, too, that like Bosnia, where I also served, this is not a level playing-field; the stronger side may ruthlessly exploit its position. In that respect, Assad is not far behind Milosevic.

In the absence of political progress, ceasefires are all too likely to break down. But I believe that even before a ceasefire, which I fear is some way off, it is of paramount importance that the Red Cross, the ICRC and the United Nations should have unfettered humanitarian access, and that this needs to be the demand of the civilised world. I believe, too, that the impasse in the Security Council needs to be broken, if necessary through an international conference, perhaps in Geneva, bringing together the P5, Germany, Turkey and the countries of the Arab League to chart a map of the road ahead. The Dayton conference in 1995 followed many years of conflict in Bosnia, and we cannot allow that to happen in Syria. I urge the Government to think of these possibilities and not to rule out an appeal to the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace resolution, which has been used in the past on issues where the Security Council was deadlocked. I join others in bearing in mind that awful crimes are almost certainly being committed in Syria; the relevance of the International Criminal Court should not be lost sight of in that regard.

The demise of the Assad regime could be a strategic game-changer in the Middle East. At one stroke, Iran would be deprived of its Arab ally and simultaneously the link between the revolutionary guards in Tehran and the Lebanese Hezbollah would be, if not severed, seriously eroded.

In Israel, the focus has been on the Iranian nuclear challenge and too often now, as in the past, political opportunities have been lost. Israel has long prided itself, rightly, on its vibrant democracy, but it has looked at the democratic surge in the Arab region with fear and a lack of empathy. Did it really expect the 84 year-old Hosni Mubarak to be succeeded by his son Gamal in the same way that Bashar al-Assad followed in the footsteps of his father Hafez? If so, it was a seriously flawed reading of the Egyptian political mood.

Some months ago I was in Madrid to participate in a seminar commemorating the famous conference of 1991, which did so much in its time to spur a peace settlement. In its wake came the Oslo accords of 1994. Later came the efforts of President Clinton, culminating in the 2000 Taba agreement. In 2007, President George W Bush convened the Annapolis conference. In the subsequent five years, I regret to say that there has been no serious momentum to settling the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It worries me that Israel may not in the future have such moderate interlocutors as President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. My former UN colleague the Dutch diplomat Robert Serry told the UN Security Council on 21 November last:

"Without a credible path forward ... the viability of the Palestinian Authority ... and ... of the two-State solution ... cannot be taken for granted".

We are perilously close to that possibility, and it is the duty of the friends of Israel to sound the alarm.

This is a time of great hopes in the Middle East, but also of considerable fears. Unless the Syrian problem can be addressed, and addressed soon, it will migrate and one of its first victims could be Lebanon. Many references have been made in this Chamber to the complexity of Syria; that is of nothing compared with the complexity of Lebanon, whose constitution of 1943 recognises, if I remember correctly, at least 18 faiths. In Lebanon now, there is an awful fear of the future. Many believe that it may only be a matter of time before the conflict in Syria moves across the Lebanese borders.