Mr Alan Clark: Hear, hear.
Mr Alan Clark: He is not a Member of Parliament.
Mr Alan Clark: The Chamber is pretty full this afternoon, which I find reassuring and creditable. It is plain from all the contributions that there is widespread anxiety in the House touching many aspects of the war. I believe that it also attaches to what is being done in our name and in the name of this country. Probably it is seated in the paradox of Government policy. The first paradox is the notion...
Mr Alan Clark: I advise hon. Members who dissent from that to consider how often this frightful equation of casualty lists, this bogus equilibrium of people who have been killed, is put to the House and in the media. The second paradox is more bizarre. Yugoslavia has been bombed to pieces and had its infrastructure almost destroyed. The River Danube has been polluted and hundreds of acres of pasture have...
Mr Alan Clark: It must also be proportionate, as my right hon. and learned Friend says. If NATO continues to behave in its present reckless, indiscriminate and brutal manner—devoid, it seems, of any comprehensible, tactical plan—which is greatly separated from the original concepts under which the organisation was set up and from the deference that it originally owed, and should owe, to the Security...
Mr Alan Clark: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Like most hon. Members, I understood that there was a 10-minute limit on speeches. Under what circumstances are you extending that limit? The right hon. and learned Gentleman has been speaking for 14 minutes, but he is using the extra time to attack the Conservative party.
Mr Alan Clark: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. As the record will show, it was Mr. Berisha, a highly respected senior Albanian politician, who attributed the murder of Mr. Agani to the KLA.
Mr Alan Clark: Would the Minister draw the attention of the Foreign Secretary to the sayings of the Albanian President, Mr. Berisha, as reported in The Times today? Mr. Berisha, as well as saying that the KLA are a bunch of feuding gangs and racketeers, recommended that NATO should negotiate with Mr. Rugova. However, the House will be shattered to learn that, shortly after that, Mr. Rugova's henchman, Mr....
Mr Alan Clark: Did he enclose a cheque?
Mr Alan Clark: It was not the Royal Air Force that smashed up the Chinese embassy, and as the Foreign Secretary is speaking in the British House of Commons, why does not he say so? That action was taken by the USAF, whose general and habitual standard of inept targeting and gung-ho opportunism must have been responsible for the deaths of many hundreds of civilians. In the last war, the alliance had the...
Mr Alan Clark: I was going to suggest that all the white middle-class males in the catchment area be employed as cleaners.
Mr Alan Clark: Can the Home Secretary assure the House that his Department is taking effective screening measures to eliminate criminal elements among the refugee immigrants? His hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development will tell him that I have already raised that in the House, on the Adjournment. Has the right hon. Gentleman seen both the MI6 report and the Interpol papers...
Mr Alan Clark: If, as is proper, the Minister is consulting local authorities and others and getting their consent, will he not also feel obliged, for reasons of both practicality and honour, to assure those authorities that a proper screening process will be set in train, to prevent infiltration by criminal elements and by those who, as I have warned the House, will be intimidating refugees, and whom their...
Mr Alan Clark: The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) refers, in the long title of his debate, to "Humanitarian and economic effects". I subsume those broadly into the social consequences of a huge tide of refugees. I understood you to rule, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that it would be within order to discuss the impact that that may have on the United Kingdom. Hon. Members may recall a...
Mr Alan Clark: I hope that the Minister will infer from what I have said that that would be welcome.
Mr Alan Clark: I am grateful to the Minister for responding at this stage. I listened with great concern to the first-hand accounts of visiting the camps by the hon. Members for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington), for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge), and for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). The hon. Members for Richmond Park and for Cynon Valley spoke movingly and I would in no way impugn their testimony to the...
Mr Alan Clark: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and should not for a moment dispute the tenor of his comments. However, I feel that the House should be aware of the very high level and very wide diffusion of criminality within the camps and within the itinerant refugee bodies themselves. When the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie says that we have to "get it right", I...
Mr Alan Clark: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I should be most grateful for your guidance on this matter. The title of the debate on the Order Paper refers only to neighbouring countries, but the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) has introduced into his dissertation the general subject of refugees and their admission to this country. I am sure that he is right so to do, and...
Mr Alan Clark: I apologise to the hon. Lady for arriving a couple of minutes late for her important debate. Regarding the point raised by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) and others, as I have said before in the House, part of the problem with such horrendous tragedies relates to the language with which they are described. All too often, the police and the press describe such...
Mr Alan Clark: I must start by saying that it is my opinion that this war is clumsy, wasteful and shambolic. I accept that the intentions of many of those who have signed up to it are honourable, but I can see neither clearly defined objectives nor any measurable progress in attaining them. Our Prime Minister appears to be making things up as he goes along. It is indisputable that the situation of all...
