Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I, too, commend the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, on securing this important debate. I first visited Myanmar nearly 30 years ago, in 1988, shortly after the putsch that brought the military to power. At the time I was a correspondent for BBC World Service, which to this day has a reach in Burma unequalled by any in the contemporary world. In the past few years there have been many...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I welcome this debate and declare my interest as a trustee of the School of Oriental and African Studies, from where I also graduated with a master’s degree and a PhD. In addition, I am a member of the Council of Swansea University. In this country we have some of the finest universities in the world. Indeed, our universities as a whole are second only perhaps to those of the...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I welcome this debate, although I rise with some apprehension, as the register notes my membership of that endangered —nay, condemned—species, the BBC Trust. I acknowledge, too, a previous speaker in the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, who led the BBC Trust for several years with that considerable élan for which he is renowned and which was demonstrated again...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I declare my interest as a former special adviser to the late Robin Cook when he was Foreign Secretary from 1999 to 2001, and to Jack Straw when he was Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2005. In that year I returned to the UN, where I was director for the Middle East in the Department of Political Affairs in New York. In all three positions I had much to do with Iraq. Let me record my...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, like many in your Lordships’ House, I did not expect a few weeks ago to be speaking in a debate today on the UK leaving the EU, but that is what we are now doing. Formally, of course, it is the EU but, for all intents and purposes, there is little difference between the EU and Europe. In that regard we are joining the outsiders: Norway and Iceland, Switzerland, Albania—that...
Lord Williams of Baglan: I am grateful to the Minister. That is exactly the sort of thing I would like to hear and I hope the Prime Minister can do more in that regard in the coming weeks. We must be conscious, too, of NATO. In these times, when we are set to leave the EU, we must pay it greater attention, and I am glad the Prime Minister will be going to that summit. It is true that the vast majority of NATO members...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, the gracious Speech makes the bold statement that Her Majesty’s Government will continue to play a leading role addressing major international security and humanitarian challenges. However, there has not always been strong evidence of that in the debate this afternoon, preoccupied, as it has been, by the forthcoming referendum on Europe—the result of which, I would argue, will...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, the register declares my interest as a member of—I was going to say of an endangered species but it is a now a condemned species—the BBC Trust. Knowing the great interest in this House, I first welcome the Government’s commitment in the White Paper to ring-fencing the BBC World Service. That is very important. That presents a solid guarantee for the years ahead, as well as the...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I rise with some trepidation. As the register of interests notes, I am that much maligned species, a trustee of the BBC. Noble Lords might ask why I joined the BBC Trust. I did so because the BBC has always been important in my life and career. Indeed, I worked in that iconic building, Bush House, as a journalist and editor for the World Service for some eight years from 1984 to...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry is to be commended for obtaining this debate. It is timely because, for the first time since the commencement of the conflict in early 2011, there are signs that a fragile cessation of hostilities is taking hold, and we all hope that it will be successful. It is too early to be overly optimistic, and it might be useful to remind...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, the defeat of ISIS is of paramount importance for the future of Syria, but it is of even greater importance for the future of the Middle East. ISIS is a transnational movement. It will not be defeated in Syria, it has to be defeated throughout the region. Although as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, mentioned, some progress has been made in Iraq in pushing ISIS back, let us not...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, like others, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for obtaining this debate on a country rarely discussed in this Chamber, but one which uniquely suffers from perhaps the most oppressive regime in the world. It is no accident, perhaps, that its godfathers were Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, who did so much to bring this state into existence in the 1950s. More than 30 years ago, I...
Lord Williams of Baglan: I welcome the Minister’s Statement, which was very good. I want to pick up on one aspect, namely the coalition that has been formed by Saudi Arabia. We need Saudi Arabia to defeat Daesh but, at the same time, we must be careful that it is not done on a sectarian basis. The Minister referred earlier to Haider al-Abadi, in the Iraqi Government. Iraq is not part of the coalition formed by...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I should say at the outset that I support the Government’s proposal, albeit with some reluctance, principally because of the continuing absence of a meaningful political and diplomatic strategy worthy of the name and which should accompany military action. That said, three of the permanent members of the Security Council, the US, France and Russia, are already engaged in military...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, for obtaining this debate. Aleppo has tragically been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of this war, which has destroyed an historic city which bears the marks of so many of the great civilisations of the past. The most sustained urban fighting of the brutal Syrian civil war has divided the city between Bashar al-Assad’s forces in...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I welcome this debate. The Middle East and north Africa is an area where I have worked and lived in the past decade. Sadly, it is a region where I have seen at first hand a very considerable deterioration of the humanitarian situation. In looking at the causes, the Syrian civil war has to come top of the list. It is a conflict that has now lasted longer than the Spanish civil war...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, I rise with some trepidation, as I am a trustee of the BBC, a body much-criticised these days, a post I have held since December 2011. I also declare that in the distant past, in the 1980s, I was a reporter and correspondent for the World Service for some seven years. My responsibilities on the trust cover international issues, and especially the World Service. It is a...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, much of the comment in the press on the most gracious Speech as it relates to foreign policy has dwelt on the commitment by the Government to a referendum on our membership of the European Union, but I am pleased that in this debate we have moved over a terrain much greater, covering the Middle East, Asia and Africa, international human rights and the United Nations. My remarks will...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, has asked me to apologise for his not being able to participate in this debate. This debate is timely and I strongly endorse the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, in that regard. It is timely because there is now no peace process and this debate will be helpful in perhaps moving towards a peace process again in the future. Here I...
Lord Williams of Baglan: My Lords, this has been an extraordinary debate and, like other colleagues, I pay tribute to the most reverend Primate for initiating it. Not only is soft power a concept of critical importance in addressing global conflict, it is an area where the United Kingdom excels, from our vast array of NGOs working in almost every conflict corner of the world, from Gaza to Afghanistan and South Sudan...