Sudan (Peace Agreement)

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 3:16 pm on 21 July 2004.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Chris Mullin Chris Mullin Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Foreign & Commonwealth Office 3:16, 21 July 2004

We have had a constructive and useful debate. I am grateful to my hon. Friend Mr. Dawson for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue and for the measured tones in which he introduced the debate. I thought that the debate was all the better informed for the fact that about four or five hon. Members present have first-hand experience. I shall deal briefly with some of the points raised—I was asked a large number of questions, not all of which I shall have time to respond to—and then set out what I want to put on the record.

Several hon. Members asked about African Union peace monitors and the example of the Nuba mountains was mentioned. The British monitor, Mr. Rob Symonds, who is now with the AU in Darfur, helped to set up the joint monitoring commission in the Nuba mountains, so he has a lot of experience and will be able to bring some of it to bear in Darfur.

I was asked by the hon. Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) whether the Government's policy was one of quiet diplomacy. It is not. No casual observer of our pronouncements and activities over the past six months could think that our policy is confined to quiet diplomacy. We have made representations in public and private to all the parties at all levels of the Sudanese Government. I shall take the opportunity to say something about that again in a minute.

One or two hon. Members touched on the role of the Sudan Liberation Army, and they were right to draw attention to that, because it is sometimes overlooked. The SLA is a major player and has been attacking food convoys, taking hostages and stealing vehicles, even as the humanitarian operation has got under way. Its role should not be overlooked, although inevitably we have to focus on the role of the Government of Sudan.

My hon. Friend Ms Keeble said that in the end there must be a political solution and that it is not just a humanitarian issue. I entirely subscribe to that. We shall certainly do all that we can to bring the parties to the conference table. Talking of that, my hon. Friend Mr. Drew said that the SLA was complaining that it had had difficulty getting the Eritrean passports of its members acknowledged. That is the first that we have heard of that issue. We have been doing all that we can to encourage the SLA to make its demands at the conference table rather than as a precondition to going to the conference table. It has raised a number of points with us but not that one, and I note it with interest.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre and others have been gracious in mentioning the role of the UK. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Buckingham for saying that we can hold our heads up high. None of us wants to be complacent; we all know that nobody has done enough or was on the scene early enough, but we have done more than most. We can, as the hon. Gentleman said, in the global scheme of things, hold our heads up high.

We have played a leading part in trying to resolve the crisis. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development visited Sudan, including Darfur, in June; the Foreign Secretary has had conversations with the Sudanese Foreign Minister, the most recent of which was on 12 July; our ambassador in Khartoum, Mr. William Patey, has for a long time been making daily representations to the Sudanese Government at all levels on all the issues that we would wish him to raise—both political and humanitarian; the UK special representative, Alan Goulty, who has just returned from the region, had a meeting with President Bashir very recently; and I have had two long conversations with the Sudanese Foreign Minister, most recently at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa the week before last.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, both visited Sudan at the end of June, and during those visits the Sudanese Government made a number of commitments to improve the security situation and humanitarian access. They agreed to deploy more police to Darfur, to disarm the Janjaweed, to resume political talks, and to remove all obstacles on visas for NGOs. There are signs that they are—albeit belatedly—taking steps to honour those commitments. We have been pleased to see improvements in humanitarian access and the fast- tracking of visa applications for NGOs. Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has instructed its embassies to facilitate visas for NGO staff for Darfur within 48 hours of application and to exempt them from all fees, and foreign aid workers in Darfur are now exempted from restrictions on movements of foreigners.

On the security situation, the Sudanese Government have announced the deployment of an additional 6,000 police from outside Darfur, and claim to have arrested 40 or so Janjaweed and begun the disarmament process. The UN has reported that some police have started to arrive in Nyala, el-Fashir and el-Geneina, and that there has been some limited removal of militias from areas around IDP camps in el-Fashir.

Together with the US and our EU partners, we have made it very clear that UN Security Council action will be needed if the Government of Sudan do not honour the commitments that they have given—so the international community will continue to monitor the situation closely in the coming days. Meanwhile, discussion of the US draft Security Council resolution and of the possibility of targeted sanctions continues. Given the urgency of the crisis—