|
|
Richmond upon Thames Liberal Democrats:Covering the constituencies of Twickenham and Richmond Park |
Campbell and Horwood quiz Hague
July 2, 2011 11:52 AM
• [Jun 29] Menzies Campbell (North East Fife, Liberal Democrat):HOWEVER welcome it may be that the International Criminal Court has issued those warrants, is not it the case that on a realistic assessment we can hardly be wholly confident that Colonel Gaddafi will ever face the Court? Does my right hon. Friend agree, however, that the significance of issuing the warrants is as much political as legal, in that it demonstrates a unified international response to the barbarism of Colonel Gaddafi and those about him?
William Hague (Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs; Richmond (Yorks), Conservative): My right hon. and learned Friend is right: it is a legal process, but it is of political importance. It is a political statement by the world that the behaviour of the Gaddafi regime is unacceptable and that it should be accountable for that behaviour. It sends, as I have said, a clear message to adherents of the regime that there is every risk of being held accountable. We cannot provide certainty, but these warrants show an ever-increasing risk to supporters of the regime of facing that accountability, so more of them should take the opportunity to leave it.
• . . Martin Horwood (Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat): I strongly welcome the Foreign Secretary's remarks about Israel and Palestine, especially his encouragement to Israel to be open to negotiations on a united Palestinian Authority, if they are freely elected by the Palestinian people. Does he believe that both parties could learn from our own example in Northern Ireland by dropping other unhelpful preconditions to talks, such as those that relate to Jerusalem on the one side or the extent of variations to the 1967 border on the other?
William Hague: I will go a long way with my hon. Friend on this. We want a return to negotiations; that is absolutely right. I have set out the conditions under which Israel should resume its negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which are the same conditions in relation to the PA. We need the negotiations to succeed so we should not be setting new hurdles. Comparisons with negotiations elsewhere, including those in Northern Ireland, are fraught with difficulty. The situations are not exactly the same and have not reached the point at which negotiations really started to bear fruit in Northern Ireland. A lot of painstaking work still has to be done on this, but it would be a good start, after President Obama's speech and his statement on the 1967 borders, for both the Israelis and the Palestinians to make it clear that they are happy to return to direct negotiations with each other.
What would you like to do next?
-
Subscribe for updates
Follow the party's activity on...
- Twitter:
- Liberal Democrats
- Facebook:
- Liberal Democrats
- YouTube:
- Liberal Democrats