................................................................................ ON THE RECORD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 27.6.93 ................................................................................ JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Good afternoon and welcome to On The Record. If nothing else, the American bombing of Baghdad last night is a sharp reminder of the turbulence that buffets our disordered world. In this programme, we report from the United States and from Europe on the challenge that faces the West in general and Britain, in particular, now that the iron disciplines of the Cold War are no longer in place. And, I'll be asking the Foreign Secretary to answer the charge that - rhetoric aside - Britain is adrift in a sea of uncertainty. ***** DIMBLEBY: Yesterday afternoon, before the news about Iraq, I caught up with the Foreign Secretary, whose usually hectic schedule had taken him to Leicestershire. Foreign Secretary, despite the horrors of what is happening around the World, you have a stock in trade, which is to sound remarkingly reassuring. You state general principles but when one peers behind the principles, to try and discover the policies, we end up with a Foreign Secretary thrashing around in a vacuum, don't we? DOUGLAS HURD MP: I hope I don't undervalue the horrors because they're very many and they show how foolish it was to talk about a new world order. We don't have a new world order. What we do have is various institutions, techniques, ways of reducing the horrors but you have to deal with each situation as it is and it's...the greatest mistake is to pretend at the beginning that it's easily solved. Rhetoric is, in the present situation, I think, one of the greatest enemies of real progress. DIMBLEBY: That doesn't though suggest that there is anything other than drift in those who are supposed to hold the destiny of great nations in their hands. HURD: No, it means you have to look at each horror, each crisis and decide what you can do to prevent it getting worse and to cure it. What you shouldn't do is to pretend that from outside you can solve the problems of Bosnia, or Croatia, or the Sudan, or Liberia, or Angola or the rest of the dozen or so comparable horrors. If you start from a rhetorical position - as some of those you've just been quoting - then, you won't actually get very far. But, if you actually say: well, start from the bottom. What can we do? Bosnia's a very good example. What can - what we can do, I believe, we are doing. We should always be looking for ways in which we can do more which is helpful. But we won't do that sensibly if we start from the assumption that it's only a lack of will, or lack of courage, or lack of vision, which is preventing us from sorting out a civil war. DIMBLEBY: Even, if there happens to be a lack of will and a lack of courage? HURD: Shall we take Bosnia as an example of that reasoning? DIMBLEBY: No, let's come to that, in a second. Just in general terms, 'cos the..the Kissinger complaint is that there is - after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union - there is drift. The complaint of the Secretary General of NATO is: he sees no leadership. Those are general complaints, they're not specific. HURD: No, they're very general. They're very general, they verge on the rhetorical. I see institutions - the UN, NATO, EC and others; in Africa and other countries - which are all invented for one purpose, for one world and which now have to face another and they're adapting. NATO is a classic example. The numbers are down, the threat is different and NATO is adjusting, finding new ways in which it can be useful and Manfred Woerner has done a man's job in that; and, that's why there is a NATO fleet in the Adriatic. That's why NATO is now planning to protect a UN force in Bosnia from the air; things which would have been unthinkable, even a few years ago. DIMBLEBY: Well, let's take what was Yugoslavia and Bosnia and see whether the complaint that there is.. HURD: Yes. DIMBLEBY: ...a lack of policy..or a lack of coherence, or drift, or lack of leadership stands up. You reject it as rhetoric. Let's see whether you can sustain that rejection. Let me put this to you, that, actually, Bosnia is a very apostate example of what that complaint is. The declared aim was: let there be peace in Yugoslavia from the beginning. We want peace. Of course you want peace but actually your policy has done nothing to stop the horrors of war. HURD: I don't think it's a test of the Community, or the UN, or NATO, or Britain, or France or America, as to whether one can impose a particular peace on a particular part of country outside our borders. Of course, we could if we were willing to send a big army to turn Bosnia into a protectorate and impose a particular government, a particular form of government and keep our troops there, as in some much bigger and more difficult Northern Ireland. No one is proposing that. What worries me is that so many of the critics and the columnists and so on, without actually saying that's what they want, imply that's what they want. But they don't actually propose it and no government is proposing anything like that. So, if you're not going to do that, it's better not to pretend that you are and, then, you can work out what you can do. The three things that we have done and are doing are to provide a political framework - by 'we' I mean Europeans, UN. A political framework -
that's David Owen really and Stoltenberg now. You can put on the pressures - economic and financial pressures - particularly, against those who are most responsible. In this case, the Serbs, and you can keep people alive, whom the experts predicted would die and that's why we have. There are British troops, French troops, Spanish troops on the ground, in Bosnia, keeping people alive. DIMBLEBY: Now, leaving aside the fact that people have been kept alive, who otherwise might have died, your first two - it's your first two questions.. HURD: ..it is, actually, not unimportant. DIMBLEBY: No, I say leave aside. Let us say: for the moment, leave aside. HURD: Right. Right. Right. DIMBLEBY: In the first two cases what you say that the political framework that you created and the use of economic sanctions have had no effect whatsoever on the capacity and will of the Serbs and the Croats to carve up Bosnia. That's the drift. HURD: But there is a negotiation going on now. DIMBLEBY: Yeah but on their terms. HURD: .....succeeded... DIMBLEBY: But on their terms. HURD: Well it isn't a partition...the basis on which they're suggesting is there should be a confederation, there should be a map. DIMBLEBY: On their terms? HURD: Well, the Muslims have to accept it- DIMBLEBY: Precisely. HURD: - but the world won't accept it unless the Muslims do accept it. So, it's not on their terms. It's not on their terms and as regards the sanctions, there's no magic but they are bringing the Serbian economy to slow ruin and once people begin to think about their standard of living, their future, their jobs, then, these pressures are important. DIMBLEBY: Let me press this point about.. HURD: And have had an effect. DIMBLEBY: Let me press this point of incoherence, even if it's the only option that you say is available. You declare that this is a civil war. You're going to impose sanctions on an external power. HURD: It's mainly a civil war, in as much as ninety per cent of those fighting are Bosnians - Bosnian-Croats, Bosnian-Muslims, Bosnian-Serbs - but the main responsibility for starting it, for aiding and abetting it, for supplying it from outside has been with the Serbs, which is why there are UN sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro and not against the others. If the Croats were to continue what at times, in the last few weeks, they seem to be starting, then, as the Prime Minister said this week, sanctions might need to apply to them, too. But, at the moment, the sanctions - the economic sanctions - against those who have the greatest
responsibility are the Serbs. DIMBLEBY: The effect of those sanctions is to intervene in such a way as to ensure if you apply the arms embargo, as the key sanction. HURD: I was talking about the trades sanctions. DIMBLEBY: If you take the arms embargo- is to intervene in such a way as to ensure that the weakest military force, namely the-the government of Bosnia goes to the wall. HURD: Shall we just...can we just consider what would happen if you changed that policy and there is the logic of changing it, which you've just stated. The first thing would happen is that the keeping people alive exercise for the UN, British, French, Spaniards would stop because I don't think you, or I, or anyone could responsibly expect British troops to stay in the middle of Bosnia if, at the same time, we were supplying one side with arms - which would be the proposition. We'd be arming- or the world would be arming the Croats as well because, in practice, I don't think you can do the one without the other and, of course, the main fighting - certainly, in the part of Bosnia where we are - is nothing to do with the Serbs, it's between Muslims and Croats. So, you would, in effect, be saying to those concerned: we can't help you anymore. No more negotiations, no more humanitarian help but what we can do is make sure you get the kit to go on killing each other. DIMBLEBY: Alright. HURD: And, that, I think- I mean, it's-it's- I can see circumstances in which it might happen, in which it might be inevitable...French.. DIMBLEBY: ......you can see.... HURD: Yes, that's why we've never excluded it. DIMBLEBY: I'm going to come back- HURD: That we-but-but it is, as the French Foreign Minister said, it is a policy of despair. It's a policy of letting people fight it out and, I think, one danger of it would be that it would increase the chances of the war spreading. I can't be sure of that but, I think, there would be an added danger of that, so it's not a good policy. DIMBLEBY: Can I come back to that, in a moment, via dealing with what happened at Copenhagen, to pursue, again, with you the thought that not only is there incoherence but, in this respect, really, quite profound cynicism because you blithely opted at Copenhagen to say: no, we won't arm the Muslims and to say that we will go with the policy of supplying the men that are needed on the ground - there's seven and a half thousand troops - in the full knowledge that the member states were not going to supply those troops. HURD: I don't think that's in the least bit correct. We started with the convoys and then we put in troops to escort the convoys. What we're now doing is to try to build on that this concept of safe areas which the Security Council has endorsed. Try because you need some local agreement to make it work and you also need more troops. Now the Secretary General of the UN is looking for troops, he's had various offers, he's tried to turn those offers into reality. We have at the moment, the British, more troops in Bosnian than any other county....but I'm just answering your point, so it's not saying, look it's not real, it is real, the French have now decided to add to their contingent and others will. DIMBLEBY: That's all that's been added...that's all been added? HURD: But there are troops there already and there are others, offers which the Secretary General is now trying to turn to reality. So don't say it's unreal, it's difficult, it's dangerous but we have troops on the ground and one get's a little bit impatient of the rhetoric of people who don't have and won't have or can't have troops on the ground, who constantly say that nothing is being done. DIMBLEBY: Alright. HURD: Now this is one of the one irritating, unrealities of these arguments. DIMBLEBY: Now what irritates you in what you're referring to here is Germany and America. Now let me suggest to you that it's pretty incoherent to end up having a policy which actually is of a consequence of a great row between the Germans and the British so you can't even finish your coffee at dinner. HURD: Oh no, there's no great row, the row's invented afterwards. There is a discussion and it ends in an agreement... DIMBLEBY: Now that's exactly the points you've been reassuring if I may so Foreign Secretary, you say there was a discussion. There was a very fierce disagreement, was there not HURD: There was a disagreement which was resolved. You see one thing we've managed to do, we haven't solved the Bosnian problem which is why it is something which actually, you know, takes up more time and I'd say, emotion, than anything else. I mean, one argues about it, I hope, in a rational way but I mean, I think everybody does feel it. We haven't solved the problem but what we have prevented is that kind of rush to back different clients, indeed to arm different clients, which destroyed the Balkans before. We have at least kept, prevented either the European Community or the Russians or Americans, we've kept... we've agreed on a minimum of things while continuing to discuss and sometimes argue about other things. So that's something, it could be worse, the war could have spread and it's not. DIMBLEBY: Now let's just stick with this question though of the Muslims, the Germans have said unequivocally that they believe the Muslims should be armed. The Americans have said unequivocally that the Muslims should be armed. Britain and others have set their face against that for the reasons that you've already given, the trouble is that you're going to be forced down the road, are you not, by their momentum to accept that outcome? HURD: When we met in Washington, now a month ago, we tried to agree and we did agree on the things that we thought immediately should be done, say various tighter sanctions and so on and we've been gradually carrying that through. We said we don't exclude other measures and we were obviously thinking of the arms embargo. When we had the discussion at Copenhagen and they've since then having a discussion in New York, when the discussion is there then most people come to the conclusion that it isn't sensible, for the reasons I've given, to change the arms embargo. It's not saying... it may become inevitable in the end but it's a bad idea for the reason I've tried to set out and we continue to believe that and so do most people. DIMBLEBY: This precisely is where the incoherence and lack of leadership lies. You have said very eloquently, talked about the level killing fields that would be created there, that aggravated suffering that would occur as a consequence and now you say to me, oh well, it could be the case that that's what we have to do. Is that leadership? HURD: I'm talking about what may well happen. It's a bad idea, it's the politics of despair as my colleague said. DIMBLEBY: But you may have to go along it. HURD: If the negotiations break down, if the position of British, French, Spanish, Belgian troops in Bosnia becomes intolerable because it's too dangerous and we have to pull them out then I can conceive of circumstances in which the world says to those who are fighting, the Russians say to the Serbs, some people say to the Croats, others say to the Muslims, we can't really help you resolve this, if you're going to go on fighting, you go on fighting. But I don't think that's a good policy. DIMBLEBY: But you wouldn't veto it? HURD: I'm not saying whether we'd veto it or not, we're arguing against it, we don't think it's sensible. DIMBLEBY: You hold open the option of vetoing? HURD: We haven't said whether we're going to veto on it? DIMBLEBY: Ah no, but I'm asking you. HURD: No and I'm not going to say. DIMBLEBY: If you were not to veto it, let me suggest to you that it would be quite a humiliation for Britain that claims to be playing a major role, to say well although we actually think this is a disastrous policy, the policy of despair, nonetheless, in the end because the others have decided that they won't do what we would like them to do, we have to do what they want to do. HURD: We're not at that point yet, there isn't a question of veto because there isn't a majority for it in the Security Council. I'm just saying we haven't excluded that. The French haven't excluded it, the majority of the UN haven't excluded it, the majority in the EC haven't excluded it but we just don't think that it's a good idea. We think it's a bad idea, we think it's a policy which leads to greater fighting, longer fighting. The immediate effect of course would be to maximise the incentive for the Serbs to attack Sarajevo, to destroy the Muslims while they could. You know, the more one thinks it through and gets away from the, you know, the first feeling that it's a fairer policy, the more you think it through what actually would happen, the less fair, the less attractive it seems. DIMBLEBY: Now you said in a recent speech to the Atlantic college of civil war and you describe this situation as a civil war with some external components. You said that in really difficult circumstances it might be necessary to keep the peace. Well if Bosnia isn't a difficult circumstance, what is? HURD: You have to judge what you can do. Now Somalia, can we take another example? DIMBLEBY: Yeah. HURD: Somalia is another example because there you didn't have that degree of fighting, you didn't have that degree of risk and so the Americans decided to go in and now there's a UN operation supplying, I suppose, most of the public needs, the public services. Now that's a different situation, you have to weigh up each situation. It's no good, you know, trying to carry generalisations from one to another. We have an obligation, I think we in Britain have an obligation to play a part in building a more decent world from the bottom, brick by brick and not pretending there's a new world order and every breach in it is a disaster. It's the other way round. Everything that we can actually do in these kind of desperate situations, most of them civil wars, everything we can actually do to prevent it happening in the first place and to reduce this suffering in the second place and bring it to an end, we should do. But you have to look carefully at each before you commit your troops or large quantities of your money. DIMBLEBY: You said a very interesting thing in respect of Somalia, you said the Americans decided to go in and you also said, it was easier, which says two things to me. One is, it wasn't a collective leadership involved, it was simply the Americans deciding we can do this, and secondly, we lacked the will and the determination to stop killing fields in Yugoslavia but we didn't lack the will where it was easier to stop it. HURD: Because the two things are not comparable. You do what you can and no-one has suggested we lacked will in the Gulf. No-one has suggested we lacked will in keeping a peace keeping force in Cyprus year after year. The British actually, with the French, those two permanent members of the Security Council are the ones who have done most for peace keeping, for UN peace keeping. Others have done a lot. We two actually happened to have done most and that's because both of us have the kind of past which tells us that we ought to do what we can. But that doesn't mean that we feel that we can do something everywhere or everything everywhere. You really do have to weigh it up. We have limited resources, of course we do in Britain, we know that. We're not grand above our means or ambitious above our means, we have certain assets, we have a very good Army, we have a very good foreign service. We have certain assets which we can use for our own interests of course but also in the interests of a better world. But I'm very keen, you know, we shouldn't exaggerate or pretend because if you exaggerate and pretend then you're going to arouse expectations which you may disappoint and I don't want to do that. DIMBLEBY: You see, the other side of the coin of exaggerating and pretending is that, even you would like to be able to build from the bottom up an order, even though you would like to play big on the stage, in reality, the nature of collective intervention - which is what we're talking about - is of a kind that makes the options for intervention extremely limited. HURD: They're difficult. I think, one thing we have all learned - and one should learn all the time - is that you've got to move earlier. Can I mention an example which has succeeded and is, therefore, forgotten? Namibia. There was a war; South Africans, Angolans. There was a savage, bitter war. Collectively, the UN moved in. It's now at peace. Britain trained the two armies who'd been fighting each other. We are a military team there and it's created a Namibian Army. It's part of the solution. It's a good example because it worked against the odds. Cambodia is, naturally, in the balance now but the UN moved in - in a very big way, all of us paying our whack. We don't have-we have a few naval officers there but not more; others have done more there - and they've held elections and people came from miles out of the villages to vote and it worked. Now, we don't quite know whether it's going to work in terms of a coalition government and so on. It's trembling on the edge but it might work. This is what I mean by brick by brick, case by case. You've got to try but the way you try will be different, according to the different situations. DIMBLEBY: Well, let me put it another way. The way you try is to hope that you can get the diplomacy out of the politics of the lowest common denominator. Everyone will do...everyone will put a sticking plaster on something. Some people if their interests are really at stake might go further. When it's great strategic interests, as in the Gulf, then, America and the rest will come into line. Now, that is not a coherent policy towards the world, it's an opportunistic policy. HURD: Well, it does mean.... I don't accept that as a criticism. You take each opportunity as it exists. I think we have to learn to move earlier. I think, we have to learn to look at a situation inside a country - this is what is new - and say: look, this is going to be very dangerous and then say to that country: we must help you sort this out now before the fighting starts. Now, this is against all the sort of doctrine of the UN and the anti-Colonial doctrine because it is a form..or would have been in the past talked of as a form of Colonialism - moving into an internal situation - but, I think, increasingly, we're going to have to do that because, in fact, an emissary at peace conference, all those sorts of things are much - if you can get them right at the beginning, of course - avoid a huge amount of suffering, which comes when the excitement of fighting starts. When the excitement of fighting and killing starts and you learn to believe that you can't live with your neighbour, then of course that is very, very difficult and long to deal with. DIMBLEBY: Well, by the same token, where it is only a matter of diplomacy - and, I don't mean that disparagingly - when it's only a matter of diplomacy, maybe, the UN can operate. Maybe, you can get people to go in quickly because no one's going to care if Vance Owen, or whatever it is down the road, goes in and does something. But when push comes to shove and you need to back it with a big stick to be influential that's the point at which collective action becomes virtually impossible and you get instead postponement and fudging. HURD: I don't believe that in civil wars and most of the examples we've been talking about have been basically civil wars, it's usually going to be sensible to propose - pretend, I'd say - that you can actually solve that by the big stick, by marching in, by creating a protectorate and keeping an international army there for X years. I don't think that will often be thought to be very sensible. Where there is an aggression of one state against another - when Iraq swallows up Kuwait in a day - that's a different situation and the world reacted differently, as earlier in Korea. It's interesting, you see. You say opportunistic is a criticism and, of course, it's often used as such. If you look at it from my - from the point of view I've learned to look at it at, you're taking each opportunity you can - usually through collective action. If it's your own country, like the Falklands, it isn't collective. It's your own responsibility and you do it. But, usually, it's through collective action and you plan your defences, your defence forces, so that you can take a part in that. Not supposing you could do it all but saying in the right circumstances, where there is a plan, where there is an objective, where you've not just falling into it because of television or headlines, we are prepared to do our bit and, I think, Britain should be among those who are prepared to do their bit. DIMBLEBY: But the picture you paint, Foreign Secretary, down the road is of continuing civil wars because there's no means of stopping the warlords, in which the UN and the great powers end up being at the behest of every Tom, Dick and Harry warlord who says: yes, you can give us humanitarian aid here and there but we might stop you tomorrow. We might kill the odd soldier or two in the process. That's not a very enchanting prospect. HURD: No but I don't think the world is a very enchanting place. I think, the alternative vision, which lies behind so much of the rhetoric of a series of international armies, turning the world UN blue with a series of protectorates. It's not-it's not practicable and we don't really do anybody a service by pretending it is. It is the interests of Britain that these institutions we belong to and we're the only one who belongs to all of them - if include the Commonwealth, which is quite important in this - should, actually, adjust, adapt to the new situation which is now what three years on. And, they are. We spend a lot of time in NATO talking about this. Security Council - I would like to see the Secretary General have a general staff. He has to operate ad hoc. I've been there on the thirtieth floor with the telephone ringing and more and more crises coming in. People saying: we must have a UN force in Rwanda by Wednesday - you know. He's not equipped, either with money or staff, or the promise of men to cope with all these things and that's why he, clearly, needs more staff work. He needs more assets he can dispose of. The EC is not a military organisation and we don't believe it should become one but we do believe that we should work together more effectively and that, in the diplomatic side of it and the economic side of it, dealing with, say, Russia, that we should, as we do, have a common policy and stick together on it. DIMBLEBY: But, Foreign Secretary, what you've done very cogently is actually describe a world in which there is, now, no clear leadership and in which - if you're observing it from outside - you would say this is a world adrift. HURD: It's a world in which there's disorder and there always has been. The question is how you actually create out of the disorder places of light and safety. You can do it. I've given you two examples and we should try and do more of it but not with rhetoric and pretence. DIMBLEBY: Foreign Secretary, thank you very much. HURD: Thank you. ...oooOooo...