|
JOHN HUMPHRYS: The Government continues
to insist that there is no danger of British troops being drawn into a
civil war in Sierra Leone. But there are hundreds of paratroopers there
and more soldiers arrived off the coast only last night. The Shadow Foreign
Secretary, Francis Maude, is in our Oxford studio. Mr Maude, what would
you like to see happen now?
FRANCIS MAUDE MP: I'd like to see some real clarity
about what the purpose of this mission really is. We haven't heard that.
Last Monday when Robin Cook announced the mission he said it was essentially
to get the British nationals and other European nationals for whom we were
taking responsibility, to get them out. That's broadly been done but we
are now seeing the mission being extended apparently more or less indefinitely
and you know a lot of us are finding difficulty in reconciling Robin Cook
saying this morning that there's no question of the British troops taking
a combat role with the fact that the government has sent some of the finest
combat troops that there are in world. You know these are real front line
strike troops and if they are not there in any sense in a combat role then
actually expectations in the government of Sierra Leone and the people
of Sierra Leone who are suffering hideously from this brutal so-called
rebel force led by Mr Sankoh, then their expectations are being raised
high in a way that's very unsatisfactory.
HUMPHRYS: Do you want some sort
of enquiry into what?
MAUDE: Well there's a bit of a
tangled history here in Sierra Leone going - of the British government's
involvement going back quite some time and the aspect that I think is causing
some concern at the moment is the way in which the peace agreement that
was reached last July - June/July time - which involved the President -
the democratically elected President of Sierra Leone granting a pardon
to Sankoh and then giving him a seat in the government and a number of
his rebel colleagues seats in the government and effectively handing over
control of the crucial diamond mining area. The suggestion has been made
that that was forced upon, or Mr Kabbah are put under considerable pressure
to agree to that kind of arrangement by the Foreign Secretary, the British
Foreign Office, in order to secure a peace agreement. Now obviously that
was a flawed agreement because the rebel forces have, the bulk of them
haven't gone along with this for a second.
HUMPHRYS: That they say was the
least worst option, that's what the Foreign Office says.
MAUDE: Well I hate to think what
the other options were at the time, but this was a man who was then in
exile. Who was out of the country, under sentence of death and from what
one hears very deservedly so, he's been leading the most appalling crusade
of maiming and killings and intimidation in a way that was quite intolerable.
And to, as it were, to impose him as part of a new government is quite
wrong and is actually precisely that that seems to have led to today's
civil war.
HUMPHRYS: So what would you do
now then? I mean we have troops there and we have more troops arrived
last night. Would you, if you were running the show, would you now pull
them out?
MAUDE: Well it's very hard for
me to say that because I don't know what commitments have been made. I
don't know what has been said to the government of Sierra Leone and said
to the United Nations. You've got a big United Nations force there which
hasn't by all accounts performed terribly well and so I don't know what
Robin Cook has led them to believe the British troops are going to. Any
commitments that have been made by the British government have obviously
got to be met, the problem we have, which is why I come back to what I
said at the outset, that we need some clarity here. The problem is that
we just don't know what has been - what the purpose of this mission is.
HUMPHRYS: But I mean given that
no particular commitment has been made of the sort you are implying there
and Robin Cook says that it hasn't, that the troops went in in order to
help British and European nationals get out and secure the airport while
they did so. Given that that is the case, are you saying that those troops
- and you can hardly criticise the government for no clarity if you don't
have a view on this - are you saying that those troops should be pulled
out now or what?
MAUDE: I'm sorry to come back to
it. I mean you are saying why they have a view if we don't. We can't have
a view on that because we are not close to what is going on. You know it
is the government that sent the troops in, the government must have said
things to the government of Sierra Leone and to the United Nations about
what the purpose of this troops contingent is. Now, the mission has already
gone considerably beyond what Robin Cook set out in his statement to the
House of Commons last Monday when he said this was essentially a mission
to evacuate the nationals. That's happened, that's been done, broadly.
There may be some clearing up to do..
HUMPHRYS: But that has been done,
so would it not be responsible...irresponsible to pull out now given the
state that the country is in. Would it not be irresponsible to do so?
MAUDE: There is certainly a case
for saying that the troops should stay but we should be told what the purposes
of their staying. If they are not to be combat troops then....not to be
employed in any combat role, then we need to be told precisely what their
role is. You know, the danger of this is that we get more expectations
among those in Sierra Leone, in the UN and in the government and the people
of Sierra Leone, get raised beyond what we are actually prepared to deliver
which is why we do need to know what commitments Robin Cook has made to
the UN and to the government of Sierra Leone, otherwise it's very difficult
to make a judgement over whether the right thing is being done.
HUMPHRYS: But if there were any
danger, and clearly this danger must exist depending on who you believe,
that Sankoh and his gang of thugs and there are many thousands of them
are going to march into Freetown and God knows what they might do there
- they've been savage enough as it is already, and we had the chance at
least to hold them back a bit or maybe to stop them because of the way
we might work with UN troops, would you then say 'that is our moral responsibility
we should do that'?
MAUDE: I think we should.... Again,
without knowing
precisely what the sort of position would be it's very difficult to answer
that hypothetically because again one of the big dangers here is promising
more than you can deliver and the problem here you see is that Robin Cook
has said at the moment these troops won't be employed despite their being,
as I say, some of the finest combat troops in the world, they won't be
deployed in a combat role. And so there doesn't seem even to be the sort
of deterrent effect on the Sankoh forces of having these people there.
All of this is part of the reason why we think there should be a proper
enquiry into the whole of this. It's an unhappy way to proceed. First
of all with the peace agreement last June with clearly some baggage as
far as the British government is concerned from the British government's
own involvement in it and then the way in which this mission has been set
up, has been configured and now has been apparently developed, without
anything explicit being said about what the change in the mission is.
HUMPHRYS: Just a very quick thought
then - what sort of enquiry do you have in mind?
MAUDE: Well I don't have a fixed
view about that but it should be an enquiry which is able to look thoroughly
at all of the history of this and reach some conclusions, mainly factual
conclusions, it doesn't necessarily even need to be judgements, about what
happened. If the facts are properly disclosed then we the politicians
and the public can make our judgements on what happened.
HUMPHRYS: Francis Maude, thank
you very much indeed for joining us.
MAUDE: Thank you.
|