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NB. THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED
FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT; BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY,
IN SOME CASES, OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH
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ON THE RECORD
MENZIES CAMPBELL INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE: 9.5.99
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Well I gather we can now, successfully I hope, go
to Edinburgh where Ming Campbell has been waiting patiently. Sorry about that, can you hear
me now?
MENZIES CAMPBELL: Yes I can, loud and clear thank you very much.
HUMPHRYS: Well now you�re here as you know to talk about
the war in Kosovo, but since we�ve just had that report from Paul Wilenius. Let me pick up
one of the stories that�s circulating this morning which says that Tony Blair has been talking
to Paddy Ashdown and leaning on him a little bit to, or perhaps a great deal, who knows, to
get this deal rushed through in Scotland so that this coalition, if that�s what it�s to be can get
up and running. Is that right, and if so do you approve of it.
CAMPBELL: Well there�s no point Tony Blair leaning on
Paddy Ashdown, or indeed Paddy Ashdown trying to lean on Jim Wallace, the leader of the
Scottish Liberal Democrats because since ours is a federal party with devolved political
responsibility to Scotland, it�s for Jim Wallace and his colleagues in the new Scottish
Parliament to decide whether or not they want to enter into an arrangement with Donald
Dewar and his colleagues. So leaning on anyone would actually be counter productive and in
any event would not have any material effect.
HUMPHRYS: But you are all one party and it�s inconceivable
isn�t it that there isn�t going to be a wee bit of pressure from Westminster on Holyrood, or
from New Labour in Westminster on New Labour, if they�re still called New Labour in
Scotland. It�s inconceivable isn�t it.
CAMPBELL: Well I think it�s conceivable that Jim Wallace will
certainly want to talk to Paddy Ashdown over the next couple of days if he hasn�t already
done so in order to make sure that what he�s arguing with Donald Dewar is something which
generally has Paddy Ashdown�s support. But Paddy Ashdown was asked at a press
conference just before the election what advice he would give Jim Wallace about coalition talks
and he said �None� very firmly, in recognition of the fact that this is an issue which will have
to be resolved here in Scotland.
HUMPHRYS: Alright. Let�s move on to more serious matters I
suppose one has to say, and that is the war in Kosovo. As a result of the bombing of the
Chinese Embassy things have changed, certainly on the diplomatic front, there�s no doubt
about that. It is the case isn�t it that this war cannot be won if that�s the right expression to
use since NATO doesn�t need to concede that it�s a war, but let�s use that, sure hand that can
be won just by continuing the aerial bombardment.
CAMPBELL: No, the attack on the Chinese Embassy was a
very serious mistake based we now understand on faulty intelligence, and there�s no point
arguing that you�ve got a discriminating policy with regard to targeting if you haven�t got
good intelligence. The policy is only as good as the intelligence. It is a setback, it will
undoubtedly have consequences for the diplomatic efforts which have been gathering pace in
the last week or so and I think it underlines the fact that we need to proceed in my view, with
the bombing campaign, but at the same time to invest much more effort in the diplomatic
efforts which looked as if they might be about to prove rewarding.
HUMPHRYS: Come back to that in a minute, but I notice you
didn�t say in that answer that we should, and this is something you and Paddy Ashdown
certainly have said in the past: we must be prepared for some sort of ground invasion.
CAMPBELL: You�re quite right to pull me up on that. We
have argued right since the very beginning that a bombing campaign on its own was unlikely to
create the circumstances in which the people of Kosovo could return in safety and confidence
to their own homes, and we have also argued that to accept that forces on the ground could
only be in Kosovo with the agreement of Mr Milosevic was effectively to give him a veto.
That�s why we�ve said forces on the ground might well have to operate in a hostile
environment, might have to make a forced entry, and I still believe that if the diplomatic
efforts are not successful that in the last resort will be the policy which NATO will have to
adopt and implement.
HUMPHRYS: But it can�t be because America won�t have it.
CAMPBELL: Well I think opinion in America has veered about.
There�s an interesting distinction between opinion on Capitol Hill and opinion among the
public. In the public in America there�s a far greater degree of support for troops on the
ground than there is among the legislators, either in the Senate or in the Congress, and if we�re
going to achieve the return of the refugees and if Milosevic continues to be intransigent in face
of the diplomatic effort then I think there is no alternative but to resort to ground forces and
for these ground forces to be willing to go in, in the face of opposition
HUMPHRYS: But in the meantime you say intensify the
diplomatic activity. Should that include a bombing pause to allow the diplomats to get on
with the job, because you can�t get on with the job when missiles are falling or bombs are
falling on foreign embassies.
CAMPBELL: Well, perhaps we can come back to that and the
consequences that may have in relation to Chinese participation, but I do firmly believe that if
we were to stop the bombing there�s absolutely nothing to guarantee that Milosevic would
then honour any agreement that he�d made. Do you remember, there was a cease-fire agreed
here last October. No sooner had Richard Holbrook who brokered that cease-fire gone back to
the United States than the Milosevic regime start to move tanks and armoured personnel
carriers and the paramilitary police back into Kosovo. Now I think the bombing has to
continue but in parallel there has to be intense diplomatic effort. Now if I can come back to
the question of the Chinese, they�re obviously extremely angry, understandably so about this,
and it means that any United Nations Security Council resolution which has become part of
the diplomatic objective may be much more difficult to achieve, but remember this - China is
very anxious to join the World Trade Organisation and the United States has been its patron in
that effort, and therefore I think we may see a certain amount of ritual anger but in the end I
think China will recognise that its long-term interests will best be served by being part, and
assisting in the diplomatic effort to bring an end to the war and to allow the return of the
refugees.
HUMPHRYS: But sooner or later we�re going to have to deal
with Milosevic aren�t we and that dealing is inevitably going to involve some sort of
compromise?
CAMPBELL: Well you raise what I think is one of the most
profound moral and political questions in all of this: and it is, here is a man whose personal
imprint is upon the terrible events that have taken place in Kosovo. People have already
argued that he may well be someone against whom an indictment should be raised by the
International Tribunal on War crimes for the former Yugoslavia but if it�s necessary to get the
people back, if it�s necessary to create circumstances in which they have the confidence to go
back to their homes then we may have to deal with them. That is a profound moral dilemma
and in the end it may have to be determined on an entirely pragmatic basis - namely what will
be for the greatest good of the greatest number of people?
HUMPHRYS: You say �may�, perhaps you should say �will�
there.
CAMPBELL: Well I�m leaving open the question of whether or
not we do in the end have to deal with Milosevic. I think it is likely that we will have to do so
but it�s by no means guaranteed and it does raise a very profound issue; This is a man whose
behaviour has gone far beyond the norms of any kind of civilised behaviour that you�d expect
from the head of a state but if we can�t get those people some of whom I saw a week ago in
the camp right up in the North of Albania back into their homes without dealing with him then
we would have to consider very very carefully whether we thought their continued expulsion,
their continued deportation from their own homes was a price that was worth paying in order
not to soil our hands by dealing with Milosevic.
HUMPHRYS: So at the end of it all what we may find, and this
you may regard as a pessimistic scenario but many people will say it�s a realistic one, at the
end of it all we may well end up with Milosevic still in control, not much doubt about that,
we having to treat him as another head of state, maybe not all if any in substantial numbers of
the refugees having gone back and people are then entitled to say - what was this all about?
CAMPBELL: Well I don�t think you can make that judgement
until we come to what I think you described as the end of the day. Certainly if Milosevic
remains as a head of state he will be a pariah head of state for all the reasons we�ve discussed
in the last moment or two.
HUMPHRYS: There�s plenty of those in those in this world
and we have to deal with them in one way or the other.
CAMPBELL: Yes indeed but what we�ve got to do is we�ve got
to take the best opportunity we can to get these poor people, expelled, bombed, shelled,
looted, burned, raped even out of their homes and communities back there as soon as we
possibly can and we must use every means available to us to do that.
HUMPHRYS: And in the end we will have to put in troops
although not in a hostile environment probably but it�s going to be a very long game indeed
isn�t it having to secure the safety of these people.
CAMPBELL: There are two issues really that arise out of that
question: The first is, yes we should acknowledge now that it�s going to be a long haul, that
NATO is likely, or an international force with large components from NATO is likely to be
present in Kosovo for a long time to come and secondly, that there�s going to be a very large
amount of money required for the reconstruction of the communities in Kosovo, that if we�re
hopeful to achieve stability in the Balkan region then a large amount of aid, a martial plan for
the Balkans is going to be necessary and in that regard the European Union is going to have to
play a much more prominent part than anyone has up until now anticipated.
HUMPHRYS: Menzies Campbell, thanks very much and I�m
sorry about the problems earlier.
.....ooooOOoooo....
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