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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 04.12.94
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Hello. The Foreign Secretary is on his
way to Belgrade for one more attempt to negotiate an end to the nightmare of
Bosnia. Before he flew out he went ON THE RECORD with his fears that it may be
a hopeless mission ... and with his forecast of what might lie ahead. That's
after the news read by MOIRA STUART.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Thanks Moira. The European Union is the
rock on which Margaret Thatcher's leadership foundered and which is threatening
John Major too.
Getting the Maastricht Treaty through
the Commons two years ago was a nightmare. Merely topping up our contribution
to Brussels last week was achieved only by the threat of Cabinet suicide and
risking the government's majority by withdrawing the whip from eight rebellious
backbenchers.
But while Mr. Major peers nervously over
the European ramparts - hoping desperately for a period of calm - many of his
Continental colleagues are charging ahead toward a single currency and closer
integration.
But first ... the Foreign Secretary,
Douglas Hurd. I spoke to him before he left for Belgrade. He's gone there -
with his French counterpart - to try to achieve what many believe is the
impossible: a negotiated end to that terrible war in Bosnia. He will try to
win the support of the Serbian leader. Mr. Milosevic, for the latest peace
plan cobbled together by the five nations in the so-called Contact Group.
But the Bosnian Serbs themselves have
already effectively thrown it out; they want even more concessions. So, I began
by asking Mr. Hurd why he thought THIS had any chance of succeeding when
everything else had failed.
DOUGLAS HURD: We can't be sure. We looked at all the
alternatives and we decided, as we said in our statement, there could not be an
outcome on the battlefield, we had to look again for a negotiated peace. I
suppose if you'd asked Robert Bruce's spider as he was climbing up maybe the
fourth time: "What makes you think that you are going to succeed this time when
you've failed before?" He wouldn't have had much of an answer. But he got to
the ledge.
HUMPHRYS: We are talking about Robert Bruce's
spider trying over a matter of minutes to reach an attainable and obviously
achievable objective. In this case we've been trying for years and we're not
getting anywhere and each time we slip back a little.
HURD: The change for the better in the last
few months has been that Milosevic, the President in Belgrade, has accepted the
contact group plan and is putting pressure on the Bosnian Serbs to accept it
too. That's very important and that's why Alain Jupe, the French Foreign
Minister, and I are flying to Belgrade tomorrow to update Milosevic on what is
happening and encourage him to build up that pressure until it works.
HUMPHRYS: But he's been putting pressure on. He's
been putting pressure on for months.
HURD: He has been putting pressure on and he
believes it's having some effect. It hasn't had a decisive effect. He has to
continue with that and we all have to continue with that.
HUMPHRYS: It's very hard to tell the people of
Bihac, for instance, that this pressure is working. They see something quite
different.
HURD: Yes. The Bosnian Government troops
launched an attack out of Bihac, it failed and they have been driven back. I
hold no brief for the Bosnian Serbs, they are a brutal barbarous lot, they've
committed terrible crimes and they are the only people now who are rejecting
the peace plan. But that is all an argument either for putting in a big army
and forcing them out - but no-one is suggesting that - or for persevering with
the negotiation effort.
HUMPHRYS: You say persevering with it. You also
say we don't have much time. What do you mean by 'much time'?
HURD: We are talking about weeks, I think.
That was the timescale that we were discussing round the table last night. We
have some weeks, I hope, unless something disastrous further occurs on the
ground. We have some weeks and we have to use them and that...all sorts of
other ideas have been going the rounds; the idea is that you could solve this
somehow from the air by airstrikes, the idea that lifting the embargo and
withdrawing the UN forces was maybe not so bad, the idea that maybe the Serbs
should be allowed to hang on to more than forty nine per cent of the land. All
these ideas have been going round. We sat down yesterday - Russians,
Americans, French, Germans commission and agreed that these ideas wouldn't
work. There was no disagreement rejecting all those ideas. So then you are
(break in tape) with the need to persevere with the effort to have a negotiated
settlement just like the spider trying to get on the lodge, on the ledge. Now
the moment you say that, of course all kinds of people sit back and say you are
an appeaser, you're doing wrong, you're betraying principles - we are not. We
are simply trying, accepting a lot of criticism, we are simply trying to
persevere with the only way out of this tragedy which we - all of us - think
makes sense.
HUMPHRYS: So if within a matter of weeks - and you
say weeks and not months - this agreement is not accepted - the Serbs and the
Bosnians to the extent of their doing it, the Muslims to the extent of their
doing it, don't stop their aggression, then what do we do?
HURD: Then it may become unavoidable, as we
have already said, to lift the arms embargo, let the arms flood in. But of
course that has to, before we do that, we have to pull out our troops. Now I
don't know when that point may be reached, we've said for months that it may
become unavoidable, it's quite clearly closer than it was months ago.
HUMPHRYS: So you have in your mind, you and other
members of the contact group have in your mind a clear schedule of events now.
If these things don't happen, those troops will be brought out, the arms
embargo will be lifted and we will leave it to them to fight it out amongst
themselves.
HURD: We have no date for that.
HUMPHRYS: Why not?
HURD: Because I don't think that's sensible.
I don't know how long this effort, I don't know exactly the timing of the
different parts of this effort. Alain Jupe and I are going to Belgrade, the
contact group will go to Sarajevo, there will be meetings no doubt at the
summit in Budapest in the next few days. We are now relaunching the
negotiating effort. I can't say that it's going to succeed or when it's going
to succeed. All I am saying is that there may come a time when we have to say,
well we've tried once more along the only way which we think makes sense, it's
not working and therefore it becomes unavoidable, unavoidable to lift the arms
embargo, let...pull our troops out first and then it's for the parties to fight
it out.
HUMPHRYS: You said in that answer 'may come a
time', surely it's 'will come a time'
HURD: No. Don't push me to be more definite,
particularly about times. What we decided again yesterday was the outlines,
the basis of a scheme. Big Serb withdrawal from about seventy to about forty
nine per cent, or to forty nine per cent. If they want to sit down with the
others and say, but it shouldn't be that forty nine per cent, if they want to
talk about changing the map, exchanging villages, swaps, land swaps, they may
do so. If they want to talk about the constitutional arrangements, what the
relationship would be between Bosnia which would have to stay within its
present frontiers and Croatia, on the one hand, Serbia on the other, they can
do that. We pointed those things out again last night but the outline of a
negotiated settlement we set out again. Now we will try and rebuild the
pressures, particularly on the Bosnian Serbs, to accept that plan and we will
take a little time to do that but if it fails then I think lift and withdraw -
that is to say the lifting of the arms embargo preceded by the withdrawal of
the UN forces - may become unavoidable.
HUMPHRYS: You say, if it fails. Many will say,
when it fails. Because it's manifestly obvious it doesn't contain what the
Bosnian Serbs want. They want sovereignty, they want a confederation with
Serbia, Greater Serbia, that must be unacceptable, musn't it.
HURD: That is unacceptable. That is what Mr
Karadzic says. He's not the only Bosnian Serb. Bosnian Serbs who think a
little bit beyond the headline and the drama of the occasion will ask
themselves well what sort of life is this for me or my children? If they want
a settlement they can have a reasonable settlement. We've set out the terms
which we the outside community believe are fair and possible. We cannot impose
those terms without sending in an army with Americans, Germans, Italians - a
big allied army. We don't...no-one is proposing that. What we can do is put
in ideas and pressures from outside and meanwhile continue the humanitarian
effort so long as we can.
HUMPHRYS: But you don't believe it's going to
work, do you?
HURD: I believe it's the only thing that can
work. And the alternative to pursuing this road is simply to sit back and say,
let them fight it out, they're just tucked away miles away in the Balkans, let
them fight it out, what does it matter to us? And I get quite a lot of letters
saying exactly that. The answer is, it might spread. It might involve Russia
and America. And in any case people in this country are not happy that nothing
whatever should be done to prevent slaughter and disaster, whether it's in
Rwanda or Bosnia or Somalia, so we have to make as good and well conceived an
effort as we can without rhetoric and without sitting back and supposing that
by two or three harsh air strikes killing a good many people you are going to
bomb the Bosnian Serbs to the table. Of course you are not.
HUMPHRYS: You say people in this country aren't
happy with that, neither is anybody happy with seeing NATO made to look
foolish. The United Nations made to look foolish; the whole Alliance threatened
and that is what's been happening because in the past we haven't been
sufficiently decisive because we have allowed it to drag on and on and on and
we have allowed this enormous confusion over who has what mandate and how it is
to be exercised.
HURD: That question is based on, I think, an
illusion, the illusion that if we had been decisive, if somehow we had done
something or other unspecified from outside we could have prevented Bosnian
Muslims, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs from fighting about the nature of
Bosnia.....(both talking at the same time)...
What is this? Again this is the idea,
you could have prevented, you could have imposed a peace but only by sending in
a large army to impose a peace and sustain it. I don't know of anybody who has
actually suggested that. All kinds of other things have been suggested, some
of them have been tried. What we concluded, all of us, and this was unanimous
last night, that none of those things are going to work and you are going to
have a negotiated peace and I'm sure that that is so.
NATO is not at stake in this. The idea
that this is a test of NATO is I think quite wrong.
HUMPHRYS: But that's how it's being seen.
HURD: By whom?
HUMPHRYS: By many people. By the Americans. For a
start the Americans have used the kind of language about NATO, and about
Britain, that we haven't heard for many many a long year. Senator Dole,
possibly the next American President, calling us appeasers - this sort of
language.
HURD: No, no, but you're racing away between
different ideas. NATO exists to keep us safe, NATO is a collective security
organisation, NATO means that if any member state is attacked, all are
attacked, that's what NATO is and that's why other people are seeking to join
it. And what NATO has tried to do, to help the UN in Bosnia, is not part of
its basic task and is not a test of its worth. That was one thing again which
was totally agreed round the NATO table, at the NATO council this week. We
need to be clear about that.
HUMPHRYS: Papering over the cracks?
HURD: No, no. You know, you're trying out the
phrases, I don't blame you. But the idea that this is some test of the worth
of NATO has, I think now, been exposed as wrong. NATO has been seeking to help
the UN, keep the skies clear over Bosnia and the no-fly zone, help protect
UNPROFOR, help to deal with heavy weapons say around Sarajevo. And certainly
there have been setbacks and confusions about that, no-one can deny
that...(both talking at once)...
I mean in an ordinary war, you have a
ground effort and you have an air effort and they're in the same headquarters
and any arguments are dealt with in the same headquarters and never come to
public view, you just get on with it, once you've reconciled the arguments of
ground and air. What we have in Bosnia, no-one can say it's satisfactory, is
the ground effort in the hands of one organisation - the UN - and the air
effort in the hands of another organisation - NATO - and the discussions how to
handle particular episodes which normally take place in one headquarters are
now semi-public between two different organisations but they are getting on
with it.
HUMPHRYS: What lessons have we learned from all
this?
HURD: I think the lesson that we learn not
just from Bosnia but from the other trouble spots, the other places where
there's no television but people are slaughtering each other in even greater
numbers: Angola, Nagorno-Karabakh and so on, is that the international
community should be quicker to try to prevent these tragedies. This means
poking your nose into other people's affairs, getting involved in the internal
affairs of other countries in a way which would have been thought inconceivable
even ten years ago. But I think we have to do that and that's why we and the
French have put forward ideas for preventative diplomacy, for helping countries
resolve their disputes whether in Europe, or whether in Africa, before they
reach this tragic stage.
HUMPHRYS: More from Mr Hurd later in the
programme. Well, as he flies across the continent on his way to the Balkans,
the French Foreign Minister in the seat beside him, he may wonder what some of
his other European colleagues thirty thousand feet below him are getting up to.
Preparing themselves for much closer integration within the European Union,
that's what and that's a real problem for him and for Mr. Major as Emma Udwin
now reports.
******
HUMPHRYS: Emma Udwin reporting.
So to the second half of my interview
with Douglas Hurd. I began by suggesting to him that he has a clear problem.
The only road ahead in Europe is towards closer integration, but that is the
very road the government cannot travel because of political divisions here at
home.
DOUGLAS HURD: I don't think we've got a problem with
Europe. I mean we have a debate in Europe, and not before time, and not just
in Britain. As your film showed, but there's lots more to it than that,
there's a debate in Germany with the paper you were talking about rejected by
the Foregin Minister, there's a debate in France which will come into the
presidential elections, there's a debate in Italy which is quite new, there's a
debate in Spain, we all know there's a debate in Denmark and there is as you
may have noticed, a debate in Britain. And this is all - the idea that there's
only one road is I think depply old-fashioned.
HUMPHRYS: But there's only one destination.
HURD: What's that?
HUMPHRYS: Ultimate destination as far as people
like Chancellor Kohl is concerned, and that is political union in Europe.
HURD: If by that you mean a centralised
executive, a government sitting in Brussels and a centralised parliament
sitting in Strasbourg or Brussels, I think that's just plain wrong.
HUMPHRYS: No, but you ....
HURD: No, no, no, but this is the general - I
mean this used to be the general view, and there are still people who hold it
but I think it's old-fashioned. I mean the French Prime Minister said the
other day, the idea that the only goal, the only possible goal is a federal
Europe is out of date, its day has passed.
HUMPHRYS: When ...
HURD: No, no, but when I've said that in the
past, people like you have said no, no, no, it's just the British Foreign
Secretary papering over the cracks. (INTERRUPTION) But he did, and it's going
to be a Europe of nations, that's my conviction, and the idea that the only
good European is one who believes in centralising I think is very old hat. It's
held by Paddy Ashdown and other old-fashioned people.
HUMPHRYS: You mentioned the French Prime Minister.
The French Prime Minister has said, and has made it absolutely clear it is
vital that everybody joins together on economic and political matters. He
couldn't be clearer than that.
HURD: He's very clear that you're not going to
have a unitary system with the commission becoming a government.
HUMPHRYS: But you're ...
HURD: No, no, I'm not, because if you look at
what people - the difficulty, the weakness of the argument in this country has
been precisely the one that you are showing, that there is only one road, and
either we're slow on it or fast on it. This is not so and the debate now right
across Europe is much fuller, it has many more possiblities in it.
As regards defence, if we're coming on
to particulars, I'm sure that Britain needs to be at the centre. It's not an
opt-out subject for us, and that's why when the French talk about defence we
listen very carefully because Britain and France need to work together on this
as we are increasingly doing. When you're talking about a single currency you
have a different situation where Britain has reserved for itself, the Prime
Minister has reserved for us the freedom to choose if and when this becomes a
real choice, so you need to take it, instead of doing with great rhetorical
generalities you need to deal - take it subject by subject and show flexibility
as the Prime Minister said in his speech at Leiden, and this is what is
happening.
HUMPHRYS: But these are anything but rhetorical
generalities. You say the French want closer union on defence matters. Yes,
that's certainly true but again Mr Balladur has made it perfectly clear that
along with that ultimately has to go economic union.
HURD: He separated - he said the two - he's
nominated those two, economic and monetary union, - the French believe and are
signed up to a single currency. We are ....
HUMPHRYS: With many others.?
HURD: Along with many others - with others
except the Danes, provided that their economies come together. The Germans
will not accept that there should be a single currency, that the Deutschmark
should become an ECU unless the economies have converged, and that's all set
out in the treaty very clearly and Leon Brittan has just said on your programme
he doesn't think that choice will be before us in '97 but it may be in '99, and
that may be so.
HUMPHRYS: But our problem is that our partners in
Europe have made that choice. They recognise that economic and monetary union
is going to come - not may come - this isn't some rhetorical generality - it is
as far as they're concerned a hard reality, a fact.
HURD: No, no, not at all. The German court
said that it required a decision by the German parliament. The treaty says it
requires a moving together, a convergence in the jargon of the European
economies, which has not yet occurred. (INTERRUPTION) Monsieur Chirac is
saying that it should have a referendum in France. It's just possible you may
ask me about that before we're through, so to say that this is going to happen,
this is an accomplished fact is just not right. This is an example of the
fallacy of supposing, you know, that we are there sitting on an island and
we're having a debate and difficulties which others don't have. It's simply
not so.
HUMPHRYS: Well, it begins to look to them as if
that is so, and we talk about flexibility, and they don't like it when we do
that, because what they see is that we're not really talking about flexibility.
They talk about it as "a la carte" which you present as - and I know you don't
like that particular phrase - but you present as a destination. What they say
is that this is merely a transition.
HURD: What we have to do in this country is to
work out and put forward in the course of next year our ideas, in my case the
Tory Party's ideas, the Tory goverment's ideas of the kind of Europe with which
we will be at ease. We've begun to do that and we will find - we are finding -
country by country, because of that, not because they accept the British ideas,
but because these are also ideas which make sense for them. Now we haven't won
the argument, I'm not saying that. There are people like President Delors at
the commission who hold to the old-fashioned view.
HUMPHRYS: Possibly that's ...
HURD: Possibly. But as Monsieur Balladur said
that view is an old-fashioned one. Its day has passed. Our weakness is that
we always think, you know we hate to be reassured that anyone's on our side.
We love our nightmares. We don't want to be woken up into the cold day, where
you actually do some arguing, and you win some and you gain ground if your
views are actually valid for Europe as a whole. That's our job for '95, whether
you're thinking of the government or the Tory Party or the country as a whole,
and it's a serious job.
HUMPHRYS: But it's not a nightmare that Europe,
bits of Europe, terribly important bits of Europe are moving towards this hard
core which is committed to a single currency and economic union. The most
powerful bits of Europe, Germany, France, the Benelux countries.
HURD: We have to decide, we have the freedom
to decide. If that happens, even Leon Brittan says it won't happen until 1999.
HUMPHRYS: But it is happening. It's ...
HURD: No, no, no, no, if this happens, if that
decisive step were taken by others which they have the right to do under the
treaty, and we have the right to say yes or no, and we need to make that
decision in the light of a serious discussion of what it does for the
prosperity and the political freedom of people in this country. On defence
there's a different situation. I can't see the defence of Europe without the
defence of Britain. There I'm quite clear, we have to be right at the centre
of whatever emerges and it has to be very clearly linked as it is in the treaty
with NATO and the Atlantic alliance.
HUMPHRYS: But let's stay, if we may, with Economic
and Monetary Union. You say "if it happens". The danger is that the approach
we're adopting at the moment, the so-called flexibility, is to use Leon
Brittan's words "paving the way" for precisely that "paving the way" for these
hard cores to develop from which we will be excluded in the long run, so we
will be on the fringes of Europe.
HURD: We will have a choice and not only us,
the Danes in a similar position, and other countries. We will have to make a
choice, and all I'm saying is that we've got that freedom to choose, we're not
bound and we should make that choice, intelligently when the time comes, based
on our assessment of our own interests and our own future and there are big
questions here which need actually to be discussed instead of just being
treated as, you know a phenomena of political gossip.
HUMPHRYS: But you've accepted that you don't want
these hard cores, to use the jargon, to develop..
HURD: The Prime Minister at Leiden set out
what we mean by a flexible Europe. There will be areas in which some countries
go ahead and others don't, we don't call it a hard core, we look at what's
already happening. We have the Western European Union, which is a defence
organisation which we belong to, but the Irish don't, the Austrian won't. We
have the Shenhan (phon) Agreement which deals with frontiers, we're not part of
that because we and the Irish are part of islands, and so we're not part of
that. So already you have this flexibility. When we bring in, maybe at the
turn of the century, Poland, Hungary and the Czechs and so on - which we very
much favour - then you'll need this flexibility, I don't doubt that. That's
the way it's actually going.
HUMPHRYS: But we're talking here, clearly, aren't
we, about two different things. You're talking about this flexibility, this
variable geometry on certain areas, I'm talking about something quite
different, I'm talking about these hard cores developing, where you get
Germany, France, the Benelux countries, together deciding that they will form
an area from which we are going to be excluded. We're going to become
effectively second class citizens and what the Prime Minister and you have made
quite clear is that that is not acceptable.
HURD: No, and nor is that acceptable and nor
is that what would actually happen. There will be occasions and subjects when
certain countries go ahead faster than others and sometimes Britain would be
among those fast countries and clearly defence is one where we have to be. We
have to be sure the ideas come forward suit us and in others, like the Social
Chapter, we say you go ahead, if you want to take steps which in our view
destroy competitiveness and reduce jobs you may do so but we have negotiated
that , it was agreed with everybody that we can have an opt-out. Now, that was
agreed by everybody. That's not an ideal solution but it suited us and suited
them on this particular occasion.
HUMPHRYS: The reality is that you can't sit here
this morning, and say yes, ultimately we share the same goal as them and I
insist on saying THEM because there are..the leadership of most of the
countries of Europe, indeed all of the countries of Europe in this regard,
share the same goal ultimately of closer European integration. You can't sit
here and say that this morning, because of the domestic political situation.
Your party wouldn't let you do that.
HURD: But I'm not the only person..we're not
the only people with problems of opinion and this is one thing I think, I hope,
everyone has learned from the Maastricht experience. Maastricht didn't create
a super state, but it only just squeaked through, in the House of Commons by a
handful of votes, in the French referendum by a handful of votes, in the
German..in Germany by a court judgement which was iffy, and in Denmark of
course only on a second referendum. So, I hope everybody gathering for '96 or
putting the ideas which you've been discussing in this programme, is aware, I
believe they are, of exactly what you are saying: you need to carry the public
with you. Not just in parliamentary votes and referenda, but how the thing
actually works and that's...
HUMPHRYS: And you know that you can't carry your
party with you. If you were to saying this morning "yes of course I agree that
we have the same ultimate goal and that is closer integration in Europe"...even
if you believed it passionately, and many people believe you do believe it, you
cannot say it.
HURD: Political integration what does that
mean? I believe...
HUMPHRYS: Let's talk about economic and monetary
union, a single currency.
HURD: I believe in a Europe of nations working
effectively together, much more effectively together than Europeans ever have
done before. What we're doing is something very difficult which no continent
or set of countries have ever done before. We're turning our backs on a
history of fighting each other and filling the cemeteries and we're now trying
to shift that stability and security eastwards - to Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia - and we are not, I'm quite clear that we can't succeed in that
if at the same time we are seeking to undermine or smother the nation states.
And I think in that proposition THEY or most of THEM actually come or will come
to agree because that is what the peoples of Europe want.
HUMPHRYS: Couched in those terms but not in the
terms in which I couched it and that is to say the ultimate goal has to be some
sort of economic and monetary union and a single currency. You can't even
seriously address that issue because of the domestic, political pressures upon
you.
HURD: I think we have to address that
seriously, this is exactly what I'm saying. We have the freedom to take that
decision, if and when it comes, in the interests of Britain. We have that
freedom, we're not committed. Let's for heaven's sake...(both talking at the
same time)...let's for heaven's sake take it seriously. We have a bit of
time...
HUMPHRYS: Not long.
HURD: No, but we have at least five years in
my view. At least five years..
HUMPHRYS: In five years, in all probability you
will be excluded from the central core of Europe and that's the danger.
HURD: No, no, I really don't believe that's
what happens at all. The treaty is perfectly clear, this particular problem
comes up, this particular choice comes up, if and when the economies converge
and if that were to happen the choice is open to all, that is in the treaty.
But what we don't want to do is to stumble into a choice, we need to make a
choice which is informed, properly informed as to the interests of this
country. There are all kinds of issues here, about the strength of our
financial sector, the difficulties, but also the advantages of a single
currency, the effect on the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the powers of a nation
state to fix its own taxes. These are the sort of things that we should be
actually discussing in substance, instead of wittering on about splits in this
party or that.
HUMPHRYS: And when we have had those discussions,
should we then have a referendum?
HURD: There are two possible ways in which you
could have a referendum. One, is on a single bank, single currency, which you
and I have just discussed and that choice will not be before us, well in my
view at least for five years. Or, you could have one after the next
conference, the IGC, which will be nothing to do with the single bank or single
currency. I don't know how important that conference is going to be, whether
it will deal with bits and pieces, in which case you wouldn't need a referendum
or whether it will deal with something more substantial. So we can't really..I
mean I don't think we can carry that discussion further.
I am sceptical. I think all ministers
are sceptical about referenda. The Labour Party is sceptical. We don't like
the general idea, but certainly we in government are not saying...and that's
really as far as we're going to get on that subject.
HUMPHRYS: The Foreign Secretary talking to me
yesterday.
...oooOOOooo...
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