Murnaghan 17.11.13 Interview with William Hague, Foreign Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now David Cameron was widely criticised for attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka but he certainly made an impression during his few days there, being hailed by Tamils in the north of the country and promising to keep up the pressure on the government there over alleged war crimes and human rights. In a moment we’ll be hearing from the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in Colombo. Well now, I spoke to the Foreign Secretary a few moments ago from the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, and I started by asking him for the latest information he had on Britain’s involved in the typhoon in the Philippines.

WILLIAM HAGUE: There are Britons who are unaccounted for. We are working hard on that. I spoke to the Foreign Minister of the Philippines last night to ask for all possible assistance with that. Of course they are doing their best, a lot of help is arriving from the rest of the world, including from us of course. As you know HMS Daring is getting there now, so I can’t give you any update with precise numbers because of difficulties with communication and access, it would be misleading I think to try to give any precise numbers on them but there are we think a number of British nationals involved and we’re working hard on it with the Filipino authorities.

DM: Okay, to Sri Lanka and this issue with the regime there. President Rajapaksa has rather thrown back in your face the demand for him to hold an independent inquiry into potential war crimes.

WILLIAM HAGUE: Clearly the Sri Lankan government, as is well known from what they’ve said in the past, don’t want to do that but the point we have been making and that the Prime Minister has made very forcefully to the President, is that they do need to do that unless there is going to be more and more international pressure including when the United Nations Human Rights Council meets next March, it would be in the interests of Sri Lanka to build real reconciliation in this country after a terrible war and that means respecting human rights, it means making sure there is a true feeling of reconciliation amongst the people of Sri Lanka and accountability for what’s happened in the past. So I think what’s happened at this Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting is that it has shone a spotlight, the attendance of the UK at this meeting has shone a spotlight on these things and has put them under greater international pressure.

DM: But what, Foreign Secretary, is the ‘or else’ so to speak? What is the sanction if Sri Lanka continues to shrug off these demands?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well it’s the United Nations Human Rights Council which is really the forum for discussing these things and that will be coming back to this subject in March. We the UK have just been elected for three years as a voting member of the Human Rights Council. Now last year a resolution was passed with the support of more and more countries, like India for instance, drawing attention to the human rights record here in Sri Lanka. Unless they take some action to set up their own thorough independent credible inquiry into allegations about the past then that international pressure, not just from the UK but from many other countries, is going to grow and I think that does cause them some concern and it will cause them even greater concern in the coming months unless they start to respond positively to it.

DM: Does the UK intend to extend this engaging with nations accused of human rights abuses? Can we expect you or the Prime Minister to be visiting places like Zimbabwe?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we do discuss human rights with countries all over the world and we produce each year from the Foreign Office, a human rights report which sets out what is going on in countries of concern on human rights all over the world. So yes, we will be doing this with other countries; yes, we have human rights dialogues, specific dialogues on human rights with many other countries in the world so this is consistent with that policy but given that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was here and we needed to come to that meeting for many reasons, for global reasons, for reasons of supporting the Commonwealth and ensuring the UK has a strong voice in its work, it was right to take advantage of that, to shine a spotlight on Sri Lanka and to take up these issues directly with the Sri Lankan leaders.

DM: So are you saying, Foreign Secretary, that you wouldn’t have gone to Sri Lanka, you wouldn’t have met the President, if the Heads of Government Meeting had not been there?

WILLIAM HAGUE: It’s because the Heads of Government meeting has been here that the Prime Minister came to Sri Lanka and I have meetings regularly with the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka and other Ministers have been here in recent months and years but yes, the Prime Minister was here, like other Prime Ministers and Presidents who have been here this week in Sri Lanka, for the Heads of Government Meeting. That’s been a success for the UK, the Commonwealth has agreed on good priorities, on development, on climate change, on supporting the work that I’m doing on sexual violence in conflicts globally and we’ve only been able to do those things because we’ve been here at the meeting but in addition, since the Prime Minister was coming, he used this visit in order to pursue the issues about human rights and democracy and reconciliation in Sri Lanka and I think has done so very, very effectively.

DM: But just on the parallels with Zimbabwe, there are and there have been in the past, international meetings that President Mugabe has attended and British Foreign Secretaries have actively dodged him and stayed away from him. Would you shake hands with President Mugabe if he was at one of those international meetings?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well I haven’t done that. Remember that in his case he is subject to a travel ban in the European Union so these cases can differ from each other but do we meet, have we met Ministers in the government in Zimbabwe and discussed human rights issues with them? Yes, of course we have. We do that with countries all over the world as I say, it is important that we do that with Sri Lanka and it’s important that other countries join us in doing so and I think Sri Lanka has been able to see something of the international concern and the international pressure during the run up to this meeting and during the CHOGM meeting itself.

DM: The whole meeting has actually thrown a light, hasn’t it, on the entire Commonwealth and lots of commentators making the point that about one third of the nation’s there have been accused of some form of human rights abuses and, get this, 41 out of the 53 states have laws that make homosexuality illegal. Is this really the kind of club the UK should be part of?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well it’s an extraordinary network, the Commonwealth. It includes two billion people, it includes of course many countries that are among our closest friends in the world and in a networked world, this is a remarkable network. Now does that mean that we agree about everything? No, it doesn’t. You’re right, many of them have laws about homosexuality we don’t agree with. I gave a speech at the last CHOGM about the importance of that changing and our support for getting rid of discrimination of any form in their societies. Does it mean that they all have the record of human rights that we would want? Well no it doesn’t, sadly but these meetings do put peer pressure on those countries. Yesterday at the Heads of Government Meeting, some of the African leaders actually spoke eloquently about the need to leave office at the end of presidential terms, about the need to observe election results, about how much can be achieved in Africa and other parts of the world through really observing democracy and good governance and the rule of law so I think there is a lot of positive pressure that comes from these meetings and we should keep that up.

DM: And have you made, you mentioned it a little bit earlier, Foreign Secretary, have you made headway on your preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative? There was, it was well documented, a lot of that in the conflict in Sri Lanka.

WILLIAM HAGUE: There was all too much of that in the conflict in Sri Lanka and I think we have made some headway. I gave a speech here, I called a meeting here on Wednesday where I spoke about our preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, it was widely reported in the Sri Lankan media. That would only have happened again if we were here to talk about it and in the communique that we have agreed this morning of the Commonwealth Heads of Government, there is strong support for the work on sexual violence and I think that will help me to bring more Commonwealth countries into this work as we try to change the entire global attitude to the outrageous use of rape as a weapon of war. So yes, I think we have made some progress and we couldn’t have done that if we weren’t actually here.

DM: And can I ask you about tensions closer to home, namely with Spain about Gibraltar and the European Commission ruling that Spain had not broken any rules when it tightened border controls with Gibraltar?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we will study in detail what the European Commission have said about that. I think it’s right that the European Commission came in to have a look and of course there might be further occasions in the future when we will ask them to do so. We have proposed a format for discussions with Spain about a wide variety of issues although not of course about sovereignty and the basic constitutional position of Gibraltar and the opportunity is there for Spain to take up the offer.

DM: But do you accept that Spain didn’t break the EU law?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we’ll have to have a look in detail at the Commission report about that and of course it depends what they do in the future but we are grateful to the Commission for having a look at this and I hope it will encourage in the future proportionate behaviour at the border that we’ve not always seen in the past. But we’ll have to go through the detail of what they said before I can give you the definitive reaction to that.

DM: Okay, and lastly Foreign Secretary, I want to ask you a question relating ever so slightly to what you were talking about sexual violence, part of it is of course attitudes to women, global attitudes to women, the objectification to women. It may seem a trivial point but Miley Cyrus, who has much been talked about on the international stage for the unnecessary sexuality some people say she exhibits whilst she is on stage. She’s appearing in the X Factor tonight in the UK, do you think she is a role model for Britain’s youth?

WILLIAM HAGUE: I think there you are inviting me well beyond the brief of the Foreign Secretary and I’ve got enough on in pursuing the campaign on sexual violence in conflict and dealing this week with Sri Lanka, issues on Iran and Syria, I’m not going to stray into the X Factor, I’m really not. So I wish everyone well watching it later on.

DM: Okay, Foreign Secretary, thank you very much indeed, William Hague there.