Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish First Minister

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON, SKY NEWS

NIALL PATERSON: We can head to Glasgow now and speak to the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. First Minister, a very good morning to you.

NICOLA STURGEON: Good morning.

NP: You’ll have had time now to review the strikes themselves, the way in which they were conducted and indeed some further rationale being provided by the Americans and the French. In the light of all of that do you believe that we were wrong to strike Bashar Al-Assad’s chemical weapons?

NICOLA STURGEON: Yes, I do and for me the big question is do isolated air strikes do anything at all to alleviate the acute humanitarian suffering in Syria which predates the chemical attack last week and do isolated air strikes do anything to take Syria a single step forward towards long term peace? This is a complex, multi-layered conflict that’s now in its 8th year. As well as a civil war in Syria we see proxy conflicts involving not just America and Russia but countries like Iran and Turkey and Israel, Saudi Arabia. This is a complicated situation and I don’t believe isolated air strikes will help resolve that. It hasn’t done so in the past, the air strike on the air base carried out by the United States round about a year ago, within hours Syrian war planes were taking off from that air base again. What we need is a long term international approach, not just action that perhaps makes Western leaders feel as if they’re doing something but I have to say, and I don’t doubt that these are difficult decisions for the Prime Minister, but what happened on Friday night into Saturday morning felt like it was more to do with some kind of macho strongman standoff between Trump and Putin and that should not be the role of UK foreign policy.

NP: As you say, First Minister, the situation in Syria is complicated, ridiculously complicated and it is certainly perfectly arguable that those air strikes don’t take us a step closer to peace but they surely do take us a step back from the prospect of Assad using chemical weapons against his people again.

NICOLA STURGEON: Well I don't know that that’s the case. Certainly I hope that the Prime Minister sets out much more detail of what her strategy is and what she considers to have been achieved by the air strikes but as well as not necessarily taking Syria a single step closer to peace, there is a real danger – and this is an extremely serious point – that air strikes such as those we saw over the weekend risk I think further escalating an already dangerous situation and we’ve heard similar concerns expressed by the United Nationals Secretary General and that, I think it’s important to stress, the conflict in Syria is a complicated civil war but we see standoff’s between a range of other countries, proxy conflicts being waged in Syria as well, so there is a danger that action that is taken hastily, action that doesn’t necessarily contribute to people, actually risks not just escalating the civil war but escalating the tensions internationally as well so this, I think, makes it all the more important that leader take the time to set out their objectives and strategies carefully. I think in a UK context it is absolutely essentially that parliament is involved. We shouldn’t forget that the UK’s active engagement in Syria right now was authorised by parliament in terms of the authority for targeted attacks against Daesh, now for the role of UK armed forces to be changed without the approval of parliament I think is a serious mistake and I hope that we see over the next 24, 48 hours a full debate in the House of Commons, not just a statement by the Prime Minister, and a commitment that if there were to be any further action that has to be authorised and sanctioned by a vote in the House of Commons.

NP: Can I just be absolutely clear as to your position as to the involvement in the Commons in all of this? Are you arguing that the Prime Minister has a responsibility, a legal responsibility, to come to the Commons before declaring military action? It seems to me that there are clearly going to be cases where all of the intelligence cannot be shared with members of the House of Commons and indeed there will be situations in which military action needs to be taken quickly without prevarication and debate.

NICOLA STURGEON: I accept all of that and I accept there will be situations, for example where there is a clear self-defence element where that is the case. I also accept that not all of the intelligence can be shared with the House of Commons, that was the case in previous votes in the House of Commons and I think there would be a wide spread acceptance of that but if we cast our minds back to the debacle over the Iraq war, one of the few positives to come out of that was the establishment of the practice that military action should ordinarily be approved and sanctioned by the House of Commons and I think what we’ve seen over the weekend is a step back from that and I think that is deeply regrettable. Now we can’t undo what has been done but I think it is important that if there is to be any further change to the engagement of UK forces in Syria, that the House of Commons should be asked to sanction that. There’s a wider point here as well, clearly if the Prime Minister is confident in the approach she wants to take, confident in the intelligence that underpins that and the evidence that underpins that – and we should remember that the chemical weapons inspectors are only now starting their work in Syria – but if there is a confidence in the position that the Prime Minister is taking then setting out that clearly in the House of Commons, getting the House of Commons behind her would actually strengthen her position, not weaken it.

NP: It would strengthen her position politically, it would weaken her position in terms of military strategy wouldn’t it? If we are talking about taking out chemical weapon sites in Syria, there is a finite amount of them, probably a handful only, any advance knowledge given to the Syrians that we are debating a military strike, surely that just gives them the opportunity to exit stage left.

NICOLA STURGEON: I think the logical conclusion of the argument you’re putting to me there would raise deep concerns about the nature of our democracy. I don't think we should see the involvement of the democratically elected parliament of the country in decisions like this as a sign of weakness, indeed I think it would be a sign of the strength of democracy. I think everybody, and certainly I, accept that not all detail either of intelligence or of the military strategy should be shared but asking parliament for the sanction for the broad objectives and the engagement of UK forces I think is something that should be done. I think it should have been done, we can’t turn the clock back but I certainly think that should be done in future and in terms of the Prime Minister making a statement to the House of Commons tomorrow, I would hope that becomes a full parliamentary debate. These are really serous issues, nobody – not least me – is doubting the fact that Assad is a brutal dictator with no regard for his own population. We don’t yet have the evidence from the chemical weapons inspectors but I have no difficulty whatsoever in believing that Assad is capable of launching a chemical attack on his own population. The question here is what course of action is best placed to alleviate humanitarian suffering that has been deepening in recent times, not least in Eastern Ghouta in Syria and what takes Syria closer to peace. We have a Security Council resolution passed earlier this year, Resolution 2401, calling for cease fires to allow the alleviation of humanitarian suffering. We need to see a co-ordinated international effort towards getting peace in Syria. It’s only a few weeks since President Trump was saying it wouldn’t be long before US forces were leaving Syria and now of course we see air strikes. We need to see commitment from the international community towards peace. Isolated air strikes may have the semblance of action, it may make Western leaders feel as if they’re doing something but I don’t believe, just as they haven’t in the past, I don’t believe they contribute towards a long-standing and lasting peace in Syria, which is what that country and its population so badly needs.

NP: But are you suggesting that you doubt the assessment of the British government, the American government and the French government that those air strikes were surgical in their precision, that they have had a seismic effect on Assad’s ability to deploy chemical weapons against his own people and on that basis are justified?

NICOLA STURGEON: I’m not privy not all of the information, I will listen carefully to all of the information put forward …

NP: How much information would you need? Honestly, the intelligence communities of those three nations are again saying chemical weapons were used, all of the available evidence suggests that Assad was responsible and after the fact we have the intelligence communities of those three nations suggesting that those military strikes were effective in limiting his ability to use chemical weapons. Where is your problem with the way the USA, France and the United Kingdom have operated?

NICOLA STURGEON: The point I’m making is that we have seen air strikes in the past that supposedly have depleted Assad’s ability to launch chemical strikes that haven’t turned out to be the case. A year ago the United States launched an attack on that air base in Syria, supposedly to deplete the Syrian Air Force’s ability. Within hours there were Syrian war planes flying from that air base. My point is that there is a bigger question here, not just about the depletion of the Syrian capability but how we take Syria overall towards a sustainable peace and the question about whether air strikes on an isolated basis can do that I think is a very serious question. Now let the Prime Minister come to the House of Commons, lay out her strategy in full and then allow a full debate with a vote as appropriate on the back of that. We are all – I think the point of unity here has to be that we want to see Assad stopped from carrying out the kinds of attacks on his own population that we know he is capable of doing but we also want to see the situation in Syria being resolved, this is a situation that …

NP: No one doubts that and no one wants the situation not to be resolved, the problem is that all of the other options on the table, bringing in the inspectors – they have been in, they have said there were chemical weapons used four times before, nothing has changed. Go to the United Nations, every time we do that the Russians use their veto. Bring all the parties together round a table for talks, that failed in Geneva. What is the plan? You’re talking about a plan but I’m not …

NICOLA STURGEON: Well let me answer that in several parts. You say first of all the Security Council action always fails – there was a Security Council resolution passed a matter of weeks ago, Resolution 2401, that calls for a ceasefire particularly in areas in Eastern Ghouta, to allow humanitarian aid in and to allow civilians to come out …

NP: And how successful was that?

NICOLA STURGEON: That’s my point, I don’t think there has been a concerted, patient effort by the international community. We’ve heard the UN Envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, talk about this in recent weeks, there needs to be a real commitment behind those efforts. There is also further action that can be taken in terms of the chemical weapons programme in Syria, the research centre in Syria that develops the chemical weapons programme, I think there is more action that can be taken to disrupt its supply chains, to disrupt the transport to and from it, to apply sanctions against some of the key personnel in that research centre. There are very few of these key individuals who are subject to UK sanctions, there are actually more subject to US sanctions. So when I hear the Prime Minister saying there is no practical alternative, I would question whether that is really the case and also question the efficacy of isolated air strikes when it comes to a long-term sustainable peace. These are serious matters that I don't think are helped by action being taken with the UK parliament being side-lined, let’s have full, proper debate about how UK foreign policy and UK action, if that is to be used, if the terms of engagement of UK forces is to be changed, then let us have confidence and a consensus behind that being in the interests of the overall long term move to peace in Syria.

NP: Do you, First Minister, do you believe wholeheartedly in the doctrine of humanitarian intervention? It does strike me that there is a fundamental hypocrisy on the part of the West, and I include politicians, opposed to air strikes and those in favour of air strikes. There is an awful lot of hand wringing in London and Washington and Paris every time we see chemical weapons being used but at the same time, hundreds of thousands of people have died, civilians have died, through the use of conventional weapons. We seem to hate seeing picture of children, dead, foaming at the mouth but we don’t seem to be that concerned about the fact that many of them have been killed using flechette rounds for example.

NICOLA STURGEON: Absolutely. Firstly, if we take the humanitarian situation as the ground, legal ground for action that was set out in the UK summary of the legal advice yesterday, just as a matter of fact there is no international consensus behind that as a legal basis for the kind of action we’ve seen. The only … let me just say that the two clear cut legal grounds are of course UN resolutions or self-defence but there is hypocrisy on the part of the West. If there is going to be a humanitarian intervention ground for action like this, then there is a need for some consistency to be developed in terms of how that kind of principle is applied. We’ve seen humanitarian suffering in Gaza, in Yemen, the plight of the Rohingya Muslims more recently – there needs to be consistency because if that consistency is not there, the danger is we deepen the suspicion and the cynicism about the reasons why Western countries take action. But it also means I think that it is all the more important to build consensus around the kind of action that is to be contemplated. The problem I think with taking the kind of action that was seen on Friday night into Saturday morning is that there are these questions over the efficacy, there are questions over the consensus behind it and rather than building international consensus around a co-ordinated approach to resolving a situation and alleviating the humanitarian suffering, which should be a priority in all of that, what we do – albeit I am prepared to accept on the part of the Prime Minister inadvertently – is that we risk escalating an already complicated situation.

NP: First Minister, many thanks for joining us, we appreciate it.

NICOLA STURGEON: Thank you.