Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Spokesman on: Washington Speech, UN reform, Iraq, Iran, Hamas, G8, George Galloway and the PM’s holiday
Washington Speech
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) previewed the Prime Minister’s speech. He said that this was the third of his series of three foreign policy speeches this year. His first speech spoke of the need to stand up to extremism and terrorism, not just through security methods but also by taking head on its ideas. The second speech argued that not only did we need to stand up for global values such as democracy and human rights but that they could only succeed if they were implemented fairly. Not just through security but also issues of justice and prosperity.
This speech took that argument further and argued how we should apply those global values in practical ways in real terms. Given that he had just returned from Iraq on Monday he started with Iraq, not because he wanted to re-open the old argument but because of where Iraq was now. It had a democratically elected government, a government which represented Sunnis, Shia and Kurds. He would say that following the setting up of the new Government that Iraq was: "…a child of democracy, struggling to be born." He would say: "If Iraqis can show their faith in democracy by voting for it, shouldn’t we show ours by supporting it?" That should be the basis for: "A new concord to displace the old contention… The war split the world, the struggle of Iraqis for democracy should unite it." He would say that Iraq had an importance far beyond the boundaries of Iraq itself, "We should be champions of change in the Middle East as a whole. Wherever we can, we should work to expand democracy and free speech." That included Iran, though he stressed that change should not be imposed there: "The greater freedom which he had no doubt most Iranians wanted was something we needed too." He also called for a change in the pace of progress in the Middle East Peace Process. Everyone knew what the solution was, which was two states sitting side by side. Hamas, he said, should accept that and acknowledge it and renounce violence. There should be "a speeded up pathway to final status negotiations;" the alternative would be a continuing descent into despair.
Finally he would deal with a mismatch between global challenges and global institutions. He would call for reform of the Security Council, to make it more representative, even if that could only be agreed initially on an interim basis. He said that the case for merger of the World Bank and the IMF should be looked at, that we should also look at a multi-lateral system for safe enrichment and that the G8+5, which had been on an informal basis at Gleneagles, should become the norm. One quote which summed up the speech, which was a much more detailed and thought through speech then he could give a full impression of: "the governments of the world did not all believe in freedom, but the people of the world do."
UN reform
Asked if the Prime Minister would expand on the idea of having a UN Secretary General with enhanced powers and more freedom to take the initiative, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister sets out for example issues such as where if you wanted a separate budget line for an issue in the UN then you had to get the approval of the General Assembly. It was a very bureaucratic system and he spelled that out. He didn’t do so in any particular depth, since the scope of this speech was very wide ranging and whilst the UN was a part of it, it was not the focus. If anything Iraq was the main part of the speech.
Asked if the Prime Minister was considering surrendering Britain’s place on the Security Council, the PMOS said that the question the Prime Minister posed was whether it made sense for France to have a place but not Germany, or Britain to have a place but not Japan. He put forward a detailed proposal today as to how you resolved it. This was an issue which he had spoken about before. Questioned further the PMOS said that the Security Council should be more representative. That did not mean people would lose seats, that meant that the council as a whole would be representative. It was not written in tablets of stone that the Security Council had to be its current size.
What you had to do was work out a way of making it more representative. Put to him that there was a danger that more members meant you got more bureaucracy rather than less, the PMOS said that what you had to do, and this was the undercurrent of the whole speech, was to stop apologising for believing in democracy. We had to stop apologising for having an approach which actually wanted to find consensus across the international community and working out how you took things forward. He believed that should be the way things worked at the UN. There was a question about political will and so on, but he believed that if you made the Council more representative then you were more likely to get that bias. Put to him that this was not particularly new, the PMOS said that this was developing a line of thought and, he stressed, the UN was part of his speech.
Asked if the Prime Minister was considering diluting the veto powers of the permanent 5 members of the Security Council, the PMOS said that no. The Key thing was making it more representative. Asked how that could happen if a undemocratic power such as China continued to use its veto, the PMOS said that in terms of the detail of UN reform that was a matter that had to be negotiated. This was not a negotiating document. This was simply setting out why he believed we needed to move the UN and other institutions on. Initially we had to start with the reasons why he believed there was this mismatch between global institutions and global challenges. The Prime Minister recognised the difficulty of getting a final agreement, which was why he suggested that perhaps there might be an interim solution.
Asked if the Prime Minister felt the US hadn’t done enough to support the UN, PMOS said that both the UK and the US wanted a more effective organisation.
Asked about enrichment, the PMOS said that this was an idea which had been floated by the IAEA amongst others. It was a way of trying to recognise, as we did, that countries had a right to civil nuclear power. At the same time deal with the very real concerns, as reflected through the UN, when countries such as Iran didn’t obey its obligations.
Asked if the Prime Minister addressed the issue of global warming, the PMOS said that in terms of climate change, the Prime Minister had a section in his speech in which he argued that we had to address climate change because national interest was the same as global interest in terms of these whether you came at the problem form the point of view of climate change or security of energy supply, it didn’t really matter. The point was you had to deal with the issue.
Asked if the Prime Minister believed the US had done enough to support action on climate change, the PMOS said whether you came at this issue from the climate change perspective or the energy security perspective the issue was still one of advancing the technology. We needed to invest in the R&D to give companies the certainty and that was why we were pursuing the stabilisation goal.
Asked if the Prime Minister was using this speech to angle for a high profile international role once he had finished working at Downing Street, the PMOS said that people should read the speech. This was a serious analysis of global issues. Anybody who read the speech and thought otherwise must be reading a different speech from him.
Put to him that all this would come to very little unless there was a UN Secretary General in place who was receptive to this agenda and asked if the Prime Minister and the President had discussed it, the PMOS said that the focus of the discussions had been on much broader issues than that.
Asked if this reform was something that the Prime Minister felt he could see through personally, the PMOS said that that was a very thinly disguised question. This was a concern that he had expressed before, including in his speech at the UN last September. This was an issue he would keep pushing on just as he would keep pushing to make sure that the international community did everything they could. Asked who in that case would drive this agenda after the Prime Minister had left office, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister was driving it right now through his speech.
If you looked at the reaction to the first two speeches then you would find that there were plenty of people who shared the Prime Minister’s analysis. What the Prime Minister was doing was bring his experience of government and world affairs to this and outlining an agenda which he would continue to follow. He would continue to follow this agenda not just in Iraq but in the Middle East, and a large part of the discussion last night was about the Middle East., and elsewhere. If you looked at Indonesia for instance, they were facing exactly the same issues and they were very much on the moderate Muslim side and wanted to promote the same values as we did.
Asked if the Prime Minister had any view on President Bush’s assertion that he hoped the Prime Minister would still be in place when he left office in 2009, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister and the President would continue to work together to promote the global values that they had talked about.
Iraq
Asked what practical steps were being proposed to help unite Iraq, the PMOS said that whenever we were in Iraq it was clear that the new government strategy broke down into three parts. First was reconciliation within Iraq itself and that had been started by having Sunnis, Shia and Kurds in the Government itself, elected by the people. Second was restoring the economic infrastructure of the country. That obviously played into security as well, because you had to have security of energy supplies and so on. Third Iraq needed to get international help so that the Iraqi government could deliver for the people. People would work up ideas and something like an international donors conference was an issue on the agenda. He wasn’t going to go into the detail but both the President and the Prime Minister were both aware of the need to try and help Iraq as much as possible. The basic point came down to the fact that we now had a democracy in Iraq. That was what was different now. We had a government which reflected that democracy. Therefore the Prime Minister’s argument was that we should come behind that democracy and support it.
Asked if now that we had sorted out Iraq we might turn our attention to places like Burma and Saudi Arabia, the PMOS said that the phrase in the Prime Minister’s speech was "where you can" - what we shouldn’t do is automatically say that the same approach worked in every different circumstance because it didn’t. What you should do was recognise that these were not just Western values but global values we were talking about and that we should try and promote those values where you could. As both the Prime Minister and the President said in their press conference last night, everyone still recognised the enormous challenges in Iraq. Equally people should recognise the enormous change that had happened in having a democratically elected, representative government.
Iran
Asked about Iran, the PMOS said that the important thing about Iran at this stage was that Iran’s obligation was spelled out very clearly. We needed to know whether Iran was or was not going to meet its obligations. The other important thing was that through the processes of the UN there was a consensus building about what we should do. That was where we should keep the focus. He was not going to provide a commentary on where we were on that process. That was best done in New York. Asked what the Prime Minister meant by the statement that change needed to take place in Iran, the PMOS said that in terms of where President Bush was, he had stated his position last night when he had said that he was fully engaged in the diplomatic process. There was no difference between us and the Americans on that front whatsoever. In terms of change, that would come through showing that democracy worked, that was why Iraq was important. If you could show that Sunnis, Kurds and Shia could work together for the national government and improve the lot of Iraqis, then the fashionable pessimist, who said that this was not possible would be proved wrong. Those who said that democracy, wasn’t possible in the Middle East would be proved wrong. That would create its own momentum.
Asked about negotiations with Iran, the PMOS said that what was important that we did whatever was best to continue to build the consensus we needed to put the maximum pressure on Iran. That process had been successful to date and we would continue with that process. The important thing was that Iran knew that it was isolated in the international community, that no one believed that it was living up to its obligations.
Hamas
Asked about the significance of the Prime Minister’s words on Hamas, the PMOS said that everyone knew what the solution was going to be. It was going to be a two state solution. At present Hams was refusing to recognise that and was refusing to renounce violence. The Prime Minister considered that to be unacceptable. However if Hamas did change that position then he believed there should be an accelerated process. He recognised the need to get momentum back into the process. If you looked at what President Abbas had been saying over night there were others who recognised the need to get the process moving and not simply have a stand off. Equally the Prime Minister was very clear that Israel could not be expected to negotiate with someone who didn’t recognise its existence. That was a real problem.
G8
Asked about the agenda of the G8, the PMOS said that the agenda of the G8 was a continuation of the agenda at Gleneagles in terms of issues such as energy, and that we welcomed. Obviously we were in discussions with Russians on Iran and it would not be particularly helpful to give a commentary on those discussions. Clearly Russia was an important player and we needed to discuss a number of important issues with them.
George Galloway
Asked for a reaction to comments by George Galloway that it would morally justified to blow up the Prime Minister, the PMOS said that it was probably best to say nothing.
Holiday
Asked about the Prime Minister’s holiday plans, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister would be taking a short break next week. He added that although he didn’t comment on travel plans he could confirm that every piece of speculation he had seen so far had been wrong.
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