Europe after Maastricht : interim report : report, together with the Proceedings of Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendices : first report [of the] Foreign Affairs Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Foreign Affairs Committee.
Date:
1992
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Europe after Maastricht : interim report : report, together with the Proceedings of Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendices : first report [of the] Foreign Affairs Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [Mr Rowlands Contd] hang in the balance today, this week. A GATT agreement would be much the most important spur which the Community, the United States, the world could give to helping the recession, much the most important spur. It hangs absolutely in the balance. Enlargement we have not discussed today, but again it is crucial and I think we will have great difficulty in getting enlargement in the fore- seeable future if the Treaty is not ratified. The Single Market we have not talked about today, but again it is crucial. This is the part of the European policy which is there and it is there just for the finalising, for the taking, and we have to complete that by the end of the year and I believe we shall do so. There are other matters we have not dis- cussed today, but those are three absolutely crucial ones together with getting an agreement on the future financing of the Community. These are four crucial points which we set out when we started in July which we have made some progress on and which remain the essential parts of our agenda. Mr Canavan 50. But the British presidency seems to have been lurching from one crisis to another and the agenda almost inevitably has been dictated by these crises. Are there any items on the original agenda which have suffered by being set back, by being abandoned or postponed because of the rearranged priorities on the agenda? (Mr Hurd) 1 just answered that question, Mr Canavan. I set out four things all of very great importance to Europe: the GATT agreement; enlargement, first of all, to include the EFTA countries which have applied; completion of the Single Market; agreement on future financing. Those are four things on which we have made some progress in discussions, despite the events you mentioned and which at Edinburgh we hope to make further progress on. The GATT actually will be decided for the time being, yes or no, much earlier than Edinburgh. As I say, it hangs in the balance this week. Chairman 51. Now, Secretary of State, if we could take a deep breath and leave Maastricht and all its works and turn to the developing role of the United Nations which is the subject of an inquiry this Committee is launching upon, resting our ques- tioning very much on the Secretary-General’s paper, Agenda for Peace. We also have a very helpful memorandum from your office, the Foreign Office, and a list of other papers. I think you are going to be joined at this stage by some new colleagues. (Mr Hurd) Yes. Can I introduce Glynne Evans who is in charge of our United Nations policy and that is it. 52. Foreign Secretary, may I begin with a gen- eral question. A view emerges that the United Nations today is over-burdened with over 11 mili- tary or UN-blessed operations around the world and under-financed. You have made some very interesting comments about how you think the United Nations might develop to carry all these new burdens. How do you see this debate continu- ing and what are the main issues in it? (Mr Hurd) The UN is certainly increasingly burdened. To say over-burdened is to suggest it should not be doing some of the things it is doing, but I think if you look at the peace-keeping opera- tions now in place, it is hard to question the need for them. That it is under-financed is absolutely clear. It is owed $1.5 billion in outstanding assessed contributions and the Secretary-General is entirely right in saying that these debts, this under- payment, has to be dealt with if he and his opera- tions are to have any hope of success, but there are wider issues which I have tried to tackle, Mr Chairman, and about which the Committee may want to ask questions, but as the Cold War came to an end, the number of disputes which the UN could reasonably be asked to intervene in has very substantially picked up and this trend may con- tinue. It is very hard for the UN to say no to pressing requests of this kind. It means a greater degree of intervention in the internal affairs of countries which would not have been thought con- ceivable 20 years ago. It means demands for money and, to some extent, men which the UN has difficulty in meeting, and this is the strain, this is the point which I have been trying to draw attention to. Chairman: Thank you for that introduction and I wonder if we could bridge the discussion between what we were talking about earlier and the UN’s role by looking at regional conflicts and particu- larly the regional conflict in the former Yugoslavia where the UN is now involved, but the EC thought it had a role either as an agent of the UN or indeed an independent role in its Community garb. Mr Sumberg 53. Foreign Secretary, I am looking at your memorandum which you kindly sent us and para- graph 8, headed “Preventive diplomacy”, high- lights the role of the EC Monitoring Mission in the former Yugoslavia and states that such “preventive diplomacy is far more effective than the most suc- cessful peacekeeping or peacemaking operation which inevitably must follow the outbreak of vio- lence”. I wonder if you would like to tell the Committee what you think the Monitoring Mission in the former Yugoslavia has so far achieved because it is a criticism made that this form of preventive diplomacy has totally failed there given the scale of the fighting, given the hor- rendous stories that we hear, and I wonder if you would like to set out perhaps for the Committee what its successes have been since it has been established. (Mr Hurd) The Monitoring Mission is a rela- tively small part of the total EC effort. The Monitoring Mission is a number of individuals, unarmed individuals, who are stationed mainly in