Mr Bowen Wells: Does the hon. Lady conclude that the continuation of sanctions against Serbia has more to do with the ousting of Milosevic than with any other single objective? Why else should we be continuing to impose sanctions?
Mr Bowen Wells: The Select Committee on International Development issued two reports on the Bill, setting out detailed considerations that face the House. We are experimenting, and the Commonwealth Development Corporation will move into a different world to that in which it operated before the Bill came before us. It is not only a matter of enabling the CDC to borrow in the private sector, an objective aimed...
Mr Bowen Wells: I thank the Minister for his kind remarks. Can he confirm that as the Government will always hold the golden share unless Parliament decides otherwise, the Select Committee will always have the power to call Ministers and officials in front of it to explain the policy that the CDC is adopting?
Mr Bowen Wells: I congratulate the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for International Development on achieving progress on third world debt. That action is very welcome, and was recommended by the Select Committee on International Development. The Prime Minister said that he feels that we need to go further. Does he agree with the International Development Committee...
Mr Bowen Wells: The House knows that I opposed the bombing of Kosovo and Belgrade. I did so because I did not think that it would achieve the objective that we set for ourselves: to avoid an horrific humanitarian disaster that was being planned by Milosevic. Unfortunately, that disaster has taken place in spades and practically all the people for whom we went to war are displaced or refugees. Including...
Mr Bowen Wells: Not just at the moment, please, particularly since we have very little time—and I know the hon. Lady wants to speak. None the less, it would be churlish not to say that the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for Defence and the Secretary of State for International Development have been steadfast in pushing through their policy. They have troops going into Kosovo,...
Mr Bowen Wells: May I make a suggestion? The Select Committee on International Development report on Kosovo and the humanitarian crisis might be a starting point for the inquiry of the hon. Gentleman's Committee and that of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Mr Bowen Wells: Does my hon. Friend agree that the inquiry for which he calls should include all the circumstances leading up to the intervention in Kosovo, right from the time when the EU, and the Federal Republic of Germany in particular, began to persuade the international community unilaterally—without agreement—to recognise Croatia and Slovenia as independent states, as well as the conduct of the...
Mr Bowen Wells: Is not it true that much of the money given by the Secretary of State for the relief of refugees in Kosovo will have to be channelled through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees? Is the Secretary of State satisfied that the UNHCR is properly organised to handle that? Is she aware that the Select Committee on International Development wrote Mrs. Ogata a letter nearly three weeks...
Mr Bowen Wells: Which bank account has the £50 million for the relief of refugees, which I very much welcome, come from? Has it come from the Treasury contingency reserve or the reserves held by the Department for International Development? To whom will that money be given and for what purposes? Is it intended to provide prefabricated housing to enable returning refugees immediately to reoccupy their ruined...
Mr Bowen Wells: Are not sugar and textiles two products that the EU could gainfully consider in its efforts to reduce its protectionism in relation to the third world? If it offered that, we might indeed get some liberal economics going throughout the world.
Mr Bowen Wells: Is proper provision being made to enable the Kosovo refugees to go home? They will need prefabricated homes in their present location in Albania or Macedonia, which they can pack up and take back to Kosovo to erect in their villages and towns while they rebuild their homes and the surrounding infrastructure. Has funding been made available and have preparations been made for that objective,...
Mr Bowen Wells: Will the Minister provide in Committee details of options available to the Government on dressing the balance sheet for sale?
Mr Bowen Wells: The hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Dr. Naysmith) anticipated how I intended to open my remarks by describing the two reports of the Select Committee on International Development on the subject as a pre-legislative process. One of the few recommendations of the Committee that the Secretary of State has not been able to honour—it is not her fault, but that of the organisers of...
Mr Bowen Wells: I could not agree more. I am describing the role that the CDC played in initiating development where previously it was not happening. That has led to other, greater development. In Malaysia, the CDC pioneered the diversification of the economy from simple dependence on rubber plantations into palm oil, which is now its second or third largest export. Once diversified, the economy was less...
Mr Bowen Wells: I very much agree with that point. I want the CDC to be encouraged by the directors in actually pursuing that. However, the change will not be easy to achieve. The right people must be found; they must be properly trained and supervised. However, doing so will provide security and that vital interest in the day-to-day management and in taught management. That would make it impossible for...
Mr Bowen Wells: Does the Secretary of State share my concern that, although her White Paper is so radical, the House has had no opportunity to debate it, despite promises from the business managers? A thorough debate on the White Paper and its implementation is long overdue.
Mr Bowen Wells: Rwanda.
Mr Bowen Wells: I oppose the bombing, first, because sadly it has not achieved, and will not achieve, the objective of safeguarding the Albanians resident in Kosovo. I predicted that it would not do so. Indeed, I calculate that Milosevic has succeeded in his ethnic cleansing of the 1.6 million Albanians who were in Kosovo at the beginning of the action. There are 900,000 Kosovan refugees in Macedonia,...
Mr Bowen Wells: No, I am sorry, I will not. Confronting and fighting the Serbians would, if we were to be successful, involve not only the NATO forces that are presently envisaged, but a vastly increased army. The present camps are a disgrace. In Macedonia and Albania, they are four to five times overcrowded. Those camps should have been properly placed by negotiation through the UNHCR, who had been warned...
