PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED On Sunday 27th February Andrew Marr interviewed William Hague. ANDREW MARR: Well listening to that was the Foreign Secretary William Hague. Good morning, Mr Hague. WILLIAM HAGUE: Good morning. ANDREW MARR: Before we turn to some of the things that John Simpson was talking about, let me ask you about the overnight news and the special forces. First of all, who was involved and whether we had to in some way deal with the official government of Libya, the people in Tripoli to get those planes in and out? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well they didn't give official permission for that. We tested that out the previous day - whether they were prepared to cooperate with such flights, and we didn't get real cooperation - so we sent those flights in anyway yesterday. And of course there are risks attached to doing that, and that is why we're always reluctant to take those steps, but we felt that was the only sure way to get those people out of the desert. ANDREW MARR: There were suggestions the Prime Minister said bribes were involved at some point in getting British personnel … WILLIAM HAGUE: (over) I think that that suggestion was about the planes taking off and landing at Tripoli Airport. And there is no doubt that the landing fees and taking off fees for aircraft at Tripoli Airport have rocketed over the last week, but we have to pay those fees and you have to pay them in cash in this sort of situation. So, yes, but that is what they are … ANDREW MARR: (over) I see. WILLIAM HAGUE: … and there's no way of getting planes in and out of Tripoli … ANDREW MARR: (over) Otherwise. WILLIAM HAGUE: … without doing that. ANDREW MARR: Do you know how many British citizens are still left in Libya? WILLIAM HAGUE: We're working hard on that this morning. A lot of work is going on in Whitehall. We're working intensively to work out who's still in Libya and where they are. We would encourage people to let us know, if they can, where they are and indeed if they are back safely in the UK or in Malta. Of course we know about a great many people's whereabouts, but we don't necessarily know whether everybody who's been in Libya has got out of Libya. And so we are doing a lot of work and we will continue to help people be evacuated in various ways. HMS Cumberland will be back at Benghazi today to take away we think quite a small number of British nationals, but it will help many people of other nationalities as we have been doing over the last few days. ANDREW MARR: And if there are groups of British oil workers or whoever still trapped in the desert, have we got the means of getting them out should we find them? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well of course we didn't comment in advance on what we did yesterday, and you'll understand that I'm not going to speculate in advance about anything else that we might do. All I can say at the moment is that we are working intensively to establish who is still in Libya and where they are, to see how we can assist with getting them out of there, and we do continue to urge British nationals to leave Libya. There are of course some people who don't want to leave or they may be dual nationals, they may have their families there in Libya. ANDREW MARR: Did Tony Blair talk to the government before he phoned Colonel Gaddafi? WILLIAM HAGUE: Not beforehand. We didn't initiate those conversations, but he did let us know about them. Clearly we're not going to get into a negotiation with Colonel Gaddafi. ANDREW MARR: You think he must now just go? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well he must go. You know we have throughout these crises in Egypt and Tunisia, we've been careful to say it's the people of these countries who must own the solution. But the people of Libya have risen up against Colonel Gaddafi. We have here a country descending into civil war with atrocious scenes of killing of protestors and a government actually making war on its own people, so of course it is time for Colonel Gaddafi to go. That is the best hope for Libya. And last night I signed a directive revoking his diplomatic immunity in the United Kingdom, but also the diplomatic immunity of his sons, his family, his household, so it's very clear where we stand on his status as a head of state. ANDREW MARR: No more shooting parties for Saif Gaddafi in Britain? WILLIAM HAGUE: I'm afraid not. ANDREW MARR: What about the question of lessons learned because, for better or worse, this country had become deeply involved in Gaddafi's Libya. We've done huge commercial deals - oil most famously, but not only oil - and we have been courting him as it were and selling him arms. Some of the rounds that might be used against demonstrators - we applaud and approve of these crowds - may well have been made and sold by British firms. WILLIAM HAGUE: Well let's be clear, we have revoked all licences that may be used in this situation … ANDREW MARR: (over) Now yes, but as a country we were selling … WILLIAM HAGUE: …. and things have happened under the previous government with which we disagreed. Of course we emphatically disagreed with the release of al-Megrahi and the Prime Minister and I made that clear when we were in opposition, albeit that was a Scottish government decision to do that. No however … ANDREW MARR: (over) "The worst, the worst case of political hypocrisy that I can ever remember" said Malcolm Rifkind, your Conservative predecessor. Would you agree with that? WILLIAM HAGUE: I think he's not wide of the mark there, yes absolutely. But let me make this clear because I'm not critical of everything that the previous government did in this regard. It was right to be able to establish a rela… to try to establish a relationship with the Gaddafi government that took Libya away from pursuing weapons of mass destruction programmes and the state sponsorship of international terrorism. If we hadn't done that, we might be in a worse situation now … ANDREW MARR: Sure. WILLIAM HAGUE: … because the country descending into this state would also have a greater variety of weapons of mass destruction. So I think that was the right thing to do. ANDREW MARR: (over) Can I just ask … Can I just ask you about that? I was asking Lord Mandelson about the same question. Are you clear that Gaddafi had weapons of mass destruction and then destroyed them? WILLIAM HAGUE: I think it was clear that he was developing various programmes and working on various programmes. There certainly was a programme of mustard gas creation and creating stocks of that. ANDREW MARR: But, as with the IRA, I mean was there verifiable destruction at any point of these stocks? WILLIAM HAGUE: Some of those stocks do appear to exist, although we're not sure what condition they are in. ANDREW MARR: (over) Yeah, you see I just wonder if you gave anything away. WILLIAM HAGUE: Well I can't know for sure and wasn't in office at the time. But he was steered away I think from any intention to have a nuclear programme, for instance, a nuclear weapons programme. We don't know how far he would have got with that, of course. So I think that level of engagement was right. But there are lessons to be learned and Britain must be clearly on the side across North Africa and the Middle East of more open societies, of more open and flexible and democratic political systems, and the more effective economic development of these countries. ANDREW MARR: Do you think the Prime Minister has learned a lesson given that he has been in the region with people selling arms or trying to sell arms to other governments in the region - some of which may fall or topple in the future? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well I don't think anyone can really argue that we shouldn't sell defence equipment, arms to a country like Kuwait that was invaded twenty years ago; that obviously is an ally of ours that has to have the means to defend itself; that was invaded by Iraq, that is so close to Iran. So of course we have good defence arrangements with those countries and of course we help them with those things. But the Prime Minister was also the first head of government into Egypt this week … ANDREW MARR: Yes. WILLIAM HAGUE: … and gave a speech in the Kuwaiti parliament clearly on the side of sensible reform and democratic change across the Middle East and North Africa. And now I think the whole Western world has to work very hard together on this because if we get this right over the coming months, it will be the greatest advance in world affairs since Central and Eastern Europe changed so dramatically twenty years ago and many of their countries entered the European Union. If we get it wrong, well then uncontrolled migration, a breeding ground for international terrorism - these things will be the problems coming at us in future years. So now this is a historic challenge over the coming months. ANDREW MARR: But if you look at a country like Libya, which hasn't really had a civil society - I think one general election in its entire history … WILLIAM HAGUE: Yes. ANDREW MARR: … we could have a situation of the Gaddafi regime falling and there still being appalling violence and chaos afterwards. So I just wonder on the international community side how much thought is now going into that? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we could have that, absolutely, and that means immediately certain things are required. The readiness to provide humanitarian help, and our Department for International Development now has teams on both borders - on the Tunisian and Egyptian borders of Libya - looking at how we can deliver such assistance if necessary. We have got through the United Nations very successfully and the UK drove this all through this week - a Security Council resolution passed with unanimous support, referring what has happened in Libya to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. And that sends a clear message to all involved - in the regime and any other groups - that if they commit crimes and atrocities, there will be a day of reckoning for them. Beyond that, of course, we have to try to help with the development of civil society and functioning political parties and those sorts of things once the conditions in Libya allow us to do so. ANDREW MARR: And you're going to Geneva tomorrow, I think? WILLIAM HAGUE: I'll be in Geneva tomorrow with Hillary Clinton and other foreign ministers. Again a diplomatic success that we had this week was to get Libya before the UN Human Rights Council with a motion passed for international investigations into human rights abuses and calling for Libya to be suspended from the Human Rights Council. The ministerial meeting of that council takes place in Geneva tomorrow. ANDREW MARR: Yes. I suppose the simple case against what Britain did under the previous government, but running into this government's time too, would say that we got in too deep, too quickly and too naively with a dictator who gave us very little back and now we're paying the embarrassing price for it? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well I certainly think one has to keep a distance from a dictator. We do have to do business though with countries we disagree with and we still have to do it. I called the Libyan Foreign Minister last night because you still have to communicate to them directly, personally: this situation is unacceptable. ANDREW MARR: (over) And that's still working, is it? WILLIAM HAGUE: Yes, we can still get through on the telephone to the Libyan regime and we use that to say this is an unacceptable situation and you've got to take steps to bring it to an end, which in this case means the departure of the regime leaders. ANDREW MARR: In terms of lessons learned, what about the military side because the British Royal Naval vessel which went and picked up all those people, including grateful Americans and so on and took them to Malta, is on the list to be scrapped. And a lot of people would look at this and say yes it's a fantastic sign, all these uprisings, but it shows the world's a very dangerous place and perhaps we need to rethink some of our defence cuts; perhaps we need more defence in the years ahead than we had thought? WILLIAM HAGUE: It shows the world is a dangerous place, but we've had to rationalise what we're doing in defence because we were left with such a huge overspend, such a vastly overcommitted defence budget. But at the end of it, we will still be the fourth largest defence spender in the world. We will still have the full range of military capabilities. ANDREW MARR: So you don't think there needs to be a rethink of any kind on the defence side? WILLIAM HAGUE: I think we have the capabilities that we need for the future. ANDREW MARR: It was said when there was that embarrassing delay of the jet going out to pick people up because it was a commercial airliner which had been hired, that the reason for a commercial flight being hired was that the Foreign Office didn't want to pay the Ministry of Defence for Hercules to go out. Surely that was - if true - was an example of ludicrous cheese paring? WILLIAM HAGUE: No, no, well that is not true. ANDREW MARR: That's not true? WILLIAM HAGUE: No, absolutely not. And indeed back two days before that, the Foreign Office had been you know making clear we would need military flights and we needed the capability to have military flights. ANDREW MARR: Are you entirely happy with your own department's performance in all this? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well … ANDREW MARR: It's always difficult for a minister to criticise his department. WILLIAM HAGUE: Yes and we have to take responsibility ourselves as ministers … ANDREW MARR: Yes, of course. WILLIAM HAGUE: … and we had a very bad day on Wednesday because, for a whole variety of reasons, several planes that were meant to be going to Libya didn't go. Now what we did was we got on top of that quickly. And actually I do want to pay tribute to so many of the staff involved because the rapid deployment team in Tripoli Airport, you know they're holding the Union Jack, getting the British people through chaotic scenes, and night and day did a fantastic job these last few days. ANDREW MARR: We've seen a lot of you on the media and visibly taking charge and so forth, but both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were away during key parts of this. Do you think the government itself has to learn some lessons? WILLIAM HAGUE: I think the government has functioned very well together. The Defence Secretary and I have had endless meetings together. And just because the Prime Minister is in another country, it doesn't mean he's not in charge and on top of things. You know this is a world of modern communications, we are able to talk to the Prime Minister even when he's abroad. So I think the government has worked well together. And bringing together yesterday the last charter flight, the evacuation of our embassy and the special forces operations in the desert, all of those things all happening in the same afternoon does show actually a strong coordination across government departments. ANDREW MARR: For now William Hague, Foreign Secretary, thank you very much indeed for joining us. WILLIAM HAGUE: Thank you. INTERVIEW ENDS
| 
E-mail this to a friend 
Printable version 
Bookmark with:
What are these?