Transcript of Liam Fox interview

PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED

On Sunday 27th March Andrew Marr interviewed Defence Secretary Liam Fox

ANDREW MARR:

NATO ambassadors gather in Brussels today to try to settle who is running the coalition war effort aimed at protecting Libyan civilians and ousting Colonel Gaddafi, depending on how you look at it. The vast majority of strikes on Libyan tanks and other heavy armour have been made by the Americans, but they're keen to get out of the driving seat and hand over command and control operations to NATO where disagreement between allies over exactly what the war aims are has led to some friction. Well Dr Liam Fox joins us now from Brussels. Good morning.

DR LIAM FOX:

Good morning, Andrew.

ANDREW MARR:

Now I gather there's been a meeting of the Military Council already this morning. Has this taken us any further forward in determining who is actually in charge?

DR LIAM FOX:

Yes it has. The NATO plans have now passed the Military Council in fact, and there will be a meeting of the North Atlantic Council this evening, which will take a final decision. That doesn't actually mean that NATO will take over immediately. There's an execution directive, as it's called, that comes from that. That means that if that's successful tonight, over the next few days NATO will take complete command. And it's also worth pointing out that this is actually relatively quick for NATO. To do all of this in eight days with the agreement of 28 countries is quite an achievement. They've already agreed to do the humanitarian operations, if asked, the no fly zone; and now the protection of civilians, which is the last part if you like of that jigsaw, which could be in place as I say tonight if things go well, and we're relatively optimistic about that.

ANDREW MARR:

So this would be complete command of the whole thing? They will be in charge of ordering in American strikes and all the rest of it, and Turkey will be part of this too?

DR LIAM FOX:

Yeah hopefully if we get agreement tonight, then all the NATO partners will come within that. And, as you say, that would be the coordination of all the various countries' different assets within the NATO command itself. And that would be a huge step forward.

ANDREW MARR:

So we understand there's been quite a lot of tension, particularly between Turkey and France. And we now seem to have the rather strange position where the Turkish Prime Minister - who not so long ago received the Muammar Gaddafi International Prize for Peace, which was given to him for bringing peace and stability and democracy and so on - is actually going to be heavily involved in the air strikes on Muammar Gaddafi himself.

DR LIAM FOX:

Well nothing's ever straightforward here at NATO, as you know Andrew. (Marr laughs) But you know a lot of people had hopes that there could be a peaceful solution in Libya, that the regime might change its ways, and I don't think you can blame people for wanting to see a different way. But what we've seen in recent days, and we've seen pictures continuing from Libya of the Gaddafi regime raining down death and destruction on their own people, and this has brought the international community together in a way that we have seen over very few issues in the past. And I think there is a very clear determination here for the NATO apparatus to come into play to bring a unified action by all the countries under the UN Resolution in achieving a single goal.

ANDREW MARR:

So do we know which general or which nationality of general will actually be in charge of calling in the air strikes and directing the whole thing?

DR LIAM FOX:

Well again it's not something you want to bet on in terms of NATO politics, but it does look as though the most likely outcome is that we may end up with the Canadian General in charge of this, and I think that would be something that pretty much everybody would be happy with.

ANDREW MARR:

What about the war aims themselves? Can I just start with trying to clear up the question of Colonel Gaddafi? As I understand it, the United Nations Resolution does not allow the specific targeting of Colonel Gaddafi. But since his command and control centres are being attacked, if he was killed, in your view that would be a good thing?

DR LIAM FOX:

Well we don't actually target individuals. As you know, we're targeting the infrastructure because the aim of the UN Resolution is very clear. It's about protecting the civilian population in Afghanistan [sic]. It does give legal authority to carry out all means necessary to protect that civilian population. Over the last week that has primarily been taking out their air defences, their command and control. In recent days of course, there's been more targeting of dynamic targets - of his tanks and his armoured personnel vehicles - and in fact the MoD will release today more footage of some of those attacks by our Tornado aircraft on that. (Marr tries to interject) So clearly what we want to do is to protect the civilian population, to degrade the ability of the Gaddafi regime to harm their own people. If Colonel Gaddafi goes, that of course is a bonus and everybody believes that he's now a liability to his people and to his country.

ANDREW MARR:

But he has nowhere to go to, does he? That's the problem. In a sense he will feel trapped, he'll feel he's going to die if he doesn't fight to the last.

DR LIAM FOX:

Well there are those who have put this argument and said with the International Criminal Court now being involved that there's nowhere for dictators to run, there's no place that we can give them of shelter. But do we really want that? I mean do we really want to say the converse, which is we have to find ways by which people who oppress their people, who commit potentially crimes against their own population have a safe haven; there may be places, there may be other regimes in the world willing to shelter him? Frankly that's Colonel Gaddafi's problem.

ANDREW MARR:

So from your point of view clearly, this can't be over until he's gone? This now NATO operation, these military strikes have to end with the end of Gaddafi as a power in Libya?

DR LIAM FOX:

No, the UN Resolution is quite clear that it will stop when the regime stops injuring and killing civilians. It's hard to imagine that they would stop with Gaddafi there, but losing Gaddafi as an aspiration is not part of the UN Resolution and it's important to get those two things clear.

ANDREW MARR:

So it is possible in six months time when you're addressing the Conservative Party conference that Gaddafi will still be in power in Tripoli, if not in the whole of Libya?

DR LIAM FOX:

Well you can have a whole range of hypotheticals about this. And what we're seeing on the ground now is the rebels moving west out of Ajdabiya now to Brega, moving back round the coast, and that of course produces a very different political dynamic. I think there are two things probably worth mentioning about this. The first is that clearing the regime forces out of Ajdabiya means that Benghazi is safe because Ajdabiya controls the water supply to Benghazi. And as they move round the coast, of course, the rebels will increasingly control the exit points of Libya's oil. And if they continue to move round that coast from Brega round to Ras Lanuf on the coast, it means they will pretty much be in control of all Libya's oil exports. That will produce a very different dynamic and a different equilibrium inside Libya. Now how that will play out in terms of public opinion and the Gaddafi regime remains to be seen.

ANDREW MARR:

NATO can help them by attacking any Gaddafi forces that are targeted on the way to take those oil installations presumably, but it seems very difficult to see how air power could actually get Gaddafi out of Tripoli and his heartland.

DR LIAM FOX:

Well the aim - I go back to the UN Resolution - is to protect the civilian population. And we have to remember that this was not a static situation at the outset. We became involved because, unlike Tunisia and unlike Egypt, when there was a spontaneous uprising of the people in Libya the army did not stand back, as they had done in Egypt, but the regime set out to crush the resistance and the uprising of popular sentiment. We just got to Benghazi in time to stop the potential slaughter of a city of a million people. There has been a change in that dynamic. There's no doubt that there has been a fillip for the rebels as they've seen the international community come to their help and to stop the oppression. That has a momentum of its own and we will see in the days to come where that takes Libya in terms of its internal politics.

ANDREW MARR:

To quote your own words back at you, in Syria the regime is now attacking its own people and crushing dissent and causing the deaths of people. What is the difference between Libya and Syria where you have another dictator who has caused trouble for a long time? Can NATO, can the world now turn its attention to Syria too?

DR LIAM FOX:

And there's North Korea and lots of other places that you can mention. As the Prime Minister has said, because we can't do everything doesn't mean we should do nothing. Yes we're very concerned about Syria and clearly the position on the ground seems to be deteriorating. There still has to be I think international pressure politically brought on that regime to say this is clearly not a sustainable position. You cannot simply shoot people who have a different point of view from the regime itself. And I hope that the example of what has happened in other countries in the region will dawn on the regime there that they have to have political reform, they have to allow people a voice. And this idea that you can close off in the early 21st century your population from the outside world and not allow them the same freedoms and the same information and the same access to technology that occurs in other countries, I think is just unworkable and unthinkable.

ANDREW MARR:

So no question of the same kinds of action over Syria, or indeed Yemen which is in a terrible condition as well at the moment, as we're seeing over Libya?

DR LIAM FOX:

Yemen is particularly worrying - not just because of the collapse of the regime or the imminent collapse of the regime there, but because we know that al Qaeda have been particularly active in Yemen. We know that they have got themselves quite well organised and represent a quite major threat not just to the Yemen but to the region and beyond. For the Yemen to collapse into instability, for there to be yet another failed state into which al Qaeda and other elements of trans-national terrorism might be drawn would represent a very potent threat. Clearly what we want to see there is a transition politically to a stable alternative to the current regime.

ANDREW MARR:

It sounds as if in many ways Yemen is a bigger threat to us than Libya was before all of this started?

DR LIAM FOX:

Well there is of course the potential in the Yemen that there could be a political settlement yet; that we may see a transition of power, we may see new elections being held with a new government, new leadership being elected. That of course is what we all want to see because to see a repeat of the scenes in Libya where we're seeing schools, hospitals, houses being destroyed by artillery fire and the sort of destruction of buildings and injuries to the civilian population is something that we desperately want to avoid. And if we can get a political solution in the Yemen, so much the better …

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

DR LIAM FOX:

… because you're absolutely correct that it does represent a major counter-terrorist, a terrorist threat to the UK.

ANDREW MARR:

Though you've mentioned several times the importance of protecting civilians, in effect we have now intervened on one side in Libya. These air strikes are helping the rebels push forward and you've just, you know you've explained why you think that's a good thing. Why can we not go further and start to arm some of the rebel forces or at least allow other Arab countries to arm these forces because apart from the air strikes they're pretty much a ragtag force pushing their way towards you know a better, if degraded, professional army under Gaddafi?

DR LIAM FOX:

Well there are two, as you know, UN resolutions in place. There's an arms embargo. We have to accept the UN resolution on that. We're not arming the rebels, we're not planning to arm the rebels. And of course the second resolution's about protecting the civilian population. And you say that we've chosen to intervene on one side. Yes we have. We've chosen to intervene on the side of unarmed civilians, so that hopefully they can sleep in their beds at night without wondering whether the regime's going to murder them.

ANDREW MARR:

There's a lot of - you'll have picked it up, I'm sure - a lot of criticism of you, leaks and so on in the newspapers this morning. Do you know who's responsible and do you have a message for them?

DR LIAM FOX:

I don't know and, frankly, I don't much care. I know journalists have to earn a crust, but you know frankly some of us are more concerned with actually what's happening in Libya, what's happening in Afghanistan, the problems in the Yemen, how we look after our armed forces more than media tittle-tattle. I'm sorry if that disappoints them.

ANDREW MARR:

And there's no question of you being anything other than at the heart of these decisions alongside, shoulder to shoulder, David Cameron - no froideur, no pushing out?

DR LIAM FOX:

Well you know, Andrew, if what I read in the papers is true this morning, I must have been imagining all these meetings I've been at in the last three weeks and the phone calls late at night, including from the Prime Minister. So either it's meaningless tittle-tattle or I've been working for absolutely no reason in the last few weeks.

ANDREW MARR:

Alright, Dr Fox, thank you very much indeed. Liam Fox there.

DR LIAM FOX:

Thank you.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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