Transcript of William Hague interview

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

Andrew Marr interviewed Foreign Secretary William Hague on June 5th 2011.

ANDREW MARR:

Well the Foreign Secretary William Hague was in Libya yesterday for talks with the opposition forces who control the Eastern part of the country, based in the Port of Benghazi; and after a late flight back, he has been up early to join us this morning. Thank you and welcome.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Good morning.

ANDREW MARR:

The people that you were talking to in Libya have sort of proclaimed themselves to be the provisional or transitional government. Do you have a clear sense of who they are and are you sure that they are not connected with extremists and al Qaeda types?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well a fairly clear sense. We've got to know some of them quite well. Mr Jalil, the President of this organisation, the National Transitional Council, I've met him several times and many of the others. And I think it is important to say that these people at the top of this organisation are genuine believers in democracy, in the rule of law. It is quite inspiring, as I said earlier this morning, to see their real hope for the future of their country. Now having said that, of course there's also a great mixture who support them. There are representatives of all areas of Libya, there are representatives of many shades of opinion.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) And you're not going to be introduced to the dodgy types. You're going to be introduced to the kind of smoother ones?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well, no but actually I met … Mr Jalil introduced me yesterday to a wide variety of the representatives on the National Transitional Council. Now, as I said, there will be people with many different political views and many different religious views on that council, supporting that council. But certainly I think they are genuine in wanting a democratic Libya and in their hope for a free country. And the other encouraging thing was that, from what one could see on a visit of that kind of the "real" people there, they are passionate about that too. You know in Freedom Square, you meet people with an outpouring of anger about what happened under the Gaddafi regime, but of hope for a country with opportunity, with dignity for their country, the things that we expect in our country.

ANDREW MARR:

They have the East of the country and Gaddafi's people still have the West of the country, or most of it. And although the helicopters have been in action and so on, it still seems that this could go on for a very, very long time. Gaddafi and his family have nowhere else to go, seem to be determined to hunker down and hold on, and simply dropping things on top of them - I mean unless they are killed unexpectedly and it could happen tomorrow, it could happen any day - but unless they are killed, it's very hard to see how this ends.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well yes, we don't know how long it will go on, and we've been clear about that right from the beginning. No-one can say how long it continues. But it's not as simple as this East/West split that you're pointing to, Andrew, because …

ANDREW MARR:

Well without going into the geography of it, Foreign Secretary. I would just like to keep on the subject of how this might end.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

But this point is crucial …

ANDREW MARR:

Alright.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

… because the way the Gaddafi regime thought it would end is that they would extinguish all the pockets of opposition support in the West - the famous town of Misrata, the towns in the Western mountains bordering Tunisia - and they have failed to do that in recent weeks because of the NATO and allied operations, because we have safeguarded the civilian population. Now that means that we're not looking at a partitioned Libya and that the pressure is now all on the regime. Time is against them. We're often told in many conflicts time is against us, but actually in this case time is against the Gaddafi regime.

ANDREW MARR:

One of the successes of the operation so far is that the Tripoli regime has not been able to produce scores of sort of charred civilian bodies that we have killed by accident. And that's clearly a good thing, but it could well mean that this goes on for really quite a long time.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

But then that is the right choice to make. It is better - and I have argued this in the House of Commons - it is better to stay strictly within the United Nations resolutions, which we do, keeping all the legal and moral and widespread international support that comes from that, than it is to seek a shortcut to the end of this. So we will continue in that vein, intensifying what we're doing - the Apache helicopters are an example of that. But that's different from Mission Creep. This is not Mission Creep changing the nature of the mission. This is intensifying what we are doing in order to make this mission a success.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) In order to get Gaddafi out. If we are still sitting here, if we return and are sitting here at, say, Christmas, and he is still there and we have spent another billion pounds on this, then that's worth it, is it?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well we're not going to set a deadline. You're asking about Christmas and who knows?

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Or this time next year or whatever.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

(over) It could be days or weeks or months. It is worth doing. If we were not doing this, Gaddafi would have overrun, by force, the whole of Libya, causing a massive humanitarian crisis, committing many atrocities, and destabilising Tunisia and Egypt at the same time with terrible consequences for Europe and for this country. So it's in our own national interest, as well as right …

ANDREW MARR:

Okay.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

… to support people who are aspiring to the things I saw from those people yesterday.

ANDREW MARR:

Let's assume that somehow, we know not exactly how, Gaddafi falls and the regime ends. What happens then? Is there a plan for Libya after that?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

This is the main thing that Andrew Mitchell and I went to talk to them about yesterday because there needs to be such a plan and it's only in an embryonic stage. Andrew Mitchell, our Development Secretary, has sent what we call a stabilisation response team that's leading the international assessment in Benghazi at the moment of what would be needed for Libya to stabilise the situation for the people of Libya after Gaddafi goes. But we're also encouraging the National Transitional Council to put more flesh on their proposed transition to lay out in more detail this coming week what would happen on the day that Gaddafi went - who would be running what, how would a new government be formed in Tripoli?

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Is anyone clear about that?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well they have published a good plan for that, which involves incorporating some of the technocratic members of the regime with the opposition members - which would be the right thing to do - and then holding elections after a certain time.

ANDREW MARR:

So no de-Baathification which happened in Iraq?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

No de-Baathification, absolutely. So certainly learning from that. But they now need to publicise that more effectively, to be able to convince members of the current regime that that is something that would work, to be able to really have the detailed plan of what happens from day one in this situation when they would have an extraordinary opportunity (that wouldn't last long) to get things right for their country. So that was part of my message to them in the meetings that we had yesterday.

ANDREW MARR:

We've been told no boots on the ground in a conflict situation, but after the regime had fallen there will be lots of trouble of one kind or another. Might we put in peacekeepers, might there be a peacekeeping force to ensure that there is stability?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well that might be one of the options. Britain does not normally these days play a huge part in peacekeeping. There are many nations that are, including African nations of course, that supply large numbers of peacekeeping troops for those sorts of operations. So no, we're not looking at British boots on the ground - British combat forces or a major British part in a peacekeeping operation. (Marr tries to interject) We can help in so many other ways - some of the ways that I've just been describing.

ANDREW MARR:

Because our moral responsibility is different. I mean we will have helped bring this regime down, we'll have broken the government as it were - so in terms of the pieces afterwards, we have an obligation presumably as a country to ensure that you know there isn't chaos?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

And that is - that stabilisation response - that is making sure that we have a whole new partnership with the Arab world, between the European Union and the Arab world, where Europe acts as a magnet for positive change, encouraging really open market economies, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, so that these things flourish in North Africa. And this, once this fighting is over, is the immense contribution that Britain and Europe again can make to the wider prosperity and stability of the world.

ANDREW MARR:

Let me ask you, if I may, about another real crisis, which is Yemen. President Saleh has gone, fled. I don't know whether he's just gone for medical treatment or he's actually fled to Saudi Arabia, but that looks like a country which is genuinely falling to pieces.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

It does look like that. Exactly, we don't know - although the President has gone to Saudi Arabia, he may just have gone for medical treatment. We hope that he will sign the mediated agreement that the Gulf Cooperation Council have put in front of him several times and he has refused to sign. We will continue to encourage him to do that. In the meantime, I can't stress too strongly that any remaining British nationals in Yemen should leave now by commercial means, which are still available. They must not assume that in these circumstances we can safely conduct or would try to conduct an evacuation of them.

ANDREW MARR:

And given the dangers of Yemen and the fact that al Qaeda in the Saudi Peninsula is based there, how worried are you about that becoming a failed state and a new source of world instability?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Very worried. Yemen is one of our principal concerns for our own national security. That's why we've been working hard on it in recent weeks and months, and indeed back into the last government. This has continued across two British governments trying to stabilise Yemen. We've not succeeded in that, but we will continue working very hard on that. It could become a much more serious threat to our own national security.

ANDREW MARR:

Domestically, a big blast from some serious economists this morning in The Observer against the government's central economic strategy, saying it's not working, the economy is far too weak and there has to be a rethink.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well the government strategy is endorsed by the IMF. It's endorsed by the OECD, by the G20, by all the major business organisations in this country, and the harsh truth is that Gordon Brown did not leave this country with the luxury of a Plan B or a different economic strategy. We have to get down the debts that he left, control the deficits that he left. And if we wavered from that for a moment, then economic confidence would be reduced, the confidence of the financial markets would be very severely affected, so it is vital to continue on the course that we have started.

ANDREW MARR:

But you don't carry on sailing the same course in a yacht if the wind changes. I mean you know if unemployment starts to rise very heavily, if there is a further collapse of confidence from the high street, if exports crash, surely there has to be a rethink?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Well you do carry on the same course, whatever the wind is doing, if what you're getting away from is the most dangerous storm of all. And that is a cycle of debt and collapse of confidence. We've seen what is happening in Greece and Portugal. The last government left us with the same level of deficit as Greece and Portugal, and the only reason we don't have the same level of interest rates as Greece and Portugal is because the world has confidence in this Chancellor and this government.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) So there's no Plan B?

WILLIAM HAGUE:

We have to carry on with the course the Chancellor has set out. And there are many economists in all of those organisations - as I said, the IMF, the OECD, across the G20 - who think that what George Osborne is doing is exactly right, and indeed it is.

ANDREW MARR:

Alright. A pair of inexpert yachtsmen, I suspect.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

(laughing) Very probably.

ANDREW MARR:

But thank you very much indeed, Foreign Secretary.

WILLIAM HAGUE:

Thank you.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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