............................................................................... ON THE RECORD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 04.12.94 ............................................................................... JOHN HUMPHRYS: Hello. The Foreign Secretary is on his way to Belgrade for one more attempt to negotiate an end to the nightmare of Bosnia. Before he flew out he went ON THE RECORD with his fears that it may be a hopeless mission ... and with his forecast of what might lie ahead. That's after the news read by MOIRA STUART. NEWS HUMPHRYS: Thanks Moira. The European Union is the rock on which Margaret Thatcher's leadership foundered and which is threatening John Major too. Getting the Maastricht Treaty through the Commons two years ago was a nightmare. Merely topping up our contribution to Brussels last week was achieved only by the threat of Cabinet suicide and risking the government's majority by withdrawing the whip from eight rebellious backbenchers. But while Mr. Major peers nervously over the European ramparts - hoping desperately for a period of calm - many of his Continental colleagues are charging ahead toward a single currency and closer integration. But first ... the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd. I spoke to him before he left for Belgrade. He's gone there - with his French counterpart - to try to achieve what many believe is the impossible: a negotiated end to that terrible war in Bosnia. He will try to win the support of the Serbian leader. Mr. Milosevic, for the latest peace plan cobbled together by the five nations in the so-called Contact Group. But the Bosnian Serbs themselves have already effectively thrown it out; they want even more concessions. So, I began by asking Mr. Hurd why he thought THIS had any chance of succeeding when everything else had failed. DOUGLAS HURD: We can't be sure. We looked at all the alternatives and we decided, as we said in our statement, there could not be an outcome on the battlefield, we had to look again for a negotiated peace. I suppose if you'd asked Robert Bruce's spider as he was climbing up maybe the fourth time: "What makes you think that you are going to succeed this time when you've failed before?" He wouldn't have had much of an answer. But he got to the ledge. HUMPHRYS: We are talking about Robert Bruce's spider trying over a matter of minutes to reach an attainable and obviously achievable objective. In this case we've been trying for years and we're not getting anywhere and each time we slip back a little. HURD: The change for the better in the last few months has been that Milosevic, the President in Belgrade, has accepted the contact group plan and is putting pressure on the Bosnian Serbs to accept it too. That's very important and that's why Alain Jupe, the French Foreign Minister, and I are flying to Belgrade tomorrow to update Milosevic on what is happening and encourage him to build up that pressure until it works. HUMPHRYS: But he's been putting pressure on. He's been putting pressure on for months. HURD: He has been putting pressure on and he believes it's having some effect. It hasn't had a decisive effect. He has to continue with that and we all have to continue with that. HUMPHRYS: It's very hard to tell the people of Bihac, for instance, that this pressure is working. They see something quite different. HURD: Yes. The Bosnian Government troops launched an attack out of Bihac, it failed and they have been driven back. I hold no brief for the Bosnian Serbs, they are a brutal barbarous lot, they've committed terrible crimes and they are the only people now who are rejecting the peace plan. But that is all an argument either for putting in a big army and forcing them out - but no-one is suggesting that - or for persevering with the negotiation effort. HUMPHRYS: You say persevering with it. You also say we don't have much time. What do you mean by 'much time'? HURD: We are talking about weeks, I think. That was the timescale that we were discussing round the table last night. We have some weeks, I hope, unless something disastrous further occurs on the ground. We have some weeks and we have to use them and that...all sorts of other ideas have been going the rounds; the idea is that you could solve this somehow from the air by airstrikes, the idea that lifting the embargo and withdrawing the UN forces was maybe not so bad, the idea that maybe the Serbs should be allowed to hang on to more than forty nine per cent of the land. All these ideas have been going round. We sat down yesterday - Russians, Americans, French, Germans commission and agreed that these ideas wouldn't work. There was no disagreement rejecting all those ideas. So then you are (break in tape) with the need to persevere with the effort to have a negotiated settlement just like the spider trying to get on the lodge, on the ledge. Now the moment you say that, of course all kinds of people sit back and say you are an appeaser, you're doing wrong, you're betraying principles - we are not. We are simply trying, accepting a lot of criticism, we are simply trying to persevere with the only way out of this tragedy which we - all of us - think makes sense. HUMPHRYS: So if within a matter of weeks - and you say weeks and not months - this agreement is not accepted - the Serbs and the Bosnians to the extent of their doing it, the Muslims to the extent of their doing it, don't stop their aggression, then what do we do? HURD: Then it may become unavoidable, as we have already said, to lift the arms embargo, let the arms flood in. But of course that has to, before we do that, we have to pull out our troops. Now I don't know when that point may be reached, we've said for months that it may become unavoidable, it's quite clearly closer than it was months ago. HUMPHRYS: So you have in your mind, you and other members of the contact group have in your mind a clear schedule of events now. If these things don't happen, those troops will be brought out, the arms embargo will be lifted and we will leave it to them to fight it out amongst themselves. HURD: We have no date for that. HUMPHRYS: Why not? HURD: Because I don't think that's sensible. I don't know how long this effort, I don't know exactly the timing of the different parts of this effort. Alain Jupe and I are going to Belgrade, the contact group will go to Sarajevo, there will be meetings no doubt at the summit in Budapest in the next few days. We are now relaunching the negotiating effort. I can't say that it's going to succeed or when it's going to succeed. All I am saying is that there may come a time when we have to say, well we've tried once more along the only way which we think makes sense, it's not working and therefore it becomes unavoidable, unavoidable to lift the arms embargo, let...pull our troops out first and then it's for the parties to fight it out. HUMPHRYS: You said in that answer 'may come a time', surely it's 'will come a time' HURD: No. Don't push me to be more definite, particularly about times. What we decided again yesterday was the outlines, the basis of a scheme. Big Serb withdrawal from about seventy to about forty nine per cent, or to forty nine per cent. If they want to sit down with the others and say, but it shouldn't be that forty nine per cent, if they want to talk about changing the map, exchanging villages, swaps, land swaps, they may do so. If they want to talk about the constitutional arrangements, what the relationship would be between Bosnia which would have to stay within its present frontiers and Croatia, on the one hand, Serbia on the other, they can do that. We pointed those things out again last night but the outline of a negotiated settlement we set out again. Now we will try and rebuild the pressures, particularly on the Bosnian Serbs, to accept that plan and we will take a little time to do that but if it fails then I think lift and withdraw - that is to say the lifting of the arms embargo preceded by the withdrawal of the UN forces - may become unavoidable. HUMPHRYS: You say, if it fails. Many will say, when it fails. Because it's manifestly obvious it doesn't contain what the Bosnian Serbs want. They want sovereignty, they want a confederation with Serbia, Greater Serbia, that must be unacceptable, musn't it. HURD: That is unacceptable. That is what Mr Karadzic says. He's not the only Bosnian Serb. Bosnian Serbs who think a little bit beyond the headline and the drama of the occasion will ask themselves well what sort of life is this for me or my children? If they want a settlement they can have a reasonable settlement. We've set out the terms which we the outside community believe are fair and possible. We cannot impose those terms without sending in an army with Americans, Germans, Italians - a big allied army. We don't...no-one is proposing that. What we can do is put in ideas and pressures from outside and meanwhile continue the humanitarian effort so long as we can. HUMPHRYS: But you don't believe it's going to work, do you? HURD: I believe it's the only thing that can work. And the alternative to pursuing this road is simply to sit back and say, let them fight it out, they're just tucked away miles away in the Balkans, let them fight it out, what does it matter to us? And I get quite a lot of letters saying exactly that. The answer is, it might spread. It might involve Russia and America. And in any case people in this country are not happy that nothing whatever should be done to prevent slaughter and disaster, whether it's in Rwanda or Bosnia or Somalia, so we have to make as good and well conceived an effort as we can without rhetoric and without sitting back and supposing that by two or three harsh air strikes killing a good many people you are going to bomb the Bosnian Serbs to the table. Of course you are not. HUMPHRYS: You say people in this country aren't happy with that, neither is anybody happy with seeing NATO made to look foolish. The United Nations made to look foolish; the whole Alliance threatened and that is what's been happening because in the past we haven't been sufficiently decisive because we have allowed it to drag on and on and on and we have allowed this enormous confusion over who has what mandate and how it is to be exercised. HURD: That question is based on, I think, an illusion, the illusion that if we had been decisive, if somehow we had done something or other unspecified from outside we could have prevented Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs from fighting about the nature of Bosnia.....(both talking at the same time)... What is this? Again this is the idea, you could have prevented, you could have imposed a peace but only by sending in a large army to impose a peace and sustain it. I don't know of anybody who has actually suggested that. All kinds of other things have been suggested, some of them have been tried. What we concluded, all of us, and this was unanimous last night, that none of those things are going to work and you are going to have a negotiated peace and I'm sure that that is so. NATO is not at stake in this. The idea that this is a test of NATO is I think quite wrong. HUMPHRYS: But that's how it's being seen. HURD: By whom? HUMPHRYS: By many people. By the Americans. For a start the Americans have used the kind of language about NATO, and about Britain, that we haven't heard for many many a long year. Senator Dole, possibly the next American President, calling us appeasers - this sort of language. HURD: No, no, but you're racing away between different ideas. NATO exists to keep us safe, NATO is a collective security organisation, NATO means that if any member state is attacked, all are attacked, that's what NATO is and that's why other people are seeking to join it. And what NATO has tried to do, to help the UN in Bosnia, is not part of its basic task and is not a test of its worth. That was one thing again which was totally agreed round the NATO table, at the NATO council this week. We need to be clear about that. HUMPHRYS: Papering over the cracks? HURD: No, no. You know, you're trying out the phrases, I don't blame you. But the idea that this is some test of the worth of NATO has, I think now, been exposed as wrong. NATO has been seeking to help the UN, keep the skies clear over Bosnia and the no-fly zone, help protect UNPROFOR, help to deal with heavy weapons say around Sarajevo. And certainly there have been setbacks and confusions about that, no-one can deny that...(both talking at once)... I mean in an ordinary war, you have a ground effort and you have an air effort and they're in the same headquarters and any arguments are dealt with in the same headquarters and never come to public view, you just get on with it, once you've reconciled the arguments of ground and air. What we have in Bosnia, no-one can say it's satisfactory, is the ground effort in the hands of one organisation - the UN - and the air effort in the hands of another organisation - NATO - and the discussions how to handle particular episodes which normally take place in one headquarters are now semi-public between two different organisations but they are getting on with it. HUMPHRYS: What lessons have we learned from all this? HURD: I think the lesson that we learn not just from Bosnia but from the other trouble spots, the other places where there's no television but people are slaughtering each other in even greater numbers: Angola, Nagorno-Karabakh and so on, is that the international community should be quicker to try to prevent these tragedies. This means poking your nose into other people's affairs, getting involved in the internal affairs of other countries in a way which would have been thought inconceivable even ten years ago. But I think we have to do that and that's why we and the French have put forward ideas for preventative diplomacy, for helping countries resolve their disputes whether in Europe, or whether in Africa, before they reach this tragic stage. HUMPHRYS: More from Mr Hurd later in the programme. Well, as he flies across the continent on his way to the Balkans, the French Foreign Minister in the seat beside him, he may wonder what some of his other European colleagues thirty thousand feet below him are getting up to. Preparing themselves for much closer integration within the European Union, that's what and that's a real problem for him and for Mr. Major as Emma Udwin now reports. ****** HUMPHRYS: Emma Udwin reporting. So to the second half of my interview with Douglas Hurd. I began by suggesting to him that he has a clear problem. The only road ahead in Europe is towards closer integration, but that is the very road the government cannot travel because of political divisions here at home. DOUGLAS HURD: I don't think we've got a problem with Europe. I mean we have a debate in Europe, and not before time, and not just in Britain. As your film showed, but there's lots more to it than that,
there's a debate in Germany with the paper you were talking about rejected by the Foregin Minister, there's a debate in France which will come into the presidential elections, there's a debate in Italy which is quite new, there's a debate in Spain, we all know there's a debate in Denmark and there is as you may have noticed, a debate in Britain. And this is all - the idea that there's only one road is I think depply old-fashioned. HUMPHRYS: But there's only one destination. HURD: What's that? HUMPHRYS: Ultimate destination as far as people like Chancellor Kohl is concerned, and that is political union in Europe. HURD: If by that you mean a centralised executive, a government sitting in Brussels and a centralised parliament sitting in Strasbourg or Brussels, I think that's just plain wrong. HUMPHRYS: No, but you .... HURD: No, no, no, but this is the general - I mean this used to be the general view, and there are still people who hold it but I think it's old-fashioned. I mean the French Prime Minister said the other day, the idea that the only goal, the only possible goal is a federal Europe is out of date, its day has passed. HUMPHRYS: When ... HURD: No, no, but when I've said that in the past, people like you have said no, no, no, it's just the British Foreign Secretary papering over the cracks. (INTERRUPTION) But he did, and it's going to be a Europe of nations, that's my conviction, and the idea that the only good European is one who believes in centralising I think is very old hat. It's held by Paddy Ashdown and other old-fashioned people. HUMPHRYS: You mentioned the French Prime Minister.
The French Prime Minister has said, and has made it absolutely clear it is vital that everybody joins together on economic and political matters. He couldn't be clearer than that. HURD: He's very clear that you're not going to have a unitary system with the commission becoming a government. HUMPHRYS: But you're ... HURD: No, no, I'm not, because if you look at what people - the difficulty, the weakness of the argument in this country has been precisely the one that you are showing, that there is only one road, and either we're slow on it or fast on it. This is not so and the debate now right across Europe is much fuller, it has many more possiblities in it. As regards defence, if we're coming on to particulars, I'm sure that Britain needs to be at the centre. It's not an opt-out subject for us, and that's why when the French talk about defence we listen very carefully because Britain and France need to work together on this as we are increasingly doing. When you're talking about a single currency you have a different situation where Britain has reserved for itself, the Prime Minister has reserved for us the freedom to choose if and when this becomes a real choice, so you need to take it, instead of doing with great rhetorical generalities you need to deal - take it subject by subject and show flexibility as the Prime Minister said in his speech at Leiden, and this is what is happening. HUMPHRYS: But these are anything but rhetorical generalities. You say the French want closer union on defence matters. Yes, that's certainly true but again Mr Balladur has made it perfectly clear that along with that ultimately has to go economic union. HURD: He separated - he said the two - he's nominated those two, economic and monetary union, - the French believe and are signed up to a single currency. We are .... HUMPHRYS: With many others.? HURD: Along with many others - with others except the Danes, provided that their economies come together. The Germans will not accept that there should be a single currency, that the Deutschmark should become an ECU unless the economies have converged, and that's all set out in the treaty very clearly and Leon Brittan has just said on your programme
he doesn't think that choice will be before us in '97 but it may be in '99, and that may be so. HUMPHRYS: But our problem is that our partners in Europe have made that choice. They recognise that economic and monetary union is going to come - not may come - this isn't some rhetorical generality - it is as far as they're concerned a hard reality, a fact. HURD: No, no, not at all. The German court said that it required a decision by the German parliament. The treaty says it requires a moving together, a convergence in the jargon of the European
economies, which has not yet occurred. (INTERRUPTION) Monsieur Chirac is saying that it should have a referendum in France. It's just possible you may ask me about that before we're through, so to say that this is going to happen, this is an accomplished fact is just not right. This is an example of the fallacy of supposing, you know, that we are there sitting on an island and we're having a debate and difficulties which others don't have. It's simply not so. HUMPHRYS: Well, it begins to look to them as if that is so, and we talk about flexibility, and they don't like it when we do that, because what they see is that we're not really talking about flexibility. They talk about it as "a la carte" which you present as - and I know you don't like that particular phrase - but you present as a destination. What they say is that this is merely a transition. HURD: What we have to do in this country is to work out and put forward in the course of next year our ideas, in my case the Tory Party's ideas, the Tory goverment's ideas of the kind of Europe with which we will be at ease. We've begun to do that and we will find - we are finding - country by country, because of that, not because they accept the British ideas, but because these are also ideas which make sense for them. Now we haven't won the argument, I'm not saying that. There are people like President Delors at the commission who hold to the old-fashioned view. HUMPHRYS: Possibly that's ... HURD: Possibly. But as Monsieur Balladur said that view is an old-fashioned one. Its day has passed. Our weakness is that we always think, you know we hate to be reassured that anyone's on our side. We love our nightmares. We don't want to be woken up into the cold day, where you actually do some arguing, and you win some and you gain ground if your views are actually valid for Europe as a whole. That's our job for '95, whether you're thinking of the government or the Tory Party or the country as a whole, and it's a serious job. HUMPHRYS: But it's not a nightmare that Europe, bits of Europe, terribly important bits of Europe are moving towards this hard core which is committed to a single currency and economic union. The most powerful bits of Europe, Germany, France, the Benelux countries. HURD: We have to decide, we have the freedom to decide. If that happens, even Leon Brittan says it won't happen until 1999. HUMPHRYS: But it is happening. It's ... HURD: No, no, no, no, if this happens, if that decisive step were taken by others which they have the right to do under the treaty, and we have the right to say yes or no, and we need to make that decision in the light of a serious discussion of what it does for the prosperity and the political freedom of people in this country. On defence there's a different situation. I can't see the defence of Europe without the defence of Britain. There I'm quite clear, we have to be right at the centre of whatever emerges and it has to be very clearly linked as it is in the treaty with NATO and the Atlantic alliance. HUMPHRYS: But let's stay, if we may, with Economic and Monetary Union. You say "if it happens". The danger is that the approach we're adopting at the moment, the so-called flexibility, is to use Leon Brittan's words "paving the way" for precisely that "paving the way" for these hard cores to develop from which we will be excluded in the long run, so we will be on the fringes of Europe. HURD: We will have a choice and not only us, the Danes in a similar position, and other countries. We will have to make a choice, and all I'm saying is that we've got that freedom to choose, we're not bound and we should make that choice, intelligently when the time comes, based on our assessment of our own interests and our own future and there are big questions here which need actually to be discussed instead of just being treated as, you know a phenomena of political gossip. HUMPHRYS: But you've accepted that you don't want these hard cores, to use the jargon, to develop.. HURD: The Prime Minister at Leiden set out what we mean by a flexible Europe. There will be areas in which some countries go ahead and others don't, we don't call it a hard core, we look at what's already happening. We have the Western European Union, which is a defence organisation which we belong to, but the Irish don't, the Austrian won't. We have the Shenhan (phon) Agreement which deals with frontiers, we're not part of that because we and the Irish are part of islands, and so we're not part of that. So already you have this flexibility. When we bring in, maybe at the turn of the century, Poland, Hungary and the Czechs and so on - which we very much favour - then you'll need this flexibility, I don't doubt that. That's the way it's actually going. HUMPHRYS: But we're talking here, clearly, aren't we, about two different things. You're talking about this flexibility, this variable geometry on certain areas, I'm talking about something quite different, I'm talking about these hard cores developing, where you get Germany, France, the Benelux countries, together deciding that they will form an area from which we are going to be excluded. We're going to become effectively second class citizens and what the Prime Minister and you have made quite clear is that that is not acceptable. HURD: No, and nor is that acceptable and nor is that what would actually happen. There will be occasions and subjects when certain countries go ahead faster than others and sometimes Britain would be among those fast countries and clearly defence is one where we have to be. We have to be sure the ideas come forward suit us and in others, like the Social Chapter, we say you go ahead, if you want to take steps which in our view destroy competitiveness and reduce jobs you may do so but we have negotiated that , it was agreed with everybody that we can have an opt-out. Now, that was agreed by everybody. That's not an ideal solution but it suited us and suited them on this particular occasion. HUMPHRYS: The reality is that you can't sit here this morning, and say yes, ultimately we share the same goal as them and I insist on saying THEM because there are..the leadership of most of the countries of Europe, indeed all of the countries of Europe in this regard, share the same goal ultimately of closer European integration. You can't sit here and say that this morning, because of the domestic political situation. Your party wouldn't let you do that. HURD: But I'm not the only person..we're not the only people with problems of opinion and this is one thing I think, I hope, everyone has learned from the Maastricht experience. Maastricht didn't create a super state, but it only just squeaked through, in the House of Commons by a handful of votes, in the French referendum by a handful of votes, in the German..in Germany by a court judgement which was iffy, and in Denmark of course only on a second referendum. So, I hope everybody gathering for '96 or putting the ideas which you've been discussing in this programme, is aware, I believe they are, of exactly what you are saying: you need to carry the public with you. Not just in parliamentary votes and referenda, but how the thing actually works and that's... HUMPHRYS: And you know that you can't carry your party with you. If you were to saying this morning "yes of course I agree that we have the same ultimate goal and that is closer integration in Europe"...even if you believed it passionately, and many people believe you do believe it, you cannot say it. HURD: Political integration what does that mean? I believe... HUMPHRYS: Let's talk about economic and monetary union, a single currency. HURD: I believe in a Europe of nations working effectively together, much more effectively together than Europeans ever have done before. What we're doing is something very difficult which no continent or set of countries have ever done before. We're turning our backs on a history of fighting each other and filling the cemeteries and we're now trying to shift that stability and security eastwards - to Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia - and we are not, I'm quite clear that we can't succeed in that if at the same time we are seeking to undermine or smother the nation states. And I think in that proposition THEY or most of THEM actually come or will come to agree because that is what the peoples of Europe want. HUMPHRYS: Couched in those terms but not in the terms in which I couched it and that is to say the ultimate goal has to be some sort of economic and monetary union and a single currency. You can't even seriously address that issue because of the domestic, political pressures upon you. HURD: I think we have to address that seriously, this is exactly what I'm saying. We have the freedom to take that decision, if and when it comes, in the interests of Britain. We have that freedom, we're not committed. Let's for heaven's sake...(both talking at the same time)...let's for heaven's sake take it seriously. We have a bit of time... HUMPHRYS: Not long. HURD: No, but we have at least five years in my view. At least five years.. HUMPHRYS: In five years, in all probability you will be excluded from the central core of Europe and that's the danger. HURD: No, no, I really don't believe that's what happens at all. The treaty is perfectly clear, this particular problem comes up, this particular choice comes up, if and when the economies converge and if that were to happen the choice is open to all, that is in the treaty. But what we don't want to do is to stumble into a choice, we need to make a choice which is informed, properly informed as to the interests of this country. There are all kinds of issues here, about the strength of our financial sector, the difficulties, but also the advantages of a single currency, the effect on the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the powers of a nation state to fix its own taxes. These are the sort of things that we should be actually discussing in substance, instead of wittering on about splits in this party or that. HUMPHRYS: And when we have had those discussions, should we then have a referendum? HURD: There are two possible ways in which you could have a referendum. One, is on a single bank, single currency, which you and I have just discussed and that choice will not be before us, well in my view at least for five years. Or, you could have one after the next conference, the IGC, which will be nothing to do with the single bank or single currency. I don't know how important that conference is going to be, whether it will deal with bits and pieces, in which case you wouldn't need a referendum or whether it will deal with something more substantial. So we can't really..I mean I don't think we can carry that discussion further. I am sceptical. I think all ministers are sceptical about referenda. The Labour Party is sceptical. We don't like the general idea, but certainly we in government are not saying...and that's really as far as we're going to get on that subject. HUMPHRYS: The Foreign Secretary talking to me yesterday. ...oooOOOooo...