Labour's Ethical Foreign Policy.
The Ethical Foreign Policy.
This page is dedicated to the "ethical" foreign policy that
Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, adopted after Labour's election victory. In fact, the
ethical foreign policy was born out of Labour's response to the Scott inquiry, which
criticised Tory ministers for misleading Parliament over changes to the official
guidelines. The party's manifesto included commitments to ban the sale of arms to regimes
using them for either internal repression or external aggression, and improve the
transparency and accountability of weapons export licences.
Robin Cook's grasp of foreign policy came under intense scrutiny after the British company at the centre of the arms to Africa controversy published details of its alleged secret contacts with the Government.
Sandline International named a string of civil servants at the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence who were allegedly aware of the covert military operation to help restore the exiled civilian government to Sierra Leone.
In a letter to ministers from its lawyers, the London-based firm of military consultants claimed its intervention on behalf of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was conducted "with the full prior knowledge and approval of Her Majesty's Government". So transparent were its activities in the region, it maintained, that personnel involved in the operation were invited aboard a Royal Navy warship off the West African coast.
Customs and Excise has launched its own investigation into whether Sandline breached UN sanctions against Sierra Leone by supplying arms. The disclosure of the extent of the Government's alleged involvement in the affair was an acute embarrassment for the Foreign Secretary, who told MPs last week that he did not know personally what was going on until he received the letter almost two weeks ago.
If the claims are proved, they would undermine the whole basis of Labour's much-vaunted "ethical" foreign policy.
This would be doubly awkward for Mr Cook because he led Labour's charge in the wake of the Scott report by accusing Conservative ministers of seeking to make their officials into scapegoats for their own mistakes. Two years ago, as Opposition spokesman, he said: "It would be outrageous if only civil servants resigned while the ministers who were responsible for the policy were able to abdicate their responsibilities."
The Foreign Office said yesterday that it could not comment on the allegations until the conclusion of the Customs and Excise inquiry. Sources said Mr Cook believed that officials in his department were right to alert Customs to earlier allegations about the company's involvement in Sierra Leone without reference to him. However, the latest development put further pressure on Tony Lloyd, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Africa, who had bluntly denied any knowledge of such an operation in a Commons debate on March 12.
Although the letter would appear to corroborate claims about Mr Penfold's role made in the Observer newspaper the previous weekend, Mr Lloyd told MPs at the time that these were "scurrilous and ill-informed". He said: "The suggestion that Britain is conspiring with hired killers was wrong, and I wish to make that clear on behalf of the Government."
The Liberal Democrats demanded that Mr Cook make a Commons statement to explain why ministers did not know what was going on in their own department. Menzies Campbell, the party's foreign affairs spokesman, said:
"Sandline's solicitor's letter has opened up a can of worms. If these allegations are correct, then it is clear that there was widespread knowledge of Sandline's activities within the Foreign Office."