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UK/BURMA
Tuesday, September 28, 1999 Published at 13:22 GMT 14:22 UK
BBC
UK Politics
Robin Cook's speech
This is the full text of Foreign Secretary Robin
Cook's speech to the Labour Party conference:
I last met Vetan the week after we liberated Kosovo.
That day among the people of Pristina I saw the joy of
freedom.
I also saw the horror of oppression.
I stood at the door of a farmhouse
and saw the remains of thirty people
lying where they had been shot.
Mostly crawled into the corners in a
desperate, futile attempt to hide from
the bullets.
In Kosovo Europe witnessed the greatest persecution of
a whole people since the days of Hitler or Stalin.
We acted because the age of mass deportation and
ethnic cleansing belongs to Europe's past. We are not
going to let it come back.
Milosevic was beaten in Kosovo. If our predecessors in
Government had acted as decisively to stop him in the
past decade then we would never have seen the tragedy
of Kosovo.
Or Bosnia. Since the Serb army pulled out of Kosovo
there is a new spirit of hope in Bosnia. The rate at which
Bosnian refugees are going back has almost trebled now
they know Milosevic is not coming back.
Our victory must be a turning point for all the Balkans.
Serbia has seven neighbours. Every one of them was
solid in their support for our action.
We owe it to them to be equally solid in helping them
build a new future for the Balkans.
A future in which we open up the markets of Europe and
help them end the poverty that breeds conflict.
A future in which we share with them the key lesson of
modern Europe. That the more we bring down barriers
with our neighbours, the more secure each of us
becomes.
We are making good progress in getting that lesson
understood in the Balkans.
I am sorry to have to tell conference that we are further
away than ever from getting it understood in today's Tory
Party.
They have just launched yet another Tory campaign
against Europe. This time called Conservatives Against a
Federal Europe.
They want to be known for short as cafe.
Let's not tell them it's a French word.
A fifth of the Tory Parliamentary Party have signed up.
Though these days you could get a fifth of the Tory Party
into most medium sized cafés.
All members of cafe are urged to "make your voice heard
in William's office".
Making your voice heard in William's office seems to me
a very modest ambition. I want our voice to be heard in
Europe.
Thanks to Labour, that is where Britain's voice is now
heard.
As a result we got agreement to end the beef ban, and
the best ever deal for our regions.
Under Labour, Britain is leading Europe, not leaving
Europe.
Leading the reform of Europe - to make it more open,
more in touch with the people. And who better to do it
than the man who started the reform of our party and is
now reforming the European Commission. Our own Neil
Kinnock.
But Britain will not be taken seriously on the case for
reform, if Europe does not believe we want to make it a
success.
Last month we heard the authentic voice of the Tory
party on Europe. Margaret Thatcher. She claimed that
Europe had been "an absolute disaster for Britain". I
would not dream of disputing that Margaret Thatcher is
an expert on absolute disasters.
But the real disaster for Britain would be withdrawal from
Europe. That is the true logic of the Tory position.
It would be a disaster because we sell most of our
exports to Europe, and we need to be there when they
draw up the rules.
Because we and our neighbours face the same problems
of cross-border crime, the same challenges of protecting
our environment, and we need common solutions.
And because we need the united strength of Europe
when we talk to the rest of the world.
And if it becomes clear that our five tests have been met
and that Britain's interest would be better served by
joining the Single Currency, then we will invite the British
people in a referendum to make the right choice.
If the economic conditions are right, Labour will not let
Britain lose out by staying out.
I challenge William Hague to say that to the Tory
Conference next week.
Of course he won't dare. The emergency exit is too far
away from the platform. He knows Conservative dogma
would keep Britain out even if it meant Britain losing out.
The Tories should be honest with the people of Britain.
For many of our people, out of Europe would mean out of
work.
The British people wouldn't thank them if it happened.
Nor would our friends around the world.
Some Tories used to claim that we had to choose
between Europe and America.
This Government has more influence in Brussels and
because of that more respect in Washington than the
Conservatives ever did.
It is not only in Europe that we inherited from the
Conservatives a record of stalemate. We were left a
whole catalogue of problems.
One by one we have been tackling them.
After ten long years the Lockerbie bombing will be
brought to court. At last, the relatives of those who died
that night can hear the evidence in open court.
For the first time in seventeen years since we went to
war with Argentina we have brokered an agreement with
them on contacts with the Falkland Islands.
For the first time in a decade we have secured an
undertaking from the Government of Iran that it will do
nothing to carry out the fatwah against Salman Rushdie.
And for the first time in forty years since the Castro
revolution, Britain has held talks with the Foreign
Minister of Cuba. I made it clear we want to see better
human rights in Cuba. But we have a better chance of
getting them, not by blockading Cuba but by making the
world open to Cuba.
Isolation in the modern world carries a big penalty in the
global economy. We do not wish to visit isolation on any
country that is willing to engage with us.
But there are some regimes so remote from our values
that they must be made to pay the price of isolation.
One of these is Burma, ruled by a regime that has put
hundreds of elected MPs in prison and hundreds of
thousands of its people into refugee camps.
As I speak, there is a service of commemoration for
Michael Aris, the husband of Aung San Suu Kyi. When
Michael knew he was dying of cancer, we asked the
Government of Burma to give him a visa so that he could
say goodbye to his wife. They refused.
They could not make even a simple act of human
compassion to a dying man.
It is because of their behaviour that this Government has
stopped all support for trade with Burma and
discouraged any tourism to Burma.
Some people say that human rights in other countries is
none of our business. We can have democracy and civil
liberty for ourselves, but can turn a blind eye to how
other governments behave and a deaf ear to the cries for
help of their people.
I find it offensive that the same people should insist on
democracy and freedom for Europeans, but insist that
we should do nothing to defend the same rights of the
peoples of Asia, or Africa.
Every delegate can be proud that last week's report from
Amnesty concludes that your government "has made a
genuine and active commitment to human rights".
Let's put a myth to rest.
Your government has not sold weapons that would
suppress democracy or freedom.
We rejected every licence to Indonesia when the
weapons might have been used for suppression. We
refused them sniper rifles, we refused them silenced
firearms, and we refused them armoured Land Rovers.
I see the Daily Mail has discovered a principled
opposition to the arms trade.
What a pity they didn't discover it when the Conservative
Government they supported was burying Indonesia under
arms.
I am content to be judged by the people of East Timor.
Xanana Gusmao has led their independence movement
for the past twenty years, half of them from a prison in
Jakarta.
He has sent us this message.
Video message from Xanana Gusmao:
It is a great honour for me to send my good wishes to
the Labour Party for your Centenary Conference. For one
quarter of those hundred years, my country has been
occupied. Today I wait on the other side of the world
from you ready to return to an independent East Timor.
These have been difficult weeks for us. The people of
East Timor have suffered appalling atrocities at the
hands of the militias backed by the Indonesian military.
They have seen friends and families killed and their
homes destroyed. But what the militias have not
destroyed is our desire to live as an independent people
under a government of our choice.
For many years the Labour Party has given us support
and strength. Since you have been in Government, you
have stood by us and you have played a key part to
secure independence for East Timor. You have
supported us in the United Nations and worked hard to
turn the promise of a referendum into a reality. And when
violence followed our vote for freedom, you played a vital
role in building international support behind our cause.
On a personal note, I would also like to express once
more my gratitude for the speed with which the UK
Government responded to the need for security of myself
and my team in Jakarta making available your Embassy
to us. The hospitality of your Ambassador Robin
Christopher and his staff was out of the ordinary.
I will miss Derek Fatchett who visited me regularly when
I was under house arrest and who was the first British
Minister to visit East Timor only weeks before he died
this year. His death is a loss to us all.
As you celebrate the first one hundred years of your
Party's history, you can be proud of the role that you
have played in East Timor. You have shown that you are
prepared to take bold steps for what you believe. In a
hundred years time we will celebrate the first centenary
of an independent East Timor, and you will celebrate
your second century. I am confident that with the clear
leadership you have shown, you will be as proud of your
second hundred years as you can be of your first.
Xanana Gusmao was a civil servant in East Timor before
its occupation by Indonesia in 1975. Following the
invasion he became leader of the East Timor resistance
movement and Commander of FALANTIL - the national
liberation armed forces of East Timor.
He was captured in 1992 by the Indonesian army and
given a life sentence. It is believed that he received
psychological ill treatment during his trial.
Xanana has become a symbol of East Timor's struggle
for freedom and a key figure in the search for a political
solution.
I promised the people of East Timor that we would not
allow their cry for freedom to be drowned in blood.
We are delivering on that promise. Our troops were
among the first ashore.
No other nation has a higher proportion of its armed
forces active on peace-keeping duties around the globe.
That is a measure of our internationalism. For a hundred
years, Labour has been the Party of internationalism.
It was members of the Labour Movement who first
opposed the rise of fascism and fought it in Spain.
It was the Labour Party that campaigned to end
colonialism and under Atlee replaced an Empire with a
Commonwealth.
And it was the Labour Party that opposed Apartheid. It
was the Conservative Party that opposed the sanctions
that brought down Apartheid.
Peter Hain used to sit on the pavement outside the
South African Embassy leading protests. Today he goes
into it as Minister for Africa for a Labour Party that is
welcome because of our long support for their struggle
for freedom in South Africa.
We have a good record. It proves that Labour is in touch
with the outside world and was right on the big questions
of the century that has past.
The real political divide in the next century will be
between internationalists and isolationists.
The isolationists in the Tory Party see every new
partnership with foreigners as a threat.
As internationalists, we do not find working with
foreigners unpatriotic.
Labour wants Britain to be part of the modern world, not
a prisoner of its past.
We recognise globalisation demands a New
Internationalism.
And our internationalism recognises that we cannot
deliver our domestic programme working alone in the
world.
Our internationalism recognises that the boundaries of
national interest have shifted.
As Kofi Annan said to the United Nations 'in the global
era, the collective interest is the national interest'.
Our internationalism recognises that rights belong to the
people not to their governments.
We ignored Milosevic when he tried to tell us that
atrocities were an internal matter. Gross breaches of
humanitarian law are the business of all humanity.
Vetan Surroi began by telling us what it was like to be
liberated from oppression.
The campaign we fought in Kosovo was not fought to
gain us territory or to bring us greater power.
What prompted us to intervene, what motivated us to
maintain the resolve of the alliance, was our values
-freedom, justice, compassion - basic human decency.
Those are the values that gained Labour the support of
the British people. And those are the values that are
gaining Britain under Labour new respect around the
world.