Foreign Secretary Cook turns up the heat

Foreign Secretary Cook turns up the heat

In his first interview since the break-up of his marriage
became public, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook talks to
Patrick Wintour in London about Bosnia's war criminals, arms
sales to Indonesia, climate change and Scottish devolution.

LONDON: As he shows off another gloriously politically
incorrect mural outside his vast room in the Foreign Office,
there is just the slightest sense that the wind has been taken
from Robin Cook's sails.

In the mural, portraying Britannia's pre-eminent role in the
formation of the League of Nations, the place of Africa is taken
by a small black servant offering fruit to the great powers. Cook
acidly observes that the work, ironically undertaken by an artist
from vanquished Germany, can hardly be whitewashed off the walls.

The ending of his marriage must have taken its toll on the
Foreign Secretary. And this, the first interview since the break-
up became public, is an opportunity to relaunch himself on to the
public stage.

There is no sign Cook has lost his zest for reform. He has
already given the Foreign Office's notoriously stuffy staff a
mission statement emphasizing human rights and the environment.
Now he wants to throw open the magnificently opulent building to
the public. There will be a weekend open day, so the public can
wander through the gilt-adorned state rooms designed to impress
visiting potentates.

But Cook does not just want to show off the splendor, he also
plans to open up the doors to several hundred schoolchildren on
Sept. 19 so they can spend a working day with staff and talking
to the High Commissioner in Singapore on a video link.

The intention, he explains, is to show those who might not
have thought about the Foreign Office as a career a chance to
realize that it is a down-to-earth, modern institution. "I hope
some of them will end up working here and the Foreign Office
staff will come to be more representative of the country."

Cook found that the previous administration had offered just
eight work experience places to students in 1996 and only one was
not from an independent or grant-maintained school.

He concedes that his last big announcement before the end of
the last Parliament -- his package on the control of arms exports
-- had received "disappointing comment in the media", but says
the criticism had been based on misunderstanding, particularly
over the government's decision to go ahead with the sale of 16
Hawk fighter jets to Indonesia, despite its human rights record
in East Timor.

"The policy we announced on the future granting of export
licenses applied to decisions to be made by this government, in
effect from May 1. In opposition we were always quite clear that
the policy would apply to licenses that we would grant. We can
not backdate those criteria."

He was puzzled by stories suggesting his government learnt
late in the day that the licenses had already been granted. "It
was always clear to me that those licenses had already been
granted for the Hawk jets."

Britain now corners 25 percent of the defense export market,
up from 11 percent in 1988, but Cook insists his new criteria
will bite. "They are explicit and extensive, and tougher than the
previous government. They set out in very great detail the
circumstances and types of weapons we will allow to be exported,
and we made it clear we would not supply weapons that could be
used for internal repression, taking into account the nature of
the regime."

He added: "The extent to which we have provided for a
responsible regulation of the arms trade is recognized elsewhere.
I was very encouraged by the decision of the French parliament to
urge their government to adopt the criteria and polices I have
set out. It is an immense step forward."

Cook also defended his policy on Bosnia, and the slow progress
in indicting Bosnian war criminals and taking them to The Hague
to stand trial. Cook, claiming the strong relationship between
the U.S. and Britain has so far worked to best effect in foreign
policy in Bosnia, said the two governments were putting "double
pressure" on Bosnian Serbs to respect the Dayton principles to
hand over indicted war criminals, including Serb leader Radovan
Karadzic.

"Right back from our period in opposition, I have said and
insisted there will be no solution in Bosnia unless those
responsible for the atrocities of war are brought to justice. How
can victims of these atrocities and their relatives possibly be
put together and reconciled and co-exist with other communities
when they know those responsible for the atrocities are still at
large?

"Karadzic must be required to stand trial. It is vital that
the most senior figure that has been indicted does not escape the
net. Personally, I am increasingly confident that Karadzic will
some day stand trial. How it will happen and in what
circumstances it's impossible to say."

He also threw out an intriguing idea. On his visit to Bosnia
at the end of July he met Momkilo Krajisnik, nominally leader of
the Bosnian Serbs, but a close associate of Karadzic. He came
away with the impression that Krajisnik's credibility was being
destroyed by Karadzic's continued freedom. Cook revealed that
Krajisnik spent a large part of the meeting trying to suggest
ways in which Karadzic could be put on trial without going to The
Hague, possibly via a video link.

"That is obviously not on. But personally I would not rule out
accepting the International Tribunal going to Bosnia and carrying
out some of the trials in Bosnia. After all, the Nuremberg trials
took place in Germany not in another country.

"If the court did go to Bosnia, it would have to have total
control of its own environment and be confident of the security
of its witnesses. But there is no obvious reason for the tribunal
to meet in The Hague."

He dismissed the suggestion that the West should allow
Karadzic to go into permanent exile in Russia: "I find that
deeply unattractive. First of all we have taken the decision that
war criminals should be brought to justice and it would be quite
wrong for the international community to abandon this goal as
soon as it became difficult.

"Second, we must not forget that Karadzic's offenses are not
simply of local domestic law. They are breaches of international
law. There should be no hiding place for anyone that has breached
the laws of the international community. Lastly, I cannot imagine
anything more likely to complicate our relationship with Russia."

Cook knows that some of the high hopes on climate change,
expressed on his appointment, have yet to be fulfilled. He says
that the British presence at the Earth 2 summit in New York was
sufficiently prestigious to lead one U.S. journalist to describe
the British as "campaign managers for the environment". His eyes
are now firmly set on the Kyoto conference on climate change at
the end of the year. It is hoped this will agree targets to
reduce carbon dioxide emissions. "At New York, we set the pace
and ruffled a few feathers, particularly among those countries
that have yet seriously to face up to their responsibilities to
control the emissions of carbon dioxide."

Cook denies that his peripatetic life is removing him from the
domestic scene. Tony Blair has accompanied him on most of his big
overseas trips, giving him more time with the Prime Minister than
most cabinet ministers, and Cook certainly has a strong grasp of
the debate on Scottish devolution. "To me the most striking
development in the past month has not been the headlines about
the Scottish party but the fact that the White Paper (the early
stages of an Act of Parliament) is a best seller in Scotland."

He also ridicules the notion that the recent scandals have
shown that Scottish Labor cannot produce candidates fit to run
this new layer of government. "It would be a grotesque insult to
a nation that has offered so much in terms of engineering,
science and the arts to the world to say that it cannot find 140
people capable of running their own country."

He is confident the mood for constitutional change will extend
to the Commons. A lot of work had been done on the Government's
Commission on Electoral Systems, and an announcement will be made
shortly. "We are still planning for a referendum before the next
election."

He denies that co-operation with the Liberal Democrats will
lead to an organic stitching together of the two parties. "We are
not in the business of gaining power for five years. We want to
stay in office to create a more open liberal era, and part of
that process is, in my view, a fairer electoral system. It would
also mean making sure that just as we came in on the swing of the
electoral pendulum, we do not go out on it."

There is just one area of policy Cook prefers not to pronounce
on. His marriage problems have seen to that. In the past he has
been a supporter of privacy laws -- now he admits that he can no
longer act as their most powerful advocate.

-- The Observer