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