12.30 pm: In the bleak Committee Room W3, adjoining the late medieval splendour of Westminster Hall. Listened to the British Ambassador to the Republic of Moldova at an All Party Group. Asked him about the million or so Moldovans who are obliged to seek work outside their country.
1.00 pm: At a larger public meeting in Parliament. Listened to a Palestinian journalist who is also an Israeli citizen. He thought that conflict-management is about the only possible thing, in the present stalemate between Israel and Palestine. I concluded that Western policy towards this conflict has been a terrible failure ever since the Oslo Agreement of 1993.
3.30: Listened with others interested in Northern Ireland to Paul Goggins MP, the NIO Minister. He explained the current situation and I asked about prisoners in Northern Ireland and the large numbers of fine defaulters who spend just a few days in prison. Also about their management problems. Got quite positive answers.
4.30 pm: Small tea party in the Lords Dining Room for members and their friends of the Democratic Society Party of Turkey. This has 21 members in the Parliament, speaking for the large Kurdish national minority. Although they work in a fully constitutional way they are accused of links to a terrorist group and threatened with closure and exclusion from public life. If the constitutional Court rules to disband the party I believe that political violence may increase and there will be delays to urgent reforms and harm to Turkey’s application for EU membership.
Noble Lord Hylton,
If we understood the Pashtun ‘arf as well as we think we understand the Kurds, the world would be a much finer place, don’t you think?
I was in the same 1pm meeting, and one of the messages I took away was that the best thing Western politicians could do to help the Palestinian situation is simply to “shut up”.
Unsurprisingly, silence is a trait that is rare within the political classes.
Sounds like a bleak afternoon, where the only solutions that were definite was tea.
Four hours, which I can imagine to a man of conscience, must appear tortuous !
LH: You make it sound as though Turkey needs the EU. Ordinary people in Turkey see it quite the other way around, in that the EU needs Turkey. Turkey also prizes and cherishes its secular state and for obvious reasons so does Israel.