CONSERVATIVE
New Forest East

FOREIGN POLICY – SIERRA LEONE - 18 May 1998

FOREIGN POLICY – SIERRA LEONE - 18 May 1998

Dr Julian Lewis: The hon. Gentleman [David Winnick] is taking a tremendously long time to tell us what we know already; perhaps he will tell us one or two things that we do not know. Is he saying that it was right and a good thing for that vicious regime to be overthrown by force? I think he is, and, if so, must he not condemn his Government for having drafted and signed up to a UN Security Council resolution that, in his own admission, made it most unlikely that the regime could be overthrown by force?

The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways: either it was right for the regime to be overthrown by force, in which case the Government were wrong to sign up to the resolution, or it was wrong for the regime to be overthrown by force, in which case the Government were right to sign up to the resolution.