Page 1 of 21 ANY QUESTIONS? TX: 26/11/04 2000-2045 PRESENTER: Jonathan Dimbleby PANELLISTS: Tim Collins Charles Moore Liz Lynne Denis Macshane FROM: St John's School for the Deaf, Boston Spa DIMBLEBY: Welcome to West Yorkshire and the town of Boston Spa and more especially the St John's School for the Deaf, which has an international reputation for developing to the full the potential of profoundly deaf children aged from 3 to 19. The school's unique approach seek to harness linguistic, academic and spiritual growth, which it does indeed to such effect that it's been rewarded with beacon status and in the new pilot work on the performance tables emerges at the very top of the national league. On our panel: Denis MacShane was once a BBC sports journalist, then the boss of the National Union of Journalists, now he's the foreign officer minister at the heart of the controversy over the English cricket team's tour of Zimbabwe, as well as being the government's Europe minister. Tim Collins was once director of communications for the Conservative Party. Then a member of the Number 10 policy unit, for which services he was rewarded with a CBE. He entered parliament in 1997 and as a close ally of Michael Howard he was summoned to the shadow cabinet in last summer's reshuffle to speak for his party on education. Liz Lynne was re-elected in June to represent the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament. She's a member of the employment and social affairs committee and vice president of the what the Parliament is pleased to call its disability inter group. Charles Moore is renowned as a writer and columnist and not least on the Daily Telegraph, the paper that he edited from 1995 until last year when he resigned to work on the authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher. From the standpoint of the present leadership of the Conservative Party however he described Michael Howard as "fearless" in relation to Iraq "he may be thought to belong to the idiosyncratic wing for the movement. He's the fourth member of our panel. [CLAPPING] Our first question please. Page 2 of 21 BUTTERWICK John Butterwick. How should the EU become involved in the precarious situation in the Ukraine? DIMBLEBY Tim Collins. COLLINS Well I think it's to be welcomed that there is for once almost unanimity in the Western world on this. We've heard declarations both from the British Foreign Secretary, from the European Union, from the US Secretary of State that the election results in the Ukraine cannot be allowed to stand as they are because the evidence that we have heard from the international observers, again from the European Union, and also from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe is emphatic that the election was deeply unsatisfactory. And Bruce George, who's a Labour MP, a man of immense experience in monitoring elections around the world, has talked of invisible ink being used on ballot papers, used in some opposition areas, he's talked of acid being thrown at ballot boxes in order to destroy some of those ballot papers. I think there's no doubt there needs to be collective international intervention to support a democratic outcome, a peaceful outcome, hopefully a negotiated outcome but we do need to bind the Ukraine in if that's what their people want but - I think that is what the majority of the people want - bind them in to the international community of the West. And remember the Ukraine is absolutely crucial to Europe's future, it is the place where the Second World War was decided. DIMBLEBY Thank you. Liz Lynne. LYNNE [CLAPPING] I believe the European Union has a very strong role to play in this and I'm very pleased that Javier Solana, the high representative for the European Union, is there at the moment helping to facilitate talks between the two challengers. I certainly hope that something's going to happen, that there is going to be a compromise somehow because if the news reports are right and there are troops moving in then the possibility of civil war in Ukraine would be horrendous. So we've got to find some solution. I think Javier Solana does a very good job in this sort of role. He's a very honest man. He is very open about what he wants to achieve and if he could achieve a solution I'm sure he is the one person in the EU that people really will trust. I know as well the Polish president is having a role, the Lithuanian president has tried to take a role in this as well and I congratulate all of them. And it is very important for all of us in the European Union and the world that this is got right for the sake of peace and stability in that region. DIMBLEBY Charles Moore. MOORE Well Liz says that Javier Solana is an honest man but I did hear an extraordinary thing this week when he said first of all that he had met members of the Hamas terrorist organisation secretly and then he said he hadn't. One of those answers must have Page 3 of 21 been wrong. I'm very glad that he is doing what he's doing in the Ukraine, I think that is a good use of a representative of the European Union and I think meeting representatives of Hamas is an extremely bad use of the European Union. The European Union or Europe, free Europe, does represent a beacon for people in the Ukraine who've voted and whose vote has been denied and it's extremely good that all of us from that side of Europe should be there trying to make sure that the real result is sustained and I think that that's what they're trying to do. I think the biggest danger here, it seems to me, is the influence of Russia and we have tended to think that Russia is alright now because Communism's over but of course President Putin was in the KGB, he retains that type of organisation and those type of methods. He tried to influence this result very strongly and I think we're going to find that more and more in the coming months and years that Putin's Russia is not a very happy nation to deal with. [CLAPPING] DIMBLEBY … made of the fact that the Ukraine and the war were linked, can you see this historically as conceivably having the same trigger effect in terms of conflict that Ukraine had in the past? MOORE Well I think … DIMBLEBY If - if you're right, if President Putin is as strongly committed to Ukraine remaining within his orbit as we hear … MOORE Well I hope not as much as in the past but yes I mean the Soviet Union dissolved under that name but its sense of its interests didn't. And the Russian influence over that part of the world remains and what President Putin is trying to do is to re- establish satellites who essentially support him in Ukraine and other surrounding states. This is a dangerous enterprise. DIMBLEBY Minister. MACSHANE I think what's happening in Ukraine is very, very important. The question was what is the EU doing? Well the EU there is present - Javier Solana - President Kwasniewski, speaking for all of us because imagine if we were 25 different responses to the Ukraine what a cacophony of uselessness that would be. And it's a paradox isn't it that while the Ukrainians by their hundreds of thousands are demonstrating saying they want into Europe, there are a lot of political forces here - I won't mention any parties - that want us out of Europe or detached from Europe. But I've been there, I've talked to a lot of the actors involved, I think they're serious on both sides, I don't think we should get into a simple one side is good, one side is bad argument. I think we're seeing another witness to democracy in Europe which is quite extraordinary. Fifteen years ago exactly, the November months of 1989 we had the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was in Prague last week to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, 24 years ago I personally was in Poland with Solidarity as workers and the Poles there Page 4 of 21 stood up against Communist tyranny without really enough support from the West. I think our hearts are with every Ukrainian saying we want to decide our own president by our own means, we have to do it politically, we have to do it peacefully. And I have to say Charles, if you do it on the basis of a Cold War mentality - hostility to Russia - that's a way to make things worse. We want Ukraine to be Ukraine, we want Ukraine close to Europe and I want Britain to be a partner in that process and the European Union working for peace, stability and democracy. DIMBLEBY Okay, that's a general perspective, let me [CLAPPING] let me ask you some particular questions on this. We know that Kuchma and Yanukovych we're told have been meeting together, what way through is there if both are claiming victory, one allegedly with 49%, one allegedly with 46% and the outsiders saying this was a rigged vote, what way out is there? MACSHANE President Kuchma is the retiring president, you mean Mr Yushchenko.