‘Wholly wrong’ to appease ‘murderous regime’ of Saudia Arabia in order to resist Russia says Adam Price
Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price MS has called for Welsh Government to speak out ahead of a reported visit by the UK Prime Minister to Saudi Arabia.
The visit by Boris Johnson is reported to be part of plans to convince the regime to boost oil production.
Speaking in Questions to the First Minister today, Adam Price warned that “the Saudi Government will no doubt seek assurances that their policy in Yemen for the last eight years, of bombing innocent civilians, will not be obstructed by the UK.”
“Do you agree, First Minister, it would be wholly wrong for the Prime Minister to seek to appease one dictatorship fuelled by dirty money in order to resist another?” he asked.
“This question has a particular resonance in this Senedd at the heart of Tiger bay, home to a fifth-generation Welsh-Yemeni community.”
Mark Drakeford said he agreed that the answer was not “swapping dependence upon one volatile regime for dependence on another of the same sort”.
“The solution to energy security in the United Kingdom is to have a really rapid and dedicated focus on the development of renewable energy, in which we are so rich,” he said.
“That would mean that we would not need to see the Prime Minister getting on a plane to Riyadh, because we would have created sufficient energy from our own resources to be dependent neither upon the regime in Russia nor unsavoury regimes in other parts of the world.”
‘Brutality’
Opposition parties have criticised Prime Minister’s planned visit to Saudi Arabia after the execution of 81 people last weekend.
But Boris Johnson has defended the trip, saying that he was building opposition against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
“I think what the world is seeing is the return in Ukraine to the kind of brutality, the kind of absolutely indiscriminate bombing of civilian centres, of great cities that we last saw in the European continent 80 years ago, this is quite unbelievable what is happening now in our continent,” he said.
“We need to make sure that we build the strongest, widest possible coalition to ensure that Vladimir Putin does not succeed, that we wean ourselves off Russian hydrocarbons and that is what the UK is helping to do.”
Meanwhile, former prime minister Tony Blair intervened in the debate on the Ukraine war on Tuesday to call on Nato to stop ruling out getting involved in the war.
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Da iawn Adam! Nawr, trais Tseina yn erbyn pobl Dwyrain Turkestan ac Inner Mongolia a Tibet, Iran yn gyffrefinol, Gogledd Corea (obvs), y sefyllfa erchyll yng Nghamerwn, targetio newyddiadurwyr yn Nhwrci a Venezuela, record India gyda thrais yn erbyn menywod, statws bobl hoyw yn Jamaica a Uganda.
Un peth gallwch dweud yn sicr am Adam Price, nid yw y dyn yn cyfeiliorni o’i egwyddorion. Er nad wyn cytuno a phob agwedd o’i eidioleg gwleidyddol, dyn da yw e.
Sucking up, or cosying up, to dodgy nations and their even dodgier citizens is the default behaviour of the UK regime. The sale of a wide range of offensive armaments, not defence weapons by any stretch of the imagination, to Saudi to flatten Yemen indiscriminately should rank as a war crime on a par with what Russia does in Ukraine. There is absolutely no merit in either, no moral foundation whatsoever.
Wholly distasteful – yes. But we need to recognize that Europe and America can no longer call the shots internationally without the support of one “murderous regime” or another. We are therefore going to have to make some pragmatic and deeply distasteful decisions …
We have done it in the past (allying with Tsarist Russia in WW1 and with Stalin in WW2), and we sadly have to do the same again now in the interests of maintaining peace and security as best we can.