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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well the Syrian conflict will be high on the agenda at this week’s G8 meeting. David Cameron will try to convince world leaders to do more to help the Syrian opposition. We’re already providing so-called ‘non-lethal assistance’ but should Britain step it up and actually arm the rebels? Let’s say a very good morning to Paddy Ashdown. Paddy, a very blunt question I suppose, should we get more deeply involved in Syria?

PADDY ASHDOWN: Good morning Dermot. If we do exceedingly carefully – and I don’t know what the Americans have planned, it may be that they are talking about some kind of humanitarian protection zone, some kind of corridor, anything humanitarian carries great risks because humanitarian areas become refuges which the guerrillas, the opposition, the rebels, can use for military purposes but that I think is certainly worth considering. Supplying arms? No, and I’ll give you four clear reasons for that. First of all, they are not short of arms, they have had 3,000 tons of arms – by the way most of them have come from the underground factories in Bosnia that I remember from when I was there and were illegally smuggled by the CIA, the Saudi Arabians and the Qataris – 3000 tons, that’s a lot of small arms. Secondly, because I don’t think the rebels are fit and proper groups to be receiving arms. They are not together, we don’t know who they are, we don’t know how weapons pass from one group to another. Thirdly, because I have never known a case in history where providing arms has produced peace, it is usually exactly the opposite and lastly and crucially, and this is the point I have trying to make with others for about a year now, this is not about Syria. We think Syria is the issue, it’s not, it’s the front line of a much, much wider struggle and that struggle by the way is funded by the same Saudi businessmen who funded Osama Bin Laden when we armed him to oppose the Russians, funded by the Qataris, to let the Wahhabis and the Salafis take over the Sunni community as a preparation to a wider war against the Shia, a regional conflict. The issue now is not tackling the great Satan of the West, it is preparing for a war against the great heretic in Teheran and the difficulty in this is this, that we are now being inadvertently and stupidly in my view, instrumentalised into supporting the Sunnis on the one hand whereas the Russians, the same thing is happening in their own republics like Dagestan and Chechnya, are being instrumentalised into supporting the Shia. I don’t believe it is sensible for us to be contributing to that process. If you want to take action, diplomatic action, which is what we should be taking and America should be taking, is to stop the Saudis arming what is basically an extremist movement in Syria and beginning to see if we can close down this wider conflict which is affecting Syria, which is affecting the Russian Muslims, which is affecting Lebanon, which is affecting Egypt, which is affecting Libya, which is affecting Tunisia and is the same conflict in Mali. That’s the big danger, not Syria.

DM: But could the threat of providing arms and more aid to the rebels, could that threat be part of the diplomacy in trying to force Assad to negotiate?

PADDY ASHDOWN: It could but I think it’s extremely contentious. One of the lessons I learnt very clearly from diplomacy in the Bosnian conflict is that you never make a threat you are not going to fulfil. If it is the case that these talks don’t come to a successful conclusion, and I think that is nine-tenths likely, you have got to make the effort, it is important that we do but nine-tenths likely, then you have to see if you are going to apply your threat and the moment that you don’t, no other threat that you ever make will ever be believed again so I think it is a very, very short term policy that. Look, anything we can do to help the rebels here short of arming them, which I think will deepen the consequence, I think we should do but arming them, getting more militarily involved in this conflict, I think I have to say at this point, until we see something different, is an act of very considerable folly in my view which could lead to exactly the opposite. Dermot, the law of unintended consequences in the Middle East, in Western policy toward the Middle East, is the law that always comes back to haunt us. We armed Osama Bin Laden because he was the enemy of our enemy and then we discovered he was our most potent enemy at the end, using our arms. We invaded Iraq to solve the problem of Saddam Hussein, all we’ve done is move the borders of Iran 400 miles to the west and I think we should just be aware that … I feel desperately for these poor innocent people but when intervention is likely to cause a consequence which makes matters worse, even if your heart is bleeding, you still shouldn’t do it.

DM: Well if the Prime Minister decides to do it, what’s your view on Parliamentary oversight? Should the issues be debated? He says it will be but it is still unclear then as to whether there would be a binding vote upon it.

PADDY ASHDOWN: Well look, governments take the responsibility of going to war, Dermot, nobody else does. They are responsible to Parliament and it is right that they should take these debates to Parliament. Tony Blair was the first to start it in the Iraq War and he was correct to do so, the Prime Minister has done it in Libya, he has made a clear commitment here he will do it again. He should be listening to Parliament but ultimately the government takes the decisions, not Parliament, and the government is then responsible to Parliament. I cannot imagine a circumstance however – that is a technical parliamentary position, I cannot imagine the circumstances in which a British Prime Minster, wanting to take his nation to war, even though he might have the absolute right to do so in the face of a Parliamentary opposing vote, I just don’t believe it would happen. So in practical terms although constitutionally Parliament doesn’t have the decision, in practical terms I don't think a Prime Minister would take his nation to war against the opinion of Parliament.

DM: Do we also have to take into consideration, Paddy, of course the cuts that are going on? The defence department very much in the cross hairs, so to speak. If we want to have further international commitments don’t we have to have the resources necessary to carry them out?

PADDY ASHDOWN: I really don’t think this is … Look, army general argues some more resources for the army – that’s not entirely new, Dermot. Defence Secretary uses international crisis to stoke up the arguments for more money for his department – hardly new. This is pretty normal stuff in these circumstances. Two points to make, one is I don’t believe there is a case that will be at all foreseeable that we would actually be using our troops or our armed forces, with the possible exception of a no fly zone, in Syria and I think a no fly zone would be very difficult as well, remember Russia is deeply engaged on the other side. The second point I think is this, no one is arguing – or at least I hope they’re not, not the Defence Secretary and not army generals either – that when the rest of our budgets are being cut, our schools, our hospitals, our welfare, our education, the army can escape that. The real danger of this, the mistake is not made in the fact that the army has to participate in the cuts, the real danger was made, in my view this government’s biggest mistake, was the disaster of the strategic defence review which arrived straight after the last election and that’s left us with an armed services which all right is operating at a lower level of financial resource, but is terribly unbalanced. So we have an aircraft carrier but no aircraft to fly off it, we have too many horses and not enough tanks, it is the unbalanced nature of our armed forces today, far more than the cuts, which leads me to doubt whether or not we have an armed forces fit for purpose in the modern age.

DM: Okay, Paddy Ashdown, thank you very much indeed.