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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well there is stalemate today in international attempts to stop President Assad killing his own people after Russia and China vetoed a UN resolution calling for him to step aside. This morning the Tunisian Prime Minister has called on Arab countries to expel their Syrian ambassadors. In a moment I’ll be speaking to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, but just to alert you to our Twitter commentators today, they are Paul Waugh, editor of Politics Home, the Sunday Mirror’s political editor Vincent Moss and Kevin Schofield, political correspondent of the Sun, they provide their reactions via Twitter. You can read those on the side panels and you can read them on the website, skynews.com/politics and please join in, we encourage you, using the hashtag #murnaghan. Well let’s say a very good morning to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who joins me from his official country residence of Chevening. Well Foreign Secretary, can you endorse the words of the US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, that those that blocked this UN resolution will have any future blood spill on their hands?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Yes, I do agree with that. I think increasingly, given what happened yesterday, Russia and China will be held responsible for this continuing appalling situation. They didn’t cause this situation but they are standing in the way of the United Nations Security Council taking a clear position, backing a very good plan for the way forward by the Arab League. I think it’s a great mistake actually on the part of Russia and China to have done this, I think it will have consequences for their influence in the Middle East, they are turning their backs on the Arab world and it will make more likely what they say they don’t want and that is continued violence and instability in Syria, so we will keep up the pressure at the UN, there are various things that we can do going forward that you no doubt want to discuss but one thing we will do is we will be coming back to this at the United Nations in whatever form. There were 13 of the 15 members of the Security Council that voted for this resolution yesterday compared to 10 the last time we put forward a resolution so Russia and China are now very, very isolated in the indefensible position they have taken up.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well indeed, I do want to discuss how you move forward after this but how about building bridges with Russia, if that’s what you want to do? We’ve heard from the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia today saying that they feel there was no attempt to build consensus and the sticking point being that their interpretation was that you were looking for regime change in Syria.

WILLIAM HAGUE: Yes, well that is not at all an accurate representation of what happened. Huge efforts were made to build consensus including by me and by Hillary Clinton and others who went to the Security Council in New York on Tuesday and indeed we amended the resolution in many ways to make it easier for Russia and China to support it but the fact that India, Pakistan, South Africa, countries that also had misgivings to begin with, voted for the resolution in the end shows how hard we worked to build a consensus but in the end the Russians were insistent they needed us not to say that the security forces of the Assad regime should be pulled back from towns and cities where violence is taking place. Now this is something that the Assad regime told the Arab League some weeks ago it was ready to do anyway so there shouldn’t have been a problem having that in the resolution. Nevertheless, of course we will continue to work with Russia and China on this, we want them to change their position and the Russian Foreign Minister is due to visit Syria this week, we will want to discuss with him what he thinks after he has been on that visit, about this dreadful situation in which hundreds of people this very weekend have been killed.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Without a UN resolution though, of course as you alluded to, there are other ways of building the pressure on Syria. We’ve had the Tunisian Prime Minister suggesting expelling Syrian Ambassadors from Arab League countries, is that something Britain is thinking about in the UK?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well we constantly review all our diplomatic options but if we have any announcement to make about that, I would make it to Parliament. We haven’t taken any decisions to sever our diplomatic links at the moment but the Arab League of course is playing a very strong role, that’s what the Tunisians are talking about, what the Arabs can do further and this is really the main way forward now, is for the Arab League to pursue their plan in any case, they don’t need the permission of the United Nations to do that although it would have been good to have had a clear mandate from the United Nations. They should pursue their plan, they should intensify their own pressure on the Assad regime to stop the killing and allow a peaceful political transition and the Arab League foreign ministers are meeting in a few days’ time, we will be having discussions with some of them before that and we will encourage them very much to intensify their own pressure on the Assad regime.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But on this issue of diplomatic relations, Britain has been in lock step with the Arab League, has co-operated very closely over Libya and of course on Syria in taking the resolution proposal to the United Nations, if they think it’s a good idea to expel Ambassadors, to cut diplomatic relations, is that something that Britain will consider as well, to stay closely allied to the Arab League’s position?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well in general, yes, we’re working very closely together and so any decision by them to do that would weigh very heavily with us. We’ve already for obvious reasons of the safety and security of our own staff, we’ve reduced our Embassy operations in Damascus to the absolute minimum consistent with keeping an embassy open. I think people will readily understand there are advantages in having an embassy open in terms of being able to interpret what’s happening in the country and get information about what’s happening in the country but we will work very closely – and I think this is another thing that will now happen after the events yesterday at the Security Council, that the Arab nations and Western nations who worked very closely together on this draft UN resolution, will continue working very closely together on the diplomatic and economic steps that we can take over the coming days in relation to Syria.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Do you think that President Assad has been emboldened by what happened in New York, taking into account what we are hearing from Homs and other places? Susan Rice also said that this may well have been the last effort to resolve the situation peacefully.

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well it’s not the last effort, I think it’s important to stress that, it’s not the last effort. The Arab League can continue their work as I’ve described and we will return when we can to the United Nations in whatever form, in whatever forum, with our allies to this subject but will he have been emboldened by the fact that Russia and China vetoed the resolution? Yes, I think so and I think that it comes back to your original question and I think it does mean that Russia and China do bear increasingly, as these events continue, increased responsibility for what is happening. They will have to face up to that responsibility and that means in the Middle East and in the Arab world there will be a great deal of anger with the position that Russia and China have taken.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But without a resolution, are things a notch closer to all-out civil war?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well it’s heading more in that direction in Syria. Because the regime is so intransigent, because they have now conducted ten months of unmitigated violence and repression with, as far as we know, 6000 and more people killed and 12 or 14,000 in detention subject to every kind of torture and abuse, well that is driving some of their opponents to violent action themselves and yes, that is tipping parts of Syria, some of the towns and cities of Syria, closer to something that begins to look like a civil war. Now this just underlines the need for a political transition, in our view for Assad to go, in the plan of the Arab League for Assad to hand over negotiations to his Deputy, to have an inclusive political negotiation between all groups and to form a Unity Government. Now that’s a sensible way forward but in the absence of that, I think the violence will only grow. This is a doomed regime as well as a murdering regime, there is no way it can get its credibility back internationally or with its own people and when you realise that you see what a mistake Russia is making by backing this regime to the very end.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But even with a United Nations resolution and given the deteriorating situation as we all know and as you have been describing there, you still rule out any form of external military intervention?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Yes, we’re not contemplating military intervention, I do want to stress that. The resolution we put forward yesterday at the UN was not about regime change and not about military intervention. It is probably useful to explain why this is different from Libya although there are so many similarities of course, so there’s a regime waging war on their own people, it’s morally unacceptable and indefensible but no two situations are exactly alike. In Libya we had the authority of the United Nations to take all necessary measures and it’s very clear from this weekend’s events that if we can’t at the moment even pass the resolution we wanted to pass yesterday, we certainly couldn’t pass a resolution authorising any military action of any kind, so it would not be legal to take such action. Secondly, in any case the consequences of such action would be far more difficult to foresee in Syria than they were in the relatively straightforward case of Libya. What happens is that Syria has a major effect on Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Israel and so it is a very difficult part of the world in which to take any military action and thirdly, any such action would have to be on a dramatically bigger scale than it was in Libya in order to be effective. So for all those reasons we are not able to do the same thing that we did in Libya, we will pursue diplomatically, economically, with a broadening coalition of nations, the measures that put more and more pressure on the Assad regime and we will return to this with Russia and China as well.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: In terms of the effect in that region, you left Iran off that list and I know we talked about the Russian Foreign Minister going to Damascus, we also understand of course don’t we that there is a senior commander from the Revolutionary Guards of Iran there advising the Syrians. They are big players in all of this.

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well that’s absolutely right, yes, and you can very well add Iran to the list of countries I was talking about in a different sense, which is they are from everything we can see actively supporting this tyrannical regime in Syria, it is very hypocritical behaviour by Iran. They spoke out in favour of revolution in Egypt and Tunisia but they are against it in Syria and they do give practical assistance, we believe they have provided equipment as well as advice to the Syrian forces on techniques of repression. They certainly give strong diplomatic support to the Syrian regime and so yes, this is also part of a very complex picture and it is one regime whose international behaviour has been unacceptable supporting another one whose domestic behaviour is unacceptable.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Foreign Secretary, can I just ask you about another region which no doubt you are keeping a close eye on developments in the South Atlantic and the issue of the Falklands. The 30^th anniversary of course of the military campaign to reclaim those islands from Argentina, do the Argentinians have a point at the moment that Britain seems to be being pretty provocative about this, sending a warship there, we understand a nuclear submarine, the heir, the second in line to the throne and of course big celebrations planned for that 30^th anniversary?

WILLIAM HAGUE: Well they’re not so much celebrations as commemorations. I think Argentina will also be holding commemorations of those who died in the conflict and of course we will do that ourselves and since both countries will be doing that, I don't think there’s anything provocative about that. Nor is there anything provocative about entirely routine military movements and they are entirely routine. Of course our ships regularly visit the South Atlantic, we don’t comment on, we don’t normally make any comments on the deployment of our submarines but our naval vessels regularly visit the South Atlantic, Prince William is also on a routine deployment that is part of his job. We will resist the diplomatic efforts of Argentina to raise the temperature on this. When I was in the Caribbean a couple of weeks ago, the Caribbean nations agreed to support the self-determination of the Falkland Islanders which is what we believe in, in their democratic and political rights, and we will put the case for that around the world, including to Latin American and Caribbean nations, whenever we get the opportunity.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Foreign Secretary, thank you very much. William Hague.

WILLIAM HAGUE: Thank you.