Colne Valley MP welcomes the Uni’s Kurdistan students
Jason McCartney MP with University staff and Kurdistan students
Wed, 14 May 2014 15:47:00 BST
A member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan, Jason McCartney MP, meets the University’s Kurdistan students
COLNE Valley MP Jason McCartney (pictured right) – who served with the RAF in the Middle East – is a leading advocate for closer economic and cultural ties between the UK and the increasingly prosperous and stable region of Kurdistan. He believes that universities have a key role to play and on his latest visit to the University of Huddersfield he met some of its Kurdish students.
He told them about his first visit to Kurdistan in 1992, when he was an RAF officer with the task of helping to enforce the no-fly zone designed to protect the Kurds from aerial attack by the forces of the then Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein. At that time, a million Kurds had fled to the mountains in search of safety. Now the MP assured his student audience that the only planes in the skies above Kurdistan belonged to friendly forces.
When he became a Conservative MP in 2010, Mr McCartney was swift to sign up to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan. Last year, with members of the group, he returned to the region and he was delighted, he told the Huddersfield students, to discover how modern, vibrant and safe it had become.
“I am proud that you are here in this country, studying at the University of Huddersfield, where there is such a vibrant Kurdish community,” he told his audience. “You are a credit to where you come from.” He pledged that he would continue to work with Kurdish students in the UK and to foster close ties between the UK and their homeland.
Improving visas and direct flights
Mr McCartney recently led a debate in Westminster Hall on the topic of UK-Kurdistan relations. He told MPs that the region had made “a remarkable journey from genocide to prosperity” and urged ministers to be “bolder and more positive” in increasing levels of co-operation.
He described five ways to boost co-operation between Britain and the Kurds. They included an invitation for the Kurdistan Regional Government’s leaders to pay an official visit to the UK, with a reciprocal visit by the Foreign Secretary. He also urged the appointment of a UK trade envoy to Kurdistan, where there are great opportunities for British companies, claimed Mr McCartney.
He also seeks improvements in the visa system, partly to aid Kurds who wish to study in the UK. This was one of the topics developed by Mr McCartney during his meeting with Kurdish students at the University of Huddersfield.
He also discussed progress on another of his high priority issues – direct flights between the UK and Kurdistan. He told students that progress had been made over security concerns and flights could begin as soon as this autumn, with not only British Airways but also a cut-price airline interested in the new route. And a flight between Leeds-Bradford and Kurdistan’s Erbil airport could be a boost to the local economy, said Mr McCartney.
He discussed a range of political issues with the Huddersfield students and said that he hoped he would soon pay a return visit to their home region.
- Huddersfield was one of the first UK universities to form links with Kurdistan and over the past decade some 130 students from the region have studied here. There are currently about 40, who are taking undergraduate and postgraduate courses. In 2013, ex-students travelled from all parts of Kurdistan to attend an inaugural alumni dinner in the capital city, Erbil.
