The Wall Street Journal - 08.11.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Friday, November 8, 2019 |A

Central Bank Sees

Modest Growth

LONDON—The Bank of Eng-

land said it expects the U.K.

economy to pick up modestly

over the next three years if

lawmakers back Prime Minister

Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and

the country pursues a free-

trade accord with the European

Union.

The forecasts—published

Thursday after the central

bank’s monetary policy meet-

ing—mark the first time the

central bank has assessed Mr.

Johnson’s Brexit plan. While it

said the deal would create new

barriers to trade with a bloc

that currently buys around half

of U.K. exports, it added that

the removal of uncertainty

could boost investment, which

has stalled since mid-2016.

“The picture in the U.K.

could change, with the recent

U.K.-EU Withdrawal Agreement

creating the prospects for a

pickup in U.K. growth,” BOE

Gov. Mark Carney told report-

ers.

However, rate setters said

they are prepared to cut their

key interest rate if that antici-

pated boost to growth doesn’t

materialize. Mr. Carney said the

exact details of the new trade

agreement may take years to

work out, and businesses and

households may continue to

feel they lack the clarity on the

final terms that would spur

higher spending. At this week’s

meeting, two on the nine-mem-

ber body that sets rates voted

to make that cut now.

The projections come ahead

of a nationwide election on

Dec. 12, when Mr. Johnson is

hoping to secure a majority in

Parliament to ratify a Brexit

deal agreed last month with

Brussels.

—Jason Douglas

The senior U.S. diplomat for
northeast Syria asserted in an
internal memo that the Trump
administration didn’t try hard
enough to dissuade Turkey
from intervening militarily in
northeast Syria, a person fa-
miliar with the assessment
said.
The memo was written by
William Roebuck, a veteran
diplomat who previously
served as the U.S. ambassador
to Bahrain, and was sent Oct.
31 to James Jeffrey, the U.S.
special envoy on Syria issues,
as well as to Pentagon, State
Department and White House
officials.
In a lengthy analysis, Mr.
Roebuck acknowledged that a
more forceful policy of threat-
ening economic sanctions
against Ankara and a stepped-
up military presence might
not have deterred Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdo-
gan from ordering a military
intervention in Syria.
“It’s a tough call, and the
answer is probably not,” Mr.
Roebuck wrote in the unclassi-
fied memo, the person said.
“But we won’t know because
we didn’t try.”
He also said that Turkish-
backed Arab fighters that were
used in the intervention have

carried out “war crimes and

ethnic cleansing.”

The memo comes to light as

Mr. Erdogan is planning to

meet with President Trump on

Wednesday at the White

House. The memo was earlier

reported on by the New York

Times.

The State Department de-

clined to comment on Mr. Roe-

buck’s assessment. “We will

not confirm or deny alleged

private internal communica-

tions,” said Morgan Ortagus,

the State Department spokes-

woman. “That said, we have

made clear that we strongly

disagreed with President Er-

dogan’s decision to enter Syria

and that we did everything

short of a military confronta-

tion to stop it.”

Turkey’s intervention in

Syria was preceded by an Oct.

6 phone call between Messrs.

However, the divisions over

Brexit have made it harder for

Britain’s two big parties to win

a majority as voters switch to

smaller parties that either

want to leave the European

Union abruptly or not leave at

all.

The Conservatives and La-

bour Party are polling 37% and

26% respectively, according to

recent polling, leaving space

for smaller parties to en-

croach.

“We basically have a system

that is built for two parties

but polling now shows that we

are very far from two-party

politics,” says Chris Curtis, a

political researcher at YouGov,

a pollster.

Some of those smaller par-

ties have agreed not to run in

certain districts to maximize

the chances for anti-Brexit

lawmakers.

“This is the last-chance sa-

loon on Brexit,” said Heidi Al-

len, a former lawmaker who

voting system usually leads to

an underrepresentation of

smaller parties in Parliament.

In recent decades, parties with

the support of fewer than 40%

of voters have won a majority

and formed a government.

tered into a large-scale deal

was in 1918 with the “coupon

election”—where candidates

were endorsed who had sup-

ported the coalition govern-

ment during World War I.

Britain’s first-past-the-post

tive Party to enter into an alli-

ance with his Brexit Party, an

offer that Prime Minister Boris

Johnson has turned down.

Such pre-election pacts are

rare in British politics. The

last time that two parties en-

now chairs an anti-Brexit

group called Unite to Remain,

which helped organize the 60-

seat pact. The group believes

that 44 of those seats can be

won by pro-EU candidates

with such an a deal in place.

Under the pact, local candi-

dates will withdraw from the

race depending on which of

the three parties has the best

chance of winning. The Liberal

Democrats say they will cancel

Brexit if they win the election.

The Green Party want to cam-

paign to stay in the EU in an-

other referendum on the mat-

ter.

Still, it is far from certain

these agreements will have a

meaningful effect. The number

of seats targeted is small and

Labour is refusing to enter

into pacts with smaller enti-

ties.

On the other side, Mr. John-

son has so far ruled out doing

a deal with Mr. Farage.

The Brexit Party leader is

pressuring the prime minister

to scrap the divorce deal he

negotiated with the EU and

abruptly leave the trading

bloc. Mr. Johnson said on

Wednesday that Mr. Farage’s

party “remind me a bit of can-

dle-sellers at the dawn of the

age of the electric lightbulb.”

As things stand, polls show

that Mr. Johnson has enough

support to win despite the

Brexit Party standing in many

seats across the country. How-

ever, if the Brexit Party gains

traction, it could take votes

and seats away from the Con-

servatives, even if it wins no

seats of its own.

Pollsters point to a by-elec-

tion in Brecon and Radnor-

shire in rural Wales this year

as a cautionary tale of what

could befall the Conservatives.

Smaller parties pulled out to

endorse the Liberal Democrat

candidate and the Brexit Party

siphoned off thousands of

Conservative voters. The re-

sult: the Conservatives lost a

district that had previously

voted to quit the EU.

WORLD NEWS

LONDON—As Brexit contin-
ues to reshape British politics,
the country’s smaller political
parties are breaking with prec-
edent and pushing for pre-
election nonaggression pacts
in an effort to maximize their
impact on next month’s gen-
eral election.
With Britain’s two-party
system crumbling as voters
abandon traditional party alle-
giances to vote along Brexit
lines, a clutch of parties are in
contention to receive millions
of votes. Ahead of the Dec. 12
poll, several of these political
groups are maneuvering as
they try to maximize the
chances of pro- or anti-Brexit
candidates winning key dis-
tricts.
On Thursday, a group of
anti-Brexit parties—the Liberal
Democrats, the Green Party
and Plaid Cymru, the Welsh
nationalist party—said they
would field only one candidate
between them in 60 seats in
the 650-seat Parliament. A
similar deal was struck this
week in Northern Ireland to
try to stop the pro-Brexit
Democratic Unionist
Party winning in six districts.
The deal is a way to address
a problem for anti-Brexit cam-
paigners: there are too many
parties wooing voters who
want to stay in the EU. That
risks splitting the anti-Brexit
vote and gifting victory to the
Conservatives. Labour has also
promised a second referendum
over whether voters want to
leave under a new agreement
that it has promised to negoti-
ate or remain in the EU.
Meanwhile, on the other
side of the Brexit divide, euro-
skeptic politician Nigel Farage
is urging the ruling Conserva-

BYMAXCOLCHESTER

Small U.K. Parties Seek Pacts on Election

Pre-vote deals are

meant to maximize

their influence on

Brexit’s outcome

Liberal Democrat Leader Jo Swinson, left, working on her campaign bus Thursday, agreed with two other parties to coordinate candidates.

AARON CHOWN/PA WIRE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Trump and Erdogan in which

the Turkish leader expressed

impatience with American ef-

forts to work with Ankara to

set up a safe zone to ensure

that Kurdish fighters couldn’t

threaten Turkey.

After the call, Mr. Trump

ordered the withdrawal of

about 50 U.S. troops from two

outposts near Syria’s border

with Turkey, and later directed

the departure of the approxi-

mately 1,000 troops from the

northeast part of the country.

U.S. lawmakers complained

that Mr. Trump effectively

gave Turkey a green light to

intervene militarily, creating a

vacuum that Russian and Syr-

ian forces would move to fill,

diminishing American influ-

ence in the Middle East. Ad-

ministration officials have said

that Mr. Trump acted pru-

dently to remove American

troops from a volatile situa-

tion.

As criticism of Mr. Trump’s

withdrawal decision mounted,

including from Republican

lawmakers, Mr. Trump di-

rected that some U.S. forces be

sent to protect an oil field in

northeast Syria.

Mr. Roebuck noted in his

memo that this policy switch

would mitigate some of the

consequences of Mr. Trump’s

initial withdrawal decision.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Demo-

cratic Forces would have some

territory to use and American

forces could continue to work

with them in confronting Is-

lamic State militants.

But Mr. Trump’s assertions

that the U.S. “keep the oil”

and perhaps bring in large

American companies to de-

velop it raised another prob-

lem. Mr. Roebuck cautioned

that statements about protect-

ing the oil would reinforce

suspicious in the region that

Washington was secretly plot-

ting to take over the Middle

East’s resources. The diplomat

advised that the Trump ad-

ministration instead stress

that the oil belongs to the Syr-

ian people.

On Thursday, a Pentagon

spokesman signaled a change

in the administration’s mes-

sage on Syria’s oil. “The reve-

nue from this is not going to

the U.S., this is going to the

SDF,” Pentagon spokesman

Jonathan Hoffman said.

Mr. Roebuck, who didn’t re-

spond to a request to com-

ment, has spent more than

two decades working on Mid-

dle East issues for the State

Department and has been

based in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Is-

rael and Bahrain.

He now serves as special

adviser to Mr. Jeffrey and has

spent much of his time as the

top diplomat—and in recent

weeks, the only—on the

ground in northeast Syria.

BYMICHAELR.GORDON

American Diplomat Faults U.S. on Turkish Intervention

William Roebuck, a State Department adviser in northern Syria,

greeted a Syrian Democratic Forces commander in March.

CHRIS MCGRATH/GETTY IMAGES

that the inspector had been

stopped from entering the Na-

tanz nuclear facility after an

alarm went off at the entrance,

which includes equipment to

detect traces of nitrate explo-

sives. He said the procedure

was repeated several times

and the alarm went off again.

The incident is the first

flare-up between Iran and the

IAEA, which monitors Iran’s

compliance with the 2015 nu-

clear deal, since it was imple-

mented in January 2016.

Before the nuclear deal,

Iran repeatedly denied IAEA

inspectors access to sites and

accused the agency of sending

in spies.

The friction comes after

Iran announced fresh steps

Tuesday to step away from the

accord’s limits in response to

harsh U.S. sanctions. Those ac-

tions and the new concerns

raised by the IAEA about Iran’s

behavior are increasing calls

from the U.S. and Israel to

tighten pressure on Iran.

Iran “is positioning itself

for a rapid nuclear breakout,”

Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo said on Twitter Thurs-

day following Iran’s announce-

ment this week that it was re-

suming enriching uranium at

its underground nuclear plant

at Fordow, near Iran’s holy city

of Qom. “It is now time for all

nations to reject its nuclear

extortion and increase pres-

sure.”

The IAEA called the deten-

tion of the inspector unaccept-

able and said it disagreed with

Iran’s characterization of the

incident.

The agency said it ordered

the inspector to leave the

country after she was blocked

from entering Natanz. The in-

spector has now returned

home, according to U.S. offi-

cials.

The agency reported on the

incident involving the inspec-

tor at a meeting of its board

Thursday, where the IAEA also

put pressure on Iran over the

presence of undeclared nuclear

material at Turquz Abad, a

now-dismantled site in Tehran.

Iran says its nuclear pro-

gram is for peaceful civilian

process. It has said it is com-

plying with the IAEA’s probe.

—Felicia Schwartz

in Jerusalem

contributed to this article.

The U.S. accused Iran of in-
timidating nuclear inspectors
after a woman from the United
Nations atomic agency was
blocked from entering the
country’s main enrichment site
and briefly stopped from leav-
ing the country.
Western diplomats said on
Thursday that the inspector
had been held by Iranian au-
thorities last week and her pa-
pers confiscated after she had
been prevented from entering
Iran’s enrichment facility at
Natanz, some 180 miles south
of Tehran.
The U.S. ambassador to the
International Atomic Energy
Agency, Jackie Wolcott, called
the move an “outrageous prov-
ocation” and harassment of
the agency’s monitoring work.
Iran’s ambassador to the
IAEA Kazem Gharib Abadi said

BYLAURENCENORMAN

U.S. Accuses Iran of Menacing U.N. Inspectors

Western diplomats

say an inspector was

held by Iranian

authorities last week.