House of Commons Hansard Debates for 12 Feb 1991

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endlessly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). However, that report states :

"The United Nations Security Council is not running the war in the Gulf"--

who said that?--

"according to Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary-General." It might be thought that he was in a position of some authority to pass comment on that.

Mr. Doyle reported that Mr. Perez de Cuellar

"told The Independent at the weekend that the council had handed control to the US, Britain and France and only learnt the outcome of military actions after they had taken place."

If it is a United Nations war, it is a bit odd that the Secretary-General learned about military actions only after they had taken place. The report continues :

"Distancing himself from allegations that the strategic objectives of the US and its allies go beyond the liberation of Kuwait, Mr. Perez de Cuellar said he could not say whether particular military actions, like the sustained and massive bombing of Iraq's infra-structure, were consistent with the United Nations resolutions."

We are entitled to ask, do the Government think that they are consistent with the United Nations resolutions? If the

Secretary-General has doubts about it, the burden of proof is certainly on the Government to say how they think that the regular, nightly, massive unparalleled bombing, described by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) as 20 times nighly what Coventry received during the blitz, is consistent with UN resolutions.

The report goes on :

"But he"--

that is, Mr. Perez de Cuellar--

"did express his distress that the UN is now associated with loss of human life caused by the war. This war is not a classic United Nations war in the sense that there is no United Nations control of the operations, no United Nations flag, [blue] helmets, or any engagement of the military staff committee', he said.

What we know about the war, which I prefer to call hostilities, is what we hear from the three members of the Security Council which are involved-- Britain, France and the United States--which every two or three days report to the Council, after the actions have taken place.' "

This is different from Korea. I was not in Korea, but I did my national service at the time of Korea as tank crew in the Rhine Army. Many of those with whom I trained went to the King's Royal Irish Hussars and were shot up in Korea. I have a clear memory that it was all about the United Nations ; it was certainly drummed into us that it was about the United Nations. The position in the Gulf in 1991 is different.

Mr. Doyle's report of Mr. Perez de Cuellar's comments continues : " The Council, which has authorised all this, [is informed] only after the military actions have taken place. As I am not a military expert I cannot evaluate how necessary are the military actions taking place now,' he added.

He was concerned most about the loss of human life, he said, because as Secretary-General of the United Nations I consider myself head of an organisation which is first of all a peaceful organisation and secondly a humanitarian organisation.' "

That has to be explained, because the Secretary-General is saying that he disapproves--no other interpretation is possible from his statement--of the action which is being taken in the name of the United Nations of which he is the titular head.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : I am following my hon. Friend's speech with great interest. Does he not agree

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that those people who claim that the action is to sustain the United Nations are wrong, because the war itself represents a failure of the United Nations? The United Nations is an international body, designed, instituted and committed by charter to resolve conflict by peaceful means, not by war.

Mr. Dalyell : I agree not only politely but from the depth of my heart with the sentiment that my hon. Friend expresses. Emotionally and otherwise, I deeply agree with the point that he has put, extremely succinctly.

Mr. Doyle's report goes on :

"While making a final appeal to Saddam Hussein to pull out of Kuwait 24 hours before the beginning of hostilities, Mr. Perez de Cuellar said that people on both sides did not want war.

Signalling once again his displeasure with the turn of events, Mr. Perez de Cuellar, who is 71, said that even if asked by the Security Council to stay on as Secretary-General he would refuse to do so. Last week Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Foreign Minister, launched a bitter attack on Mr. Perez de Cuellar accusing him of remaining silent while the allied forces targeted civilians."

So it goes on. Hon. Members can read the rest of the report for themselves. I simply ask the question : if that report or anything like it is true, what is Her Majesty's Government's view of the position of the Secretary- General?

I return to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer). I want to read to the House a moving letter, pertinent to the point, from a friend of mine, Howard Kensett, of Eastbourne in Sussex. I have known him as a United Nations stalwart and enthusiast for many years, ever since he invited me to meetings in Sussex on United Nations ecologically related subjects. He says :

"The Gulf War is a blasphemy against the spirit and ideals set out in the United Nations Charter 45 years ago. The world appears to have learnt nothing.

The inspiring preamble to the charter begins : We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.'."

Mr. Kensett continued :

"As an enthusiastic member of the UN Association for over 30 years, I have been numbed by what has happened in the name of the only world-wide organisation to encompass so much of the world's concern for mankind. The Security Council, formed to resolve conflicts, has compounded the situation by permitting no negotiation or diplomacy except an ultimatum and deadline which offered no face-saving alternative. The Secretary General was given no specific role to play, and has complained that he only knew the war had started one and a half after zero.

In September I attended, as a delegate of the Eastbourne branch of the UN Association, a peace messengers' conference at the UN in New York, where we were told that the Voluntary Trust Fund for the Promotion of Peace stood at $22,000. I said that this was a disgrace.

Since then I have written to Mr. Major, Mr. Kinnock, and the Liberal Democrats. Mr. Hurd replied that the United Kingdom makes no contribution to the fund : we doubt its effectiveness and can make better use of its resources elsewhere. We do not intend to sponsor British delegates to future UN peace messengers for the same reason.' No money for peace, but billions--nay trillions, for war--what a comment on our civilisation."

Mr. Kensett speaks for many. If the Minister or I--or any other hon. Member --were a poor Egyptian or Arab peasant and saw that money being given to the United States and the United Kingdom by the Emirates, Kuwait

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or Saudi Arabia for war, we would begin to wonder why some of it did not come in our direction for economic development.

Page 2 of today's edition of The Guardian features a long article entitled "When UN resolutions met Iraqi resolve". It is, allegedly, a statement by the United Nations Secretary-General to the Security Council on 14 January 1991. Will the Minister comment on the following passages? If he wishes to give me a considered comment in writing, I shall make no fuss. The article states :

"Underlining a theme that had been emphasised during my meeting the previous evening with Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, the President said that it would not be possible in a single meeting to find ready solutions to such a complicated situation'. He noted that whereas resolution 598, which Iraq had accepted, set out a comprehensive approach to the issues addressed therein, the Security Council had not, regrettably, adopted a comprehensive approach in dealing with the present crisis."

Does that represent the facts? If so, it means that the criteria laid down by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas for a just war--that everything should be done to avoid it--have simply not been fulfilled.

The article continues :

"He pointed out that although Iraq had never accepted resolution 660, it had agreed, in the early days of the crisis, to attend a mini-summit in Jeddah and had begun to withdraw its troops from Kuwait. But those efforts, which he stated were aimed at achieving an Arab solution', were undermined by the introduction of foreign forces into the region, which heightened the threat posed to Iraq. Criticising what he called precipitous' actions by the Security Council, he stated that Iraq had been tried in absentia and his Foreign Minister had been denied the facilities he needed to be able to present his case. Further, he stated that on earlier occasions when the Council had called for the withdrawal of troops, this had been accompanied by a call for negotiations between the parties ; withdrawal had not been set as a precondition for such negotiations. Moreover, he cited examples of Israeli occupation and annexation, noting that Israel had never been subjected to sanctions or outside military intervention as a means of ensuring compliance with Security Council resolutions."

I should like the Government to comment on that.

The House will forgive me for being personal. I am not an Arabic speaker, but both my mother and my father were fluent Arabic speakers and I was brought up in the belief that one had to be patient with Arabs. The Texan oil executives, Mr. Baker and Mr. Bush, seem to have been extremely aggressive and impatient in all their dealings. I want to know whether all that is printed in The Guardian is true. Either it is untrue, in which case it should be refuted, or it is true, in which case a great many questions have to be asked about the British Government's knowledge of the United Nations activities.

The quote continues :

"On two separate occasions during our meeting, the President called on me to use my good offices, saying that if the other parties were to permit me to play a role in search of a solution, Iraq would facilitate my task and co-operate with me. In response to my comment that this idea would be a non -starter if the position of Iraq was irreversible on the subject of withdrawal from Kuwait, the President reacted by saying that that was not what he meant. He reiterated that I should try to engage the views of the parties, including Iraq, in order to make proposals that could lead to a solution."

Is that or is that not true?

I quote now from extracts from the Iraqi transcript translated from the al- Dustour of Amman of 9 February. This is what is being said in the Arab world and this is what is believed in Jordan. A number of Jordanians have telephoned my hon. Friends and myself, including a

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princess of Jordan, one of the ruling Hashemite family, who are exceedingly concerned about what has happened, for reasons that everyone knows. In Amman, it is published :

"Pe rez de Cue llar Now I do not want to argue with you, Your Excellency but you have been the cause of this achievement for the Palestinian cause'

Saddam Hussein : From the year 1963 to 1968 Iraq was ruled by two weak brothers, and during their rule the sheikhs of Kuwait marched into the territory once again from Mitla to here, and then during the war with Iran they expanded again and exploited oil fields knowing from the very start that they were within the pre-August 2 1990 Iraq' ".

That ties up with something that the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) has been saying--to which borders does one withdraw?

I quote again :

"Pe rez de Cue llar : If you have this good case, you can go to the International Court of Justice.'

Saddam : We have said, and we still reiterate, that we desire peace and we are ready to bear our responsibilities as part of the international family of the UN, but are others ready to shoulder their responsibilities on the same grounds? Are they ready to respect international legitimacy and international law on the Middle East problem according to its background and to do justice to each issue? Notice what the American President said, that he speaks of formalties and does not touch on substantial issues which concern us as oppressed nations. He talks about the possibility of the withdrawal of ground forces after the crisis is over and does not mention anything about the withdrawal of naval and air forces. Pe rez de Cue llar : These are not my resolutions. They are the resolutions of the Security Council.'

Saddam : These are American resolutions it is the era of America. What America wants today is what happens, and not what the Security Council wants.'

Pe rez de Cue llar : I support you as far as the issue concerns me.' "

Did the Secretary-General of the United Nations actually say : "I support you as far as the issue concerns me"?

Whether that is true or untrue, the House of Commons should know. The interview continued in this way :

"Saddam : Let us go back to the law and how a member of this family' "--

he means the United Nations--

"is converted into the accused without listening to his defence. You are the Secretary-General of the United Nations and despite this you have not been able to make it possible for the Iraqi Foreign Minister's aeroplane to land in the United States so that he may attend and defend the Iraqi point of view."

Some of us have been unhappy for a long time about the United Nations being physically in the United States. There is now a case for moving it elsewhere.

Perez de Cuellar's reply was :

"I tried and I said that this is a violation of the headquarters agreement with the United States."

Did the Secretary-General really say this? If he did, it raises serious issues.

My next subject is the Government's assessment of many of the members of the United Nations whose Governments, to put it mildly, are under the most acute pressure. It is said in the Arab world that, if Saddam Hussein can stand against the might of the world for 40 days, he must be right. The war probably looks rather

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different from Cairo or from Damascus. I am told that we have achieved the near-impossible--bringing together the left in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood.

I am not making this up. Let me quote from that impeccable Labour newspaper, The Daily Telegraph . Alan Philps, of the foreign staff, wrote this :

"In non-combatant countries, the Saddam cult is becoming a focus for grievances against the government.

In Bangladesh the campaign for the general election scheduled for Feb 27 has been dominated by Gulf war agitation."

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West, who represents many Bangladeshis, knows that that is true. The article continues : "The Iraqi embassy in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, has claimed to have handed out 1,000 poster portraits of Saddam to marchers In Malaysia, where more than half the population is Muslim, police found a home-made bomb containing nails and broken glass planted outside the American Airlines office in Kuala Lumpur

Tension is also rising in Nigeria, where there have been pro-Iraqi demonstrations in the Muslim north of the country, particularly the city of Kano and the town of Kaduna

The smaller Muslim nations of Africa--Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone-- which have sent token contingents to Saudi Arabia, now find themselves open to accusations of being bribed by the Saudis." I was chosen by Mr. Speaker to lead a parliamentary delegation to Zaire because of rain forest interests--hon. Friends of the Minister were members of the delegation-- where we met the Zaire Foreign Minister, who was full of a meeting he had had with James Baker three days before. I asked him why Zaire was so definitely siding with the Americans. It was quite clear to all of us that it had nothing whatsoever to do with a judgment on the rights or wrongs of the situation in the middle east. It was all about Zaire's perception of obliging the Americans, so that a ban on aid to Zaire would be lifted--a ban which had been imposed because of that country's appalling human rights record. In a sense, that is corruption of the United Nations Security Council, and the same story could be told about the Ivory Coast vote in the United Nations Security Council.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : This American-led war has been based upon mercenary and corrupt actions from the beginning. America did not pay its subs to the United Nations--it owed $135 million--until the day that it wanted a resolution passed about the 15 January start date for the war. The United States also bailed out Egypt, to the tune of $2.5 million, writing off its debts, and told Yemen that, if it voted with America, it would get other aid. The United States got money from Saudi Arabia and laundered it to Russia, so that the United States would keep its mouth shut while Russia did what it liked in Lithuania. The United States has been trying to cadge money from Germany and Japan, the two countries which supposedly lost the war in 1945. That tells us something about wars--the winners are not always winners for ever.

Mr. Dalyell : I must candidly tell the Minister that, when I first head my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) shout across the House that the war was "mercenary", I thought that he had gone over the top. After the past weekend I believe that, as so often before, my hon. Friend's insights were spot on. At the weekend, I said to my wife, "Dennis Skinner was right after all." Having thought that he was exaggerating, even I have now

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come to the conclusion that the mercenary issue is very serious, but I shall not pursue it tonight, because I know that some of my hon. Friends wish to speak.

I am very worried about Tuwaitha, the nuclear facility in Iraq. For 24 years, I have been a weekly columnist of the New Scientist and I do not throw scientific facts around carelessly. As far as I know, it has never been satisfactorily explained what happens when a nuclear facility is bombed. I have always believed that, if one bombed nuclear reactors or certain types of nuclear research establishments, some sort of radiation would result.

I am told that no one in the west knows for certain what has happened in Iraq. There has been no monitoring. How do we know? I am not saying that this has happened, but how do we know that the most appalling Chernobyl- like effects have not resulted from the bombing of those nuclear facilities? People who drop bombs on nuclear facilities had better be clear what they are doing.

I am also worried about the bombing of Samarra, Kerbala and Najaf. I know perfectly well that Saddam Hussein probably put his chemical factories near to Samarra on purpose, and that there may well be missile boosting equipment near Najaf. However, they are holy places, and there is said to have been destruction.

I wrote to the Foreign Secretary about the damage and he replied that the Iraqis might well say that there had been damage when there was none. However, we have now seen pictures, apparently of Najaf--that has not been denied--showing considerable damage. What is the Government's assessment of the effect on the Shi'ites? I shall leave any related matters pertaining to the Hajj to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West, who knows more about them than I do ; but there is, I think, considerable concern about the holy places, and also about Babylon and Ur of the Chaldees. I have asked questions about that. If the Minister doubts what I have said, he should consider what he, as an art lover, would say if Durham, Stonehenge, Salisbury or Wells were destroyed by bombing. What would that do to the British?

Hon. Members may say that I am confining my examples to the Muslim world. I could choose the third world, but I can also choose our West German colleagues in the Social Democratic party. With, presumably, his party's authority, Karsten Voigt, a member of the Bundestag and foreign affairs spokesman for the SPD, has said :

"In the present situation, the SPD calls upon all responsible parties to cease hostilities in order to recreate room for a political solution."

I feel no embarrassment about calling for a ceasefire, at least to give space for discussion. There may be military disadvantages, but there do not seem to many of us to be any military advantages in the current inhuman bombing.

It is not just the inhuman bombing, however. On 5 December, I asked General Colin Powell--upstairs, in Committee Room 14--about his view of the much- repeated ecological figures from the King of Jordan. Part of his reply was, "Well, they will set fire to the trenches. We know from our satellites that they are pouring in oil which can be ignited, using artesian methods. My tanks will have to go through canalised fire."

I take no joy in this, but what I predicted in the first part of my Consolidated Fund debate on 19 December has come true. As can be seen in column 403 of Hansard, I specifically drew attention to the awful oil slicks that are now threatening the Bahrainis, and also threatening the

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coral atolls that produce the larvae to feed the fish that provide a permanent supply of food for the people living around the Gulf. Let me ask--in brackets, as it were--what is happening to Qaruh and Umm Al Maradim, the coral atolls. The ecological disaster is simply enormous.

I may have spoken for longer than I should have, for some of my hon. Friends wish to speak as well. I beg the Minister, in these quiet circumstances, to try to provide answers to these urgent and extremely worrying questions.

9.27 pm

Mrs. Maria Fyfe (Glasgow, Maryhill) : I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) on securing tonight's debate and on his persistence in the face of all the difficulties involved in continuing to present this issue to the House.

In all seriousness, and with no sense of irony, let me also congratulate Mr. Perez de Cuellar on his sheer frankness and honesty. When he admitted to the world at large that he had not even known that war had begun until an hour and a half after the commencement of hostilities, we had to admire his candour. In the world of politics, at almost every level, there is always a great temptation for people to pretend that they know what is going on when they do not, lest they are thought to be less knowledgeable and powerful than they are. That man's honesty will go into the history books : people in future will ask, "What on earth was going on in the Gulf war?"--the "United Nations war" which was nothing of the kind, as the facts that unroll day by day are proving. It is farcical that a war allegedly waged in the name of the United Nations has been going on for three weeks, during which time the United Nations has not even met.

General Schwarzkopf, in his fairly frequent press interviews, has referred to his political masters in the United States. He has never referred to what the United Nations might have to say about the war. Well down a lengthy article in the Evening Standard , General Schwarzkopf was asked whether it was possible that, if Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons, the west would respond with nuclear weapons. He replied that there had been no consultation with the Allies. He did not even mention the United Nations. He said that President Bush would not be able to rule anything out. I do not know whether he intended to frighten the Iraqis, but he certainly frightened me. The United Nations is certainly not in charge of this war. Various developments are unfolding. I ask the Government not merely to answer my questions but to take action on them. One arises out of a letter in today's Glasgow Herald. It was written by Canon Kenyon Wright, a man who has won a great deal of respect in Scotland, for various reasons. He mentions a letter that he had received from Church relief workers in Jordan. They told him that children in Jordan need baby milk powder but that they are not getting it. Three cargoes of baby milk powder had failed to reach those infants in Jordan because the American forces are not letting them through.

The writer of the letter to Canon Wright said that that is illegal. Due to the sheer confusion of war and battle, mistakes can be made. I hope the Government will take up that matter with their United States colleagues and get them to allow the supplies of baby milk powder to reach the infants in Jordan. We must ensure that the sad effects

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and casualties of war are reduced as far as possible. When people are so gung-ho that they start to think in Star and Sun headlines, they seem to forget about human needs.

I wonder also whether the Government will take up a question that I understand American congressmen have taken up with their Government. We have not heard a cheep about it in the House of Commons. To this day, the United States is funding people who are carrying out acts of terrorism in El Salvador. Many United States senators and congressmen have said that they can hardly go about proclaiming that they care about human rights in Kuwait when acts of terrorism are being carried out against the people of El Salvador. They have at least the honesty and goodness to recognise the anomaly. Some members of the United States Government have responded to those criticisms, but I have yet to hear a cheep from any member of this Government about that. Are they not interested in human rights in central America?

We ought to think seriously about trying to find a way out of the war. There is no point in saying that we are right and that history will prove that we are right. We must endeavour to resolve the conflict as well as possible. The United Nations ought to keep on meeting until a way is found to resolve the conflict. We ought to be trying to find some way, under United Nations authority, of organising a ceasefire under conditions that all concerned find acceptable. The United Nations should keep on meeting until a solution is worked out. The alternative is for everyone to sit back and let the war rip. Death, casualties and carnage will then go on and on until someone is declared a winner. In the name of common sense, would it not be preferable to discuss continuously in the United Nations the issues that concern the warring nations, in an effort to resolve the conflict?

Arrangements ought to be put in hand for an international conference--a conference involving not just the nations concerned but the peoples concerned, such as the Kurds and the Palestinians--to make sure that at the end of this episode some kind of settlement will be worked out. We need a settlement that will not merely stop the fighting but will achieve lasting justice in the middle east. If we simply allow the war to continue, and a victor to emerge, we shall end up with the conditions to inspire another war in the future, just as the second world war followed the first.

I hope that the Government will listen to what some newspapers are pleased to call the peacemongers. I regard those people as the ones who are actually thinking about finding constructive ways out of the dreadful mess into which the Government have got this country. 9.35 pm

Mr. Max Madden (Bradford, West) : The whole House is once again greatly indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), who initiated this important debate. This is the 27th day of the Gulf war. For every minute of those 27 days, there has been a bombing raid on Iraq. It has become very clear indeed, as each of those days has gone by, that this war has very little to do with freedom or democracy, but a great deal to do with America's determination to defend its oil interests and its ambition to extend its political influence in the region--political influence, so aptly described by the right hon.

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Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) as the new imperialism. It is indeed the new imperialism that we have seen so graphically demonstrated in the Gulf during the last 27 days. It has been much more difficult to detect the underlying reasons for the turmoil that has gripped the Gulf--indeed, the whole of the middle east--in recent years. Clearly, those reasons are the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people for a homeland and for independence, and the recognition by millions upon millions of poor Arabs that, in many Arab countries, the wealth deriving from oil is very unequally distributed. It is important to note that tonight, as during the past 27 days, British forces are seeking to defend one feudal family in Saudi Arabia and are fighting to restore another to Kuwait. If we believe in freedom and democracy, we must commit ourselves to ensuring that freedom and democracy will come to those Gulf countries one day.

Over the past 27 days we have been told that this war is approved, even sponsored, by the United Nations. Again it is becoming clearer and clearer that America hijacked the United Nations, that this war is American- inspired, American-led and American-dominated. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow referred to leaked documents that reveal the extent to which, before 15 January, Perez de Cuellar and the United Nations were marginalised and manipulated. It is very important to recall that, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, it was hours after the attack on Iraq had taken place that the United Nations Secretary-General was informed of it. [Interruption.] I do not know why the Minister is getting so annoyed. Could it be because this is the first debate on the Gulf and the United Nations initiated by my hon. Friend? The consensus between the Government and the official Opposition amounts to a conspiracy of silence to ensure that the House will not have an opportunity to speak out in the names of the 10 million or 11 million British citizens who are totally opposed to this war. Could it be that the Minister is upset because he is required, at the end of this debate, to come to the Dispatch Box and defend the war defend it in the name of the House of Commons, which during the past 27 days has been denied any genuine opportunity to debate it?

In particular, I hope that the Minister will comment on the war aims of Her Majesty's Government, remembering that we are embroiled in this venture on the coat-tails of the new imperialism that the United States of America seems determined to introduce in the Gulf region.

We are worried about the war aims, which seem to be confused and contradictory. The Secretary of State for Defence said some time ago that this war would be short, sharp and quick. Yet 27 days later, he said on BBC Radio :

"If Saddam and his forces merely withdraw to the border and we did see the liberation of Kuwait, but all the Iraqi guns and all the military machines were left on the other side of the border merely to repeat the exercise as soon as the allies went away,. that would simply not see the achievement of that resolution. I think people understand that it has to be right after all the effort, all the cost and all the pain that we've been involved in. We can't leave it half finished with a continuing menace continuing to threaten other states in the area."

Those are the war aims spelled out by the Secretary of State for Defence on 27 January. He repeated them precisely two days later, during Defence Question Time. Following that, the Prime Minister, when asked, said that

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