House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Nov 1993

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Government's response would be in the event of the Provisional IRA whole-heartedly repudiating violence. He also reiterated that there can be no place in the democratic process for those who indulge in or espouse political terrorism. Ulster Unionists welcome the clarity of that message. As the Prime Minister prepares for his meeting with Mr. Albert Reynolds in Dublin on 3 December, it is important that those ground rules are carefully understood and adhered to rigidly. One cannot--one dare not--compromise the essential principles on which democracy survives, irrespective of what might appear to be the short-term repercussions in respect of propaganda.

The Ulster Unionist party is fully aware of what the political reality of peace would be. It is now generally acknowledged that our submissions to the 1992 talks process and our subsequent search for stability and progress in Northern Ireland have been constructive and conciliatory. Of course there is concern in some quarters that our frank and forthright approach to the problem might send out the wrong signal, that our constructive participation in the debate might be misinterpreted as a sign of weakness. I can understand that, but I believe that the Prime Minister and the Government know better. In the past, we have witnessed the folly of the Government accepting words at face value, and we shall not allow that to happen again. Within Ulster Unionism, there is steely resolve that we cannot ever again allow the type of betrayal enshrined in the 1985 Anglo- Irish Agreement. We cannot forget, for example, that article 1 of the agreement--which promised that the "status" of Northern Ireland could not be changed but by the wish of the people of Northern Ireland--is now a topic of some mirth in the Irish Republic.

I was in the Dublin supreme court when senior counsel in the McGimpsey anferred to Article 1, My Lord, headed "The Status of Northern Ireland". When one reads that Article, one looks at the status of Northern Ireland, it is not defined at all. It is carefully not defined, My Lord, carefully not defined."

That is the sort of thing that the Prime Minister will have to guard against on 3 December when the word "peace" will be tossed about with gay abandon. One would wish that it were otherwise, but experience convinces one that the Provisional IRA has not the slightest intention of delivering a permanent ceasefire. Rather, it is the intention of the extreme Republican to package and offer as peace only that which is designed to thwart the democratically expressed wishes of the people of Northern Ireland. It would be so easy to be enticed by pleasant generalisations and oft-repeated platitudes, but those of us who participated in the 1992 talks process and who went--as the Prime Minister will--to meet the Irish Republic's delegation in Dublin, still await one single substantive gesture from that source, in our search for political progress. It is now fully eight weeks since the Adams-Hume liaison was, amid great publicity and mystery, temporarily suspended. The people of Northern Ireland and Members of the House have still to hear from the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) what all the excitement was about. We have, however, heard the President of Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA say of that process :

"It is not aimed, as some commentators and sections of the media are suggesting, at bringing an end to the IRA's campaign." Mr. Adams goes on, in relation to any political settlement, to state :

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"Peace cannot be a prerequisite for such a process."

It is against that background of confusion and double-speak that the Prime Minister will have to make his judgments. He will be encouraged by Dublin to define a set of criteria within which some grand plan can be constructed for the future of Northern Ireland. He must not contemplate such a step while the Irish Republic's irredentist and aggressive territorial claim remains in place. The people of Northern Ireland must be the arbiters of what is ultimately acceptable politically and the Dublin Government must not be given a pre-emptive veto. It is crucial that the people of Northern Ireland know that. The Prime Minister should resist pressure to try to agree what will be called "a framework for agreement" with the Irish Government. That would inhibit rather than help progress. It would be taken as a signal by the Provisional IRA--as was the Anglo-Irish Agreement--that it was making steady progress through its efforts to bomb and shoot its way to the conference table. The Prime Minister will not be unaware that no group of people would welcome peace more than those who serve in the Army and the police in Northern Ireland and who, for almost 25 years, have placed themselves at tremendous personal cost between the law-abiding community and the terrorists. The security services will still have to bear the brunt if anything is done which gives a new legitimacy to the men of violence.

The Prime Minister goes to Dublin armed with the knowledge that he and the Ulster Unionists have both spelt out clearly what is on offer to those who eschew political violence. It is that which must be underpinned. Although he must insist on the co-operation of the Irish Republic's Government, nothing can take precedence over the clarification of the terms which would dictate that a permanent ceasefire has come about. In that respect, it must be established that members of Sinn Fein cannot come directly, with mud on their boots and blood on their hands, to any negotiating table, but that a significant period of time has to elapse during which their repudiation of violence is proven beyond doubt. Mr. Reynolds and the Dublin Government must be left in no doubt about the terms on which men of violence will be deemed to have fully recanted.

A stringent verification programme must be established, which will guarantee the permanency of any arrangement to stand down personnel and surrender all arms and explosives, and any arrangement for Sinn Fein--or whatever that organisation may ultimately be called--to submit a totally new manifesto, repudiating violence, for the will of the electorate at the ballot box. Therein lies the acid test of good will and of tangible evidence of the desire for peace and active co-operation which Dublin professes, and therein will lie the principal responsibility of the Prime Minister on 3 December. 12.49 pm

Mr. Ian Taylor (Esher) : The Gracious Speech debate gives us an opportunity to cover a wide area, but first we should remark on the good news about what has been happening recently. Developments in South Africa are extremely encouraging, although considerable risks still lie ahead during the process towards democracy.

Obviously, there is good news in Russia, in the sense that there will be elections, but it will be a rocky road towards democracy. The Foreign Secretary was right to say that our support for President Yeltsin is as a reformer, as

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opposed to anything else. I have been to Russia more than once, so I know that words tend to have a different meaning there. In the middle east, we have had the excellent news that the Israelis and Palestinians are talking to each other. When I was in the area in 1991, I was struck by the fact that the Israelis seemed to be acting against their security interests by their policy towards the Palestinians. It is clear that my view seems to have prevailed among the Israeli Government.

Those are the three pieces of good news. Sadly, they are surrounded by many worrying signs of instability and evidence of nuclear proliferation, which underline the view in the Daily Telegraph this week that we need

"a thorough-going review of the assumptions underpinning Britain's foreign and defence policies."

We can do that in this debate. The Secretary of State has been forthright in his contribution to a wide-ranging discussion. The assumptions must be considered carefully. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was right to say that we should not promise things that we cannot deliver. That is very wise. However, we should not rely on what may not be forthcoming. The House must, for example, consider carefully the changes that are taking place within the United States of America. We must rely not on what we believe to be a special relationship, but on much more solidly based assessment of mutual interest.

When I was in America in September, I was struck by the fact that their views on the role and status of Europe are changing. Their perspectives are moving much more towards Asia, as we can see even as we speak. Inasmuch as a change has resulted because of the end of the cold war, The American perspective of Europe has been downgraded, as Secretary of State Warren Christopher remarked a few weeks ago, when he said that Europe was not the most important area of the world. That does not mean to say that we cannot still work with the Americans in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which is such an important insititutional framework for them as well.

However, elsewhere we need to draw other conclusions. The certainties of foreign and defence policy are based not merely on diplomacy and military might but on economic relationships. We can stress to the Americans the importance of their trade with the European Community--the figures are quite striking. That interdependence of interest needs to be underlined--25 per cent. of American exports are to the European Community and trade flows between the Community and the USA constitute 7.5 per cent. of world trade.

We should consider also the fact that American investment in the Community has disproportionately come to this country. Britain is an important part of American interest. In the EC as a whole, some 2.5 million Europeans are employed by American companies--many of them in this country. It is in our interest to ensure that Britain plays a full and active part in the single market that attracted outside investors. The Confederation of British Industry was right last weekend to pressure the Government to continue to be positive in their policies towards the European Community.

We tend to forget that the single market established in recent years is dynamic, and can therefore move backwards as well as forwards. Currency instability between

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Community member states will tend to increase the sense of protectionism and, in that regard, could undermine the single market. If there were moves towards a single currency in the rest of the Community, Britain would be disadvantaged. There is no use saying that a single currency is not on our agenda, because we must discuss that issue if other member states still have it on their agenda. That is not a recommendation that we should immediately commit ourselves to signing up to a single currency, the nature of which we still do not know. In that, I differ from members of Labour's Front Bench, who have made that commitment. I am arguing that discussions on matters such as how Britain should move towards any single currency and on how it should work with the European monetary institute are in the interests of British industry, British jobs and, ultimately, of the security of the British nation. We cannot simply decide that we will opt out of that discussion for domestic political reasons. The importance of the European Community and of the economic strength that we need to develop together should be emphasised to our partners when it comes to considering the Community's competitive edge, which is sadly declining. It is now a serious situation when one compares its declining productivity levels with those of Japan and America. Over the past 10 years, there has been a total transformation in European Community unit labour costs which have risen by comparison with those of America and Japan. This is having a serious effect on job exports from the Community to America. When I was in America in September, the one topic of conversation wherever I went in the south was whether Mercedes would open its new plant in a particular state, creating 1,500 jobs. The final choice was a state that I did not visit--Alabama. Concerns about declining productivity and competitiveness in the Community must be right at the top of the agenda.

We sometimes forget that our arguments have already been winning in the Community. The German Government's paper on competitiveness submitted to the Commission has many similarities with the British Government's own stance. We welcome that, and I hope that the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will continue to put positive pressure on other Community members to ensure that the strength of the Community will not only encourage new jobs into it but will enable it to sell Community-made products to the rest of the world.

On the wider military aspect, I am profoundly concerned with what is happening in Russia. The events concerning whether there will be a new elective body after 15 December are interesting, but if one considers the breakdown of order in Russia, a different picture emerges. One realises that its democratic institutions are only part of the story. If my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has time in his wind-up speech, I shall be interested to hear his comments on the reforms in the Russian army. Not only within Russia, which stretches to the Japanese seas, but externally, tensions will continue until matters have been resolved, and there is knowledge of where power actually lies and of the trade-off that President Yeltsin reached with the Russian army last summer.

There are 30 million Russians outside Russia. The Russian army regards it as part of its role to protect Russian citizens outside Russia--a policing job that, if thought of quickly, is not so dangerous, but, as we are seeing in some

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territories, it goes beyond protecting Russians. That is merely the excuse to take action. I do not know where that will lead. We must be careful, because instabilities on the periphery of the former Soviet Union will have knock-on effects in the middle east. The Foreign Secretary rightly spoke of India, but the Indian sub-continent and China are also affected by events in the former Soviet Union.

Mr. Brazier : I strongly support my hon. Friend's remarks. Does he agree that what he is describing is what happened in Russia in the two centuries before 1917? Russia is now reverting to the very unstable situation vis-a -vis its middle eastern neighbours that prevailed before 1917. The Soviet military today is led in many cases by the grandfathers of the Tsarist generals.

Mr. Taylor : My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am not sure whether he meant grandfathers or grandsons! Thinking quickly on one's feet, one tends to reverse relationships.

We must go back into Russian history. I debated with a member of the Russian Parliament whether St. Petersburg or Moscow is the determinant of influence. That is very relevant because if Moscow dominates, which is much more eastward looking than St. Petersburg, it may act in ways about which we shall be less than happy. Washington is much more Moscowcentric than we should be. We have an interest in not seeing every problem in the former Soviet Union being resolved by Moscow's influence. For example, the Ukraine has a population not much different from ours, but, interestingly, when it declared its independence within the former Soviet Union it had an Army of 1.4 million. It is now trying to reduce it to about 400,000. The Ukraine is a sensitive area. We must make considerable effort, not necessarily through Moscow but direct to Kiev, to ensure that its relationships with ourselves and Europe are kept on a stable footing.

We must be much more imaginative about how we give comfort to our newly independent friends in central Europe. The extension of the NATO guarantee is easy to say, but is a risky thing to do. NATO has been successful and has been vibrant simply because it has had a clear remit. If we start to expand it almost as a diplomatic alliance, we may run into trouble. I have debated with Hungarians whether they understand the full implications of the commitment that it would place on us, let alone them, to respond to an attack on a member country. There are all sorts of ethnic and regional problems. There are 1 million Hungarians, for example, in Romania. Many difficulties could emerge.

None of that, however, is a recipe for doing nothing. We must make it clear that our guarantee is that under no circumstances could NATO see an external threat to the eastern countries that would leave us disinterested, and we can devise such elements of what that guarantee might compromise. It is not possible to conceive of, for example, an external attack on Poland without its going straight to the security of European Community countries and, therefore, NATO itself. There are all sorts of formulae towards which we can build. The European Community has a role in taking up the idea of a European political area. That concept will at least give the people in central Europe the feeling that they are involved in discussions without having to meet the acquis-communautaire and all the demands of full

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Community membership. At least they could then be party to discussions on security and other matters such as the environment where their interests and ours intermingle.

In such a wide-ranging debate, I have tried to focus on certain areas. Our security is diplomatic, it is military and it is economic. We must ensure that under each of those headings we do the most possible to protect the British people. In the European Community, an area which I think has been the most controversial during the past year, no British national interest is served by attempting to deny the importance of our full and whole- hearted membership, whether for reasons of political influence or simply because of a crude calculation of the jobs that are involved. As 13 out of every 100 manufacturing workers in Britain are employed by foreign firms, it would be short-sightedness and foolhardiness of the worst kind if Britain were to adopt a negative approach to relations in the Community. After the Foreign Secretary's comments today and what I anticipate that he will say tonight, I have ever confidence that there is now no question of a Conservative Government every being negative about the European Community.

Several hon. Members rose --

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : There are 44 minutes remaining before the wind-up speeches and six hon. Members hope to catch my eye. With a little co-operation they may be able to speak.

1.6 pm

Mr. Mike Gapes (Ilford, South) : I begin by concurring most strongly with the words of the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Taylor) about the importance to Britain of the European Community. Now that the Maastricht treaty is in place, it is time that the Government worked with vision and foresight. I fear that at the next intergovernmental conference in 1996 we shall again find great difficulties unless we begin preparing now to look to the future. In the limited time available, I shall concentrate my remarks on the common foreign and security policy aspect of the Maastricht treaty, but first I shall comment on two issues that were mentioned earlier. First, we all welcome the fantastic if painful achievements in South Africa. It would be remiss of us not to recognise that economic sanctions, as supported by the Labour party, requested by the United Nations and opposed by the Government over many years, have played a crucial role in the weakening of the apartheid regime and have supported the African National Congress and other forces that are working for liberation and democracy.

Secondly, anybody who shows an interest in the middle east is delighted that the Israeli Labour Government have reached an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organisation. We hope, pray and trust that the extremists and the rejectionists on both sides will be resoundingly defeated and that that agreement will come to fruition and lead to comprehensive peace throughout the middle east. I must take issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) in that I do not believe that we should make any excuses for continuing the Arab economic boycott of Israel. The time to lift that boycott is now. It is important to recognise that the boycott is not like sanctions on South Africa and connected with UN security resolutions, but is imposed independently by certain states which put pressure on companies--including British

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companies--that are concerned with trade in that region. It is important that our Government should join the Germans, the Dutch and other European Community countries and clearly state that we do not tolerate that economic boycott, especially at a time when there is a real possibility for economic development in the occupied territories and in Israel, which will benefit all the people of that region. I turn now to the difficulties that we face in Europe and to our future security relations, east and west. Last week I was at the headquarters of NATO and SHAPE--Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe--with my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) and a group of Labour Members. All of us knew that following the revolutions of 1989 and the political changes we needed to rethink our security approach, but none of us realised in 1989 -90 quite how momentous and difficult those changes would be.

Poland is one such example. In 1989, Poland had three neighbours : the German Democratic Republic, which no longer exists, the Republic of Czechoslavakia, which no longer exists, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which no longer exists. Poland now has seven neighbours. We must recognise that the process of disintegration in Europe is continuing, as was mentioned earlier, within the Russian Federation itself.

I do not believe that the architecture for security issues about which we have talked will necessarily have the same number of states in five years' time, in three years' time or even in two years' time. We used to say that the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe--the Helsinki process --involved 33 or 34 states. There are now 53 member states of the CSCE. NATO is involved in discussions with the countries of the former Warsaw pact and it has established the North Atlantic Co-operation Council--NACC, to use its new acronym. Some people see the council as a means of saying to the countries of central and eastern Europe which want to join NATO that they should be involved in the processes, while having no real influence. Others see it as an automatic conveyor belt through which Latvia and the other countries, such as Romania, which want to join can beome members of NATO.

We must be careful. Are we seriously saying that we shall give a security guarantee to all 38 members of the North Atlantic Co-operation Council, or potentially to all 53 members of the CSCE ? Are we really saying to Kurdistan and to the other places a long way from Europe that any attack on them will be perceived as a threat to the security of all the other states in the North Atlantic alliance ?

There are countries which are run by medieval-style warlords. There are countries with civil wars and countries where ethnic conflicts are raging today. Let us consider Georgia and Nagorno Karabakh, and all the regions where there is massive instability. Let us consider the biggest enigma-- what happens in Russia. I visited Russia before and after Gorbachev, and I am worried about the political processes there. I have friends and political acquaintances who were members of democratic Russia and who were leading dissidents under Gorbachev. They were inside the Russian Parliament when Yeltsin sent the tanks against it. They are not communists or fascists ; they are democrats

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who believe in constitutional, parliamentary democracy, and who happen to have chosen the side of Parliament against the President. Let us look back 350 years to the history of this place. We can see that sometimes Parliaments have to be defended--even inadequately elected Parliaments. It was certainly not a democratic Parliament here in 1640 and in subsequent years.

I hope that the elections on 15 December lead to a true democracy, but I fear that if President Yeltsin does not get the result that he wants we shall see further attempts to erode, undermine and destroy parliamentary democracy in Russia. The west must say, very clearly, that there will be no economic or political support if he does that. We should not use weasel words or be mealy-mouthed about it. The time to say it is now, when we can still have an impact, not when it is too late.

I have referred to the acronyms and the plethora of organisations. One of the unresolved big issues is what will happen to the relationship between the Western European Union and NATO, as set out in article J4 of the Maastricht treaty. We all know that there are two visions of the approach. The British and American view is that the Western European Union should be the European pillar of the Atlantic alliance ; the French view is that the Western European Union is the embryonic defence arm of the European Union as a whole, an embryonic defence community which will perhaps ultimately be based on British and French nuclear weapons and some kind of west European military bloc.

I understand from talks in Brussels last week that there will be a NATO summit in January, and that discussions are currently going on which are supposedly finessing this problem. The issue is probably less high on the agenda today, but I am convinced that, unless we are very careful, we could have the worst of all possible worlds in two or three years' time. There could be a political situation in which we had sent signals to the United States to accelerate their already planned reductions in Europe, leading to an ultimate complete withdrawal--the 100,000 US forces leading down to perhaps 50,000, or even a symbolic American presence in western Europe. On the other side, we could have a growing nationalisation of defence policy and a disintegration of integrated structures within NATO. The French want a European defence without the Americans because of their Gaullist ambition --which is very slightly restrained by President Mitterrand at some levels, but is nevertheless endemic throughout the whole French political establishment, both left and right.

We must be very clear that if we go down that road it will cost a great deal of money and will undoubtedly lead to a proliferation of nuclear weapons, or at least restrict all ideas about further steps towards nuclear disarmament. That would not be in the interests of this country or European security as a whole.

We should do all that we can to keep the United States in Europe for the next few years. That requires us to be clear that it is welcome in Europe on the basis of a co-operative security relationship. That relationship will change, but it has to be done now rather than being left until 1996-- when we have the

intergovernmental conference in the European Community--or 1998, when the Western European Union treaty runs out.

I also fear the tensions over Bosnia. The American flip-flopping from one week to the next about what they are going to do, and the unrealistic perceptions of some people

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that a military solution can be imposed from outside--that we can go in, stay for six months or a year, disappear and then have no problems--will prove a big difficulty for us in the future. One big problem is that even if an agreement is reached, some 50, 000 troops will be required to police it. The Americans have said that they might contribute 25,000 if the agreement was really capable of implementation ; that would mean that a further 25,000 western European troops would be needed to make up the numbers.

Where will those extra troops come from? They cannot come from Germany, because of its role in the former Yugoslavia in the 1940s, during the second world war ; for similar reasons, they cannot come from Italy. Nor can they come from Turkey--which has a huge NATO army--because it is a Muslim state, and its troops would not be acceptable to the Croats and the Serbs. Presumably they cannot come from Greece either, because of the relationship between the Greek and Serbian orthodoxies. We are left with France, Britain,

Spain--perhaps--and the Benelux countries.

That leads us to another question : where will those troops come from? If 20,000 British troops are tied up in Northern Ireland and have to be rotated, how can there be sufficient forces to deal with the peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia? Those operations may have to continue not for a few months but for five, 10, 15 or even 20 years. Look at what has happened in Northern Ireland and Cyprus. I believe that such issues should be debated publicly. We should not be hiding behind other arguments ; we should be speaking out honestly about matters concerning the future of security in Europe.

According to the Queen's Speech, the Government are committed to pursuing a process which might at some stage--perhaps--lead to a comprehensive test ban treaty. I do not think that that is good enough. We have an American moratorium, which President Clinton has bravely continued despite some congressional opposition. We have a Russian moratorium, which really needs to be reinforced. We have a French moratorium, although there are numerous reports that the French Government would like to continue nuclear testing before the end of the year. And in recent weeks the Chinese have broken the moratorium.

It is about time that our Government announced, openly and publicly, that we are to have a moratorium. By that I mean a British decision--not a decision made for us because the Americans will not let Nevada be used for testing. I mean a British decision to impose a moratorium in our own right and to oppose any further nuclear tests by any nuclear-weapons state. I also want a comprehensive test ban treaty within the next year, so that the non-proliferation treaty review conference in 1995 can be a great success.

We have seen some good news in the newspapers today about the Ukraine, at least to some extent. Yesterday, the Ukrainian Parliament voted to ratify the START 1 treaty, which is very important. The Ukrainians have also said, however, that they will keep a number of former Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. That is bad news.

We must make the maximum possible effort to encourage nuclear disarmament in all the former Soviet republics, a halt to proliferation, a comprehensive nuclear test ban and--in association with that--a review of NATO and British nuclear strategy. Our ultimate aim should be to give control of international security and nuclear weapons

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to an international body linked to the United Nations Security Council. We must move away from national competition in nuclear policies, and build greater international security.

1.24 pm

Miss Emma Nicholson (Torridge and Devon, West) : I start by thanking the Foreign Secretary, the Minister of State and other Foreign Office Ministers and their officials for the great help that they have given me in attempting to deal with the terrible stories which are now coming from Iraq. I thank in particular Patrick Nixon and Alistair Harrison. I also thank warmly the Secretary of State for Defence and his team, whom I cannot name.

The backdrop of the middle east peace process is cloaking the continuing tragedy of the Persian gulf. It is hiding so much, and behind the curtain the horrors of Iraq continue. Saddam Hussein is reaping a grim harvest of twisted minds. In every family there is one or more informer to the state. The children go to school where they are indoctrinated by the teachers to speak against their parents. He reaps a harvest also of twisted bodies, who are the victims of torture and of lifelong imprisonment in tombs of prisons, some underground.

Saddam Hussein said that he would still rule Iraq if there were as few as 3 million people under him. He is getting there. He has been in power for a long time and he rules by institutionalised violence. The House will recall his territorial ambition to take over from Nasser as the pan-Arabic leader. His game plan surely nears completion. It is a master plan of totaler that one of Saddam Hussein's targets were the Jews. In 1981, a pamphlet published by his foster father stated that there were three groups whom God should not have created--Persians, Jews, and flies. Persians were

"animals God created in the shape of humans."

Jews were a mixture of

"the dirt and leftovers of diverse peoples."

Flies were

"a trifling creation who we do not understand God's purpose in creating."

In 1984, the head of the Mukhabarat secret service defined as fifth columnists Jewish and Iranian children, whose families were seen as people who were working against the state. They were named, classified, and were deported. Jews have been in Iraq since the seventh century and the cross- fertilisation between the great Persian civilisation and Iraq has been taking place since time immemorial. Internal aggression against Jews, Iranians and Assyrians, Kurds and Shi'ites, started early in his rule, which began in 1968. In 1981, he shifted to external aggression and attacked the Iranian province of Khozestaan which he called Arabistan. The eight-year long Iran-Iraq war was marked by Iraqi chemical weapons attacks in Khozestaan. He failed against Iran in 1988 and just a couple of days later in mid-August of that year he moved to Kurdistan with an internal attack, again using chemical weapons.

Saddam Hussein later invaded Kuwait which he declared was just a province of Basra. When he failed there and the allies drove him out, he used chemical weapons again and moved into the south of Iraq. The marshlands of Mesopotamia are under remorseless attack now. The

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people who live there are known as the Ma'dan. Saddam Hussein has defined them as "lower than animals" as "rats" and as "the scum of the earth".

Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam) : I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I would not have intervened if it had not been about something very important.

Is my hon. Friend aware that, in the aftermath of the Kuwaiti invasion, 625 prisoners of war were taken to Iraq who still rot in those prisons nearly four years after their capture? Is she aware that the Iraqis are still failing to meet United Nations resolutions 686 and 687 for their release?

Miss Nicholson : I am aware of those unfortunate prisoners and also of the prisoners from Britain who are in Iraq. Those include Paul Ride, the son of my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Ride of Bideford. There are other people of different nationalities who have been captured for crossing the border into Iraq inadvertently. I also remind the House that there are thousands of Iranian prisoners in Iraq, and that in Al Gharib prison there are many thousands of Iranian and Iraqi women. Recently those women sent a secret message out saying that, if rescue came, they would rather that a bomb was dropped on the prison. They have been violated so many times that they feel that they cannot remain alive with dignity. I am sure that the Kuwaiti prisoners must feel just the same. Her Majesty puts high on the agenda of her Government Iraq's compliance with Security Council resolutions. Surely it is clear that Saddam Hussein is not complying with any of these

resolutions--particularly with resolution 688. Her Majesty also identifies it as very important that we work towards the effective implementation of the chemical weapoons convention. I believe that our work on that is essential.

There was, I believe, an attack involving the use of chemical weapons in the marshlands north of Basra on 28 and 29 September. Reports came through immediately. They were issued by the supreme council of the Islamic revolution in Iraq, whose honourable representative in London, Dr. Al- Bayati, and his staff work so hard. I also received reports from the borders of Iran and Iraq from witnesses who managed to escape the marshes two or three weeks later. I immediately passed on the evidence that I received to the United Nations Special Commission. Tim Trevan, spokesman for the commission, assembled a team on the basis of the data with which we provided him, led by Jan Fisher and Roger Hill. Last week, that team was in Iran, by courtesy of the Iranian Government, who co-operated immediately and properly and allowed its members access to the witnesses and to the local medical people in the team of the AMAR appeal, which I chair, who also had knowledge.

It appears that the gas was phosgene. A tank commander engaged in the assault was killed, and left in his battle tank a document detailing the protective devices that the army should take with it because of phosgene gas. That surely means that those involved knew which weapon they were using.

In the past two days, we have had news of anti-chemical material that Saddam Hussein has been laying on the ground, of the burial of animals and human bodies and of the transport of army victims--some were harmed by the chemical weapons attack when the wind changed--to

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hospitals elsewhere. I know that the chemical weapons team from the United Nations Special Commission has now completed its interviews in Iran. I believe and understand that it will be proceeding to Baghdad and from there seeking access to the marshlands and the area that we identified for it.

Let me read the House just a sentence or two of what that witness, Mr. Abd Ali Hashim, said :

"The time was eight o'clock in the morning with the army advancing from the Al Fatra area"--

that is close to where he was--

"Around 9 o'clock in the morning I saw white clouds. After I reached the area which was bombarded I saw missiles and I knew that it was chemicals as used by the army. I saw tanks in which there were some masks and later I heard from one of the soldiers that the wind changed course and caused many victims in the army itself. I could see the plants changing colour and wilting the dead bodies had blue skin and blisters. Some soldiers were wearing their masks." Earlier witnesses told us that children turned blue and fell down dead, and animals too. Perhaps the gas was combined with an exfoliant in order to harm the environment as well. We have other details which have come straight from those still in the marshes.

It is important to recall that the United Nations commission has to get details--samples of soil from the site and samples of blood from the victims, for example. We must therefore wish the team well in its difficult search for evidence in the marshlands of southern Iraq. I sent the team a map identifying the precise location of the attack immediately after it happened. It was in the Al Hammar marshes, west of Algatra, south of Al Pyapat and north of Rumyla. I pinpointed it for the team from data immediately provided to me.

Why should we be surprised to learn that Saddam Hussein has been using chemical weapons ? I am not. Victims who came over to the safe haven of Iran after the 1991 uprising had with them clear physical evidence of chemical weapons having been used. Over the past two years, I have told the House of victims coughing their guts out and still just alive and talking of the smell of burnt garlic. This time, witnesses have spoken of the smell of rotten apples.

When I visited the marshes last year, on one of my missions for humanitarian relief, I was warned not to go to a particular spot because it had been bombed chemically the day before. Coincidentally, at the same time as the chemical weapon assaults seemed to have been taking place, the Royal Air Force was overflying six villages slightly north-west of the area bombed by the chemical weapon. I thank most profoundly the Secretaries of State for Defence and for Foreign Affairs for giving me the opportunity to release the first overfly film to be shown which was taken from the cockpit of the RAF Tornado jets. It is the first material that the allies have released of the overfly that we have been carrying out for the past year and a quarter.

Over the area of the Euphrates river, the RAF filmed, and with infra-red treatment identified by imagery, some villages in the marshland area of southern Iraq that have been destroyed. For the benefit of the House, I shall identify village No. 5, which is located south of the Euphrates river in the Hawr Al Hammar marshes. Around 100 ruined buildings can be observed. Scorch marks are visible around some buildings. These show up as white marks on the infra-red images, suggesting that they are warm and that the burning is

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possibly recent. The regular pattern of destruction suggests that the buildings were demolished either by fire or possibly by high explosive detonators. Cultivated areas surrounding the derelict buildings have been destroyed by fire and dried-up riverbeds can also be seen.

The RAF has filmed six villages in this way. It makes it clear to me beyond all reasonable doubt that the data that the victims have been giving us as they have crossed the border into the safe haven of Iran have now been substantiated. Their rice farms have been burned down ; there is no cultivation left possible to them because the marshes have been drained-- the dry riverbeds can be seen on the imagery ; the fish have died and the water buffalo have gone ; the villages have been destroyed and the people have thus been aggressively pushed out. The combined RAF and victims' data is of great importance.

I shall now briefly turn to the question of conventional weapons in the Persian gulf context. I suggest that when Henry Kissinger stated that if we supplied both sides in the Iran-Iraq war we would control the other countries in the region, how wrong we were. I stress the point that the policy of dual containment, which Washington still seems to continue to support, is a mistaken one. It is our duty to pull back the supply of conventional weaponry that went into Iraq in the 1980s. Indeed, in the Iran -Iraq war, 39 countries supplied either or both Iran or Iraq with conventional and other weapons, including consistent offers, and I believe supplies, of chemical weapons, too. In the town of Dezful, in south-west Iran, the entire town was destroyed by Scud missiles. Chemical weapons were used there also and I have seen the effect that that has had on the Iranian earth. In his recent speech, the Prince of Wales called for a greater understanding between Islam and the west. I believe that that is a most important call. I hope that we shall soon have in the Palace of Westminster an opportunity of listening to a debate with Islamic scholars and other experts. Iran will supply the scholars and I believe that we shall be able to obtain the assistance of Islamic professors in Europe for the seminar. I want also to stimulate a debate on Islam and democracy. I hope that these moves will lead to a greater understanding in the west of Iran, which, after all, is the country next door to Iraq--its terrible neighbour. I thank the Iranian Foreign Ministry now, which has been most generous in allowing myself and the AMAK appeal teams of doctors and nurses to carry out humanitarian relief, Mr. Ansari, the charge d'affaires here in London, Mr. Niknam who is senior in the Foreign Ministry and other Iranian colleagues have become friends and partners in this important work.

It is all too easy for the world to forget the cruelty that has been carried out by Saddam Hussein in his grim dance of death. We must not ignore the planned destruction of human, animal, bird, fish, water and soil life that is being carried out in the Mesopotamian marshes and elsewhere in Iraq.

Let me briefly refer to a UNICEF document entitled "Facts for Life." The cover of that document bears a picture of Saddam Hussein, who states :

"The image of the future Starts with the Child."

When I was last at the United Nations, it seemed to me that the deputy Secretary-General's major concern was how quickly he could move on to his next appointment, which was with the Iraqi Foreign Minister.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has said that in the United Kingdom, in respect of foreign affairs, we

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punch above our weight. Let us now do just that with regard to Iraq. Let us call for and organise a Nuremberg trial. Let us disseminate the knowledge which will be given to us shortly by Dr. Edward Maltby, head of the International Union of Nature Conservation wetlands committee, about the destruction of the marshes. Let us work hard for the establishment of a safe zone for the marsh Arabs. It is not yet too late for these and other measures to be implemented. Finally, let us plan with the confidence that no nation has ever been completely wiped out. If we act swiftly, there may still be some chance of saving some of the Iraqi victims from the extinction that Saddam Hussein has planned for them.

1.40 pm

Mr. Robert N. Wareing (Liverpool, West Derby) : I should have liked to raise many issues in this debate had there been time. One issue that I will mention briefly and which the Government should address, relates to the future of the world given the impact of the export of the Islamic revolution from Teheran. It is absolutely essential that we address that problem which is influencing the world from Algeria, across the middle east, through Tadzhikistan and into the Sinkiang province of China.

As I have been the vice-chairman of the British all-party Yugoslav group for the past nine years, no doubt hon. Members would expect me to mention the situation in Yugoslavia. The Foreign Secretary has not really addressed the problem of sanctions against Croatia. Sanctions are being applied and have been enhanced against Serbia despite the fact that the Serbian President and others, including David Owen and Mr. Stoltenberg, have been willing to reach some agreement over the Bosnian situation.

The Government have shown sympathy. The correspondence from the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. and learned Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg), has been most helpful and sympathetic with regard to the supply of medical equipment and other medical supplies to Serbia. However, although the sanctions committee often reaches agreement about the passage of equipment to Belgrade, which has become one of the main routes for the supply of medical aid to the Muslims in Bosnia, an individual member state of the United Nations can defy the sanctions committee. That was the case with equipment that the sanctions committee agreed could be exported from Siemens in Erlangen in Germany. However, that equipment could not reach Belgrade because of opposition from America ; some of the components were American. A recent law case in this country confirmed that. The whole question of sanctions resolutions should be considered.

However, it is often said that Serbia was mostly responsible for the war in Bosnia. Certainly, playing the nationalist card was an issue in Serbia when President Milosevic first came to power. However, it was certainly not confinded to Mr. Milosevic. Both President Tudjman and Mr. Izetbegovic played the nationalist card in that country.

It must be rememberd that when Croatia declared her independence on 26 June 1991, she did not use the constitutional means open to an independent republic within the Yugoslav federation. It is as though Fermanagh and Tyrone, with the aid of the IRA, suddenly said, "We

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