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Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): May I echo what my right hon. Friend has just said? Does he agree that much
of UNSCOM's success is due to the critical role played by our scientists in Porton Down, who have been members of UNSCOM from day one? Does he also agree that the work of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment and the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research at Porton Down are crucial to the enterprise's success?
Sir John Stanley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is right to highlight the significant British contribution in research facilities and some personnel, which has made a material and beneficial impact on the work of UNSCOM teams.
As critical as UNSCOM is, the key point must be made that some have argued--in this debate and outside the House--that hostilities should never occur in order that UNSCOM teams might remain in Iraq. I shall deal with that argument head on. It is not valid if UNSCOM teams are no longer able to do their work. If they are neutralised, that argument falls. Having looked through the paper of 15 December, which Richard Butler submitted to the Secretary-General of the UN--the Government helpfully placed it in the Library yesterday--I am in no doubt that UNSCOM inspection teams are being drastically neutralised. We simply cannot allow UNSCOM to become a token force, simply a flag-waving exercise for the UN or a body that goes only to several declared sites and ignores entirely undeclared sites.
We all know the position in the declared sites; the Foreign Secretary made it clear earlier in the debate. They are so heavily sanitised that, by the time UNSCOM arrives, they are--proverbially--reeking with Dettol as a result of the clearance of anything that may be remotely incriminating. We can therefore no longer rely on UNSCOM inspections. That leaves the Government with only two alternatives: to abandon any attempt to contain the awfulness of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme, or take the action that they have taken.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley):
I especially agree with the last remarks of the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir J. Stanley).
I declare an interest. I chair an organisation called Indict, which was set up to bring Saddam Hussein and his associates before an international criminal court. Some other hon. Members are part of Indict. I want Saddam and his colleagues to remain alive to sit before that court and answer the charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The United States Congress has voted us $3 million to carry out that task. It has also passed the Iraqi National Liberation Act, with the intention of helping the Iraqi opposition to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein--an aim with which I profoundly agree.
Although I am sure that no one in the House wants to see a country bombed--I certainly do not, with my long record in the peace movement--I must tell the House, with profound distress, that in the circumstances I see no option but to do so. The people who have criticised that option have come up with no alternatives. How does one cause a country to comply with UN resolutions? No one has answered that question.
The UN resolutions are endless. For example, there are resolutions 687, 707, 715, 949, 1060, 1115, 1134, 1137 and 678. Most of those resolutions are continually being broken by the present regime in Iraq. It is often forgotten that one of those resolutions calls for an end to the repression of Iraqi citizens, yet Kurds are continually being deported from the parts of Iraq controlled by Saddam Hussein.
I did not realise what was going on, because unfortunately such information does not get out of Iraq. When I was there in 1995, I found that, in the previous three months, 2,000 Iraqi citizens who happened to be Kurds had been kicked out of Kirkuk. Two thousand had been forced into northern Iraq. They had 24 hours to get out of their homes in the areas controlled by Saddam Hussein. That is ethnic cleansing by anyone's definition, and that ethnic cleansing is not a one-off; it is a continuous aim of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Many mentions have been made of the latest report of the UN special rapporteur on human rights. I have followed those reports over the years. Depressingly, year after year, the report is the same. There have been very few improvements in human rights in Iraq since the UN special rapporteur started reporting.
Recently, I attended a conference at which I heard ordinary Iraqis speak about torture in Iraq. One Iraqi spoke about gross violations of human rights, including extra-judicial killings, torture, arbitrary detention, disappearances, mass murder, the use of chemical weapons in Halabja and elsewhere, the mass deportation of 2 million Kurds, the establishment of 110 concentration camps, the destruction of 4,500 Kurdish and Assyrian villages, the laying of thousands of mines, deforestation, drainage of the Arab marshlands, repression of the Shi'ites and some formerly loyal Sunni tribes, discrimination against and oppression of the Assyro-Chaldean and Turkoman minorities, state-directed rape, thalium poisoning, scientific experimentation on prisoners, execution campaigns, state-supported terrorism and the destruction of religious and cultural property.
Dr. Al Hakim of the Organisation of Human Rights in Iraq described numerous atrocities, including those of dissolving bodies in nitric acid, submerging prisoners in septic tanks, forcing them to sit on broken bottles, piercing their tongues with needles and roasting them over a fire. Such atrocities are not consigned to the past; they are facts of life in Iraq today.
In 1991, I and others stood on the mountains and saw the Kurds, who fled in their thousands across snow-covered mountains in scanty clothing with no shoes on their feet. They died in their thousands because Saddam Hussein chased them out of their own country. I shall never forget being approached, in the sleet and snow, by women who pushed bundles at me. The bundles were dead babies. Nor shall I forget taking an all-party group of Members to a London hospital to see some of the victims of Halabja: people who could not speak because
their insides had been burnt, and people who showed the wounds on their bodies. All those were victims of Saddam Hussein's oppression.
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead):
Of course those human rights abuses are abhorrent, but is it not also the case that 7,000 people are dying from sanctions-related causes? That has been said by Dennis Halliday, who for 32 years was the UN official concerned. My hon. Friend spoke about the alternative. Does she not believe that there should be an alternative to the death of 7,000 people a month--many of them babies? Will she say what the next step is--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman has had a good innings.
Ann Clwyd:
My hon. Friend knows that I agree with him on many things. However, I do not agree with him on this issue, because he obviously has not read the special rapporteur's report in detail. The special rapporteur says:
I believe that, while Saddam Hussein and that rotten regime remain in being, the people will continue to suffer. I have no patience with those who apologise for that regime, because the facts are there for everyone to see. I am afraid that, while he persists, the situation of the people in Iraq will continue to deteriorate, because that is his wish. It gives him the opportunity to disseminate propaganda. I am very sorry that some of my hon. Friends, whom I respect in so many other ways, have been duped by that propaganda, because some of the pictures that have appeared were obviously carefully arranged by Saddam Hussein for the media. The media cannot roam at will in Baghdad or any other part of Iraq. The Government of Iraq ensure that the media are taken to those pictures that they want them to see. Please do not tell me that there is a free press in Iraq, because there is not.
In the north, there is an opportunity to see what sanctions do. For me, there can be no argument against lifting the sanctions for the liberated part of Iraq. Why should the liberated part, which holds no truck with Saddam Hussein, still suffer the impact of those sanctions? It is suffering not only United Nations sanctions but sanctions imposed by Saddam Hussein against it. It is the subject of a double set of sanctions.
"Insofar as the 'oil-for-food' programme has been implemented in a discriminatory and not fully equitable or efficient manner, the Special Rapporteur observes that the Government of Iraq is solely responsible for the distribution programme."
Moreover, he says that, for five years, the Government of Iraq refused to comply with UN resolutions in the oil-for-food programme. For five years, when the people of Iraq could have been receiving food and medicines, the Government of Iraq turned down that opportunity. The people who have imposed the sanctions are not responsible for the wretchedness of the people of Iraq. Saddam Hussein and his regime are solely responsible for the situation of his own people.
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