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Mr. Corbyn: Has my hon. Friend cared to reflect on the fact that it is odd that, once the report had been received by the Secretary-General, there was no opportunity for the Security Council to meet to discuss what to do with it? Instead, the United States and Britain took pre-emptive action and started bombardment, thus rendering the action illegal under the terms of the UN charter.
Mr. Home Robertson: What was there to talk about? We have been through all this only a month ago and many times before that. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) can make excuses for the Iraqi regime if he wants to, but I do not intend to do so. The domestic political situation in the United States had nothing to do with this.
It is worth mentioning that the Defence Secretary in the United States, who played a part in the unanimous decision of the Security Council in America to go ahead with the action, is a lifelong Republican. Would he be doing that to save the bacon of a Democratic President? I rather doubt it. I have total confidence in the integrity of our Prime Minister and my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Defence.
As a Scottish Member of Parliament I think it is right and proper that Scottish service personnel are involved in this operation and I pray that they will all return home safely. Scots can and do--they always have and I hope they always will--contribute to effective international enforcement and peacemaking operations precisely because we are an integral and vital part of the effective armed forces of the United Kingdom. Most of us in Scotland are determined that that will always remain the case and that we will remain part of a powerful and effective security family.
I want to dissociate myself in the strongest possible terms from the comments made by my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway) and for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). It is nauseating nonsense for my hon. Friend the Member for Kelvin to suggest that the United Nations is responsible for the suffering of the Iraqi people. There is nothing to prevent the Iraqi Government from importing the humanitarian and medical supplies that their people require. They have deliberately chosen not to do so. They seem to prefer to use their own people as pawns in a cynical power game.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury):
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) who, for many years, was a distinguished member of the Select Committee on Defence, which I have subsequently joined. I hope that he will not be offended if I say that whereas he said that he spoke as a Scottish Member of Parliament, I speak as a British rather than just an English Member of Parliament. I entirely endorse the sentiments he expressed at the end of his speech.
The whole House is agreed on the gravity of these events. Hon. Members in most parts of the House have expressed support for the action. We feel pride in those men and women in uniform who are risking their lives for our sake. It is important to remember that they are doing that far away from their loved ones at a time when most of us are about to go home to our Christmas dinners and our families.
I want to discuss three points. First, I want to deal with the objectives of the mission, a subject on which much has been said already. Secondly, I want to discuss the means of achieving those objectives and, thirdly, in a non-partisan way, I should like to discuss the implications for two areas of the strategic defence review.
I shall deal with the objectives first. Over the past few months, we have heard a number of statements saying that we were determined to force Saddam Hussein to comply with the requirements of the UN weapons inspectors. Important as those requirements and inspections are, that cannot be a military objective. I think that the Prime Minister was right to implicitly acknowledge that by
settling for a lesser objective when, in his broadcast yesterday and in the House today, he chose to say that we were focusing on damaging Saddam Hussein's capability.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was right to say that we should go for a greater objective and that, in the long run, the aim must be to get rid of Saddam Hussein. We must be clear about the fact that no fuzzy intermediate objective is possible. Either we seek to kill or remove him and install some other regime, or we settle for merely doing what damage we can from the air.
It is Saddam Hussein who will decide whether or not to comply with the requirements of the UN weapons inspectors. If, as long as he is there, we try to pretend that we can force him to do so when he has set his mind against it, we will simply discredit ourselves in the eyes of those in the Arab world because they will know that we will not be able to deliver on that while he is there. That is why I believe that, in the long run, we will have to face the prospect of getting rid of Saddam Hussein and installing another regime. The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), who has just left the Chamber, spent some time discussing whether it was enough simply to bomb.
I would not pretend for a moment that this will be an easy task. Removing Saddam Hussein would be difficult enough, but ensuring that his replacement was a more reasonable Iraqi Government would be equally as difficult. Next door to Iraq is Iran, which has one of the most bloodthirsty Governments in the world. That country knows very well that the majority of Iraqis are Shi'ite and it would dearly love to annex Iraq and create a power bloc even worse than the one we face now.
I want to make just one point about the means of achieving our objectives. It may prove impossible to deal with Saddam Hussein by air power alone. Barring a lucky accident where bombing catches him outside the deep vaults where he tends to shelter when it is occurring, I fear that it will probably prove insufficient. On the last couple of occasions when I went to Beirut, by chance--I hope that I was not entirely to blame for it--serious bombing occurred. On one occasion, I was struck by the extraordinary capacity of reinforced concrete to resist the Soviet rockets which have much larger warheads than the cruise missiles that are available to us. As a result of his experiences in both the last Gulf war and the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein is making colossal use of this. Indeed, the Prime Minister in his statement testified that in one particular building, the cellar was as big as the superstructure, enjoying, I suspect, this protection.
As we bomb it is sad to think--I am particularly aware of the presence of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell)--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) is not in the Chamber, so the hon. Gentleman should not refer to him.
Mr. Brazier:
I stand entirely rebuked, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Although we can see him, I accept that he is outside the Chamber. I am aware of the hon. Gentleman's earlier remarks, although I am on the other side of both arguments from him. Saddam Hussein and his regime will have gained considerable comfort from what they have seen in Kosovo. Whatever the rights and wrongs there--this is not the time to discuss it, but I am against more
We cannot rule out the use of ground forces, bloody and difficult as that may be. I do not underestimate for a moment the scale of involvement necessary. Throughout the Arab world, moderate states, some of which might wish to lean towards us, have seen the west huff and puff at Saddam Hussein over a number of years. Indeed, in 1991 they saw him stay in power after the allied onslaught. However wrong we may think the analysis, they saw both Ronald Reagan and Lady Thatcher, for different reasons, depart from the scene while Saddam Hussein remained. There is a danger that he will feel stronger if the bombings fail to achieve a substantial reduction in his strength.
The Secretary of State should look at two areas of the strategic defence review again. [Interruption.] Would he like to intervene?
The Secretary of State for Defence
indicated dissent.
Mr. Brazier:
In testimony to the House and in even more detail to the Select Committee on Defence, Ministers and commanders were open about the fact that, in implementing the defence review, they would have to abandon the ability to mobilise a large field army. The televised testimony of the Chief of the Defence Staff was that, if we were to engage in two operations of the size of the one in Bosnia, one would have to be abandoned after about six months. Our Chairman was so astonished by that answer that he repeated the question. Surely I do not have to remind the House that we are already involved in one Bosnia-sized operation--in Bosnia.
I understand that, this morning, Sir Charles Guthrie made clear the scale of the operations that would be required by the allied forces if we have to use ground forces in Iraq, as some of us believe may eventually prove necessary. That suggests two points to me about the SDR. The first relates to our industrial base, and I must in part disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey (Mr. Colvin). It worries me terribly that we should be asking our defence industry to blend with those of our European neighbours, such as Germany, which reluctantly supports this operation and is contributing nothing to it, and France, which appears actively to oppose it. Even more immediately serious, we must secure our supply of ammunition from the Royal Ordnance factories. For more than a year now, British Aerospace has said that they are not financially viable and are close to closure. God knows, we had enough trouble getting one category of shell from the Belgians. What would it be like if, in a few months' time, we were to deploy our troops on the ground and find that, of our tiny war stocks, only a few days' supply remained and we were reliant for all our ammunition on our continental neighbours?
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