House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Jan 1999 (pt 33)

10.15 pm

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) rose--

Madam Speaker: Would Members leaving do so quietly, please? [Interruption.] Order. We are still doing business here.

Mr. Dalyell: I would not have raised in the House the first aspect of sanctions against Iraq--the subject of the Adjournment debate--had it not appeared in the front of a national newspaper this morning. I refer to the relationship between UNSCOM and those who are responsible for UNSCOM. It was asserted that there were working for UNSCOM those who reported to American intelligence and to British intelligence.

At first hand, some seven weeks ago, I went along with Mr. Bill Griffin and the former Irish Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, and persuaded them to go to UNSCOM when we were in Baghdad. I can only report to the House what happened. I asked whether it was true that Mr. Scott Ritter was, as an ex-Marine, reporting information from a United Nations organisation to the United States. The answer was that he was, and that other members of UNSCOM were ashamed of him. Then I heard Albert Reynolds ask some very strong questions about the relationship between UNSCOM inspectors and their own nation states, and the long and the short of it was that, going out of the room, one of the non-American, non-British officials turned round to me and said, "You British cannot be quite so relaxed about this."

On further inquiry, the clear implication was that British officials were indeed reporting to the British Government or--as the press would have it--MI6. If that is so, it is a major undermining of the United Nations. I have given notice of the question. I did not want to make it a matter of public record because it is a delicate and embarrassing subject, but now that it has appeared on the front pages of the press I invite the Government to make some comment on the matter.

Secondly, I shall refer briefly to the statement of Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, the archbishop of the archdiocese for the United States military services, who said that US bombing of Iraq is morally questionable and that US military personnel should question their actions if ordered to take an action that is a clear

"violation of the moral law."

Archbishop O'Brien is quoted as having said to the Catholic chaplains serving in the US armed forces throughout the world that soldiers, airmen, seamen and Marines

"are not exempt from making conscientious decisions"

when confronted with immoral orders. He said:

"I join the bishops of our country as well as the concerned voices of the Holy See and other hierarchies in calling on our president and his advisers to initiate no further military action in the Middle East".

Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Kelvin): On the subject of the mounting international opposition to British and American policy, has my hon. Friend had the chance,

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as I have this evening, to hear the reports coming from Cairo, where the Arab Foreign Ministers are meeting, where, this very afternoon, the Egyptian--friendly Egypt--Foreign Minister, Amr Moussa, had a meeting, indeed an altercation, with the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett), in which he warned him not to take comfort from Iraq's leaving of the Foreign Ministers' summit because, he said, the Arab Foreign Ministers are unequivocally against any further bombing of Iraq and unequivocally in favour of an early lifting of sanctions?

Mr. Dalyell: There we have the chaplain general of United States forces and the Foreign Minister of friendly Egypt coming to parallel conclusions--chiming with each other. We ought surely to take notice.

Finally, I refer to the statement given at Harvard in November by Denis Halliday, who resigned on principle from his post as UN assistant Secretary-General and chief UN relief co-ordinator for Iraq in protest at the sanctions. The Foreign Office has had an opportunity to study his statement. Thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway) and others, Mr. Halliday will be in the House tomorrow. We shall be extremely interested to hear the Government's reply to his points.

Mr. Halliday says in his statement:

"I see the present sanctions regime representing a certain bankruptcy of ideas, simplistic, unsuccessful, without the desired results."

He continues:

"By denying access to oil sales funds necessary to invest in adequate food intake, a balanced diet, in health care, particularly preventive health care, the provision of electric power, and in the availability of potable water, the absence of which kills Iraqi children in large numbers."

Mr. Halliday asserts that

"the monthly death rate of children under five attributable to sanctions ranges from six to seven thousand per month".

I repeat, 6,000 to 7,000 infants per month.

I am grateful to the Under-Secretary at the Department for International Development for being present. I have a high regard for that Department and what it has done, but the entire Government and all of us should reflect on what those figures mean. Sanctions are responsible for the deaths of 6,000 to 7,000 Iraqi children a month, in the view of the former UN co-ordinator.

Mr. Halliday goes on to say:

"Continuing sanctions are biting into the fabric of Iraqi society and family behaviour."

Another phenomenon is the growth of corruption, which was largely unknown in Iraq in better times. Those phenomena are concerns of the Iraqi Government today, and already are concerns for Iraqi sociologists of the future. In such circumstances, how can Iraq return to the high moral standards that existed before the disruptions caused by the impact of sanctions?

Mr. Halliday refers to the many advances that women in Iraq had made in recent decades, which have been set back. In many individual cases, opportunities have been lost for ever. When I visited Iraq in 1994 and subsequently in November, it was clear that it was an entirely different Arab state from many. Anyone who saw

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the powerful film the other night, "Murder in Purdah", about what happens in Pakistan may care to draw a contrast.

Sanctions, according to Denis Halliday, have largely prevented the reconstruction and rehabilitation of war damage and, he goes on,

"today the people of Iraq continue to suffer greatly from the lack of adequate electric power now running at less than 40 per cent. of what it was in 1990."

Mr. Halliday concludes by stating that

"sanctions continue to kill children and sustain high levels of malnutrition. Sanctions are undermining cultural and educational recovery. Sanctions will not change governance to democracy. Sanctions encourage isolation, alienation, and possibly fanaticism. Sanctions may create a danger to peace in the region and in the world. Sanctions destroy Islamic and Iraqi family values. Sanctions have undermined the advancement of women and have encouraged a massive brain drain.

Sanctions destroy the lives of children, their expectations and those of young adults. Sanctions breach the Charter of the United Nations, the Conventions of Human Rights, and the Rights of the Child. Sanctions are counterproductive, and have no positive impact on the leadership and sanctions lead to unacceptable human suffering, often of the young and innocent. As I have said already, I can find no legitimate justification for sustaining economic sanctions under these circumstances. To do so in my view is to disregard the high principles of the United Nations' Charter, the Convention of Human Rights, the very moral leadership and the credibility of the United Nations itself."

Those words were spoken by a man who has given his working life to the United Nations. He went on:

"Continuation also undermines the global role of the United States."

I should like to hear the Government's response to that distinguished Irishman, who will be here tomorrow.

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