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10.26 pm
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tony Lloyd): My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has raised a number of issues, which I shall attempt to cover. I, too, shall begin by quoting Mr. Halliday, who said in a speech that he gave at Harvard university last November:
- "I am assuming that you consider it appropriate, like I do, for the United Nations to have the power and capacity to attempt to bring into line certain leadership, certain Governments, that are acting outside the bounds of behaviour acceptable to the other Member States."
Sanctions were imposed following Iraq's brutal and unprovoked attack on Kuwait in 1990. At the end of the Gulf war in 1991, Iraq accepted the terms of the United Nations Security Council resolution 687, which brought about the ceasefire. That resolution and others implementing it laid down obligations on Iraq on a number of matters, including the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. It also made it clear that the Security Council would lift the sanctions imposed on Iraq as and when Iraq complied with its obligations under those resolutions.
I take the strictures from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway) about the meeting that is taking place in Cairo, but it is only right to remind the House that, in their final statement, the Arab Foreign Ministers called for a
Thus, there can be no doubt that the resolutions, and the sanctions package that is part of those resolutions, have much wider support than simply that of this House.
Mr. Galloway:
It is important that no one is inadvertently misled. The statement by Arab Foreign Ministers said that they have grave concerns about the bombing of Iraq in December and called for no further bombing. It set up a deputation to go to New York to assist the French initiative to lift the economic sanctions. The Foreign Ministers are for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Mr. Lloyd:
Nevertheless, the Foreign Ministers are also strongly of the view that Iraq needs to conform to the UN resolutions. That is important in itself, because those resolutions commit Iraq to destroying its programme of weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq formally accepted its obligations under that and other resolutions, but its persistent failure to comply with its undertakings has prolonged the sanctions regime, which my hon. Friends urged the Government to examine in the way that they have. I must remind the House that the sanctions regime was originally envisaged as lasting only for months, not for eight years.
I must give examples of how poor Iraq's record on compliance is. Iraq did not accept the UN demarcation of the border with Kuwait until 1994. Earlier this month, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz questioned that border and referred to parts of Kuwait as Iraqi territory. More than 600 Kuwaitis detained by Iraq during the Gulf war are still unaccounted for. Proportionately, that would be equivalent to 50,000 British citizens.
Overwhelmingly, the Kuwaiti missing are not combatants, but civilians; some are women and some are elderly. To date, Iraq has provided sufficient information to close only three of those cases. Meanwhile, the families of the those who remain unaccounted for continue to live with their uncertainty over the fate of their family members.
Persistent evasion, obstruction and, indeed, mendacity on the part of Iraq have meant that the obligations under resolution 687 relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction--which could have been fulfilled in a few months, if Iraq had co-operated fully with the weapons inspectors--have still not been met. Until they are, Iraq will remain a threat to regional peace and stability. Saddam Hussein has used weapons of mass destruction before, with devastating results. In the Kurdish town of Halabja, Saddam ordered the use of chemical weapons, including nerve agents. They killed between 4,000 and 5,000 civilians and injured perhaps 10,000 more.
Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Nothing we have seen or heard from his regime over the past seven years gives us any reason to believe that he would not use them again, if he were given the opportunity.
A look at the human rights situation reminds us what sort of regime we are dealing with. The catalogue of repression and human rights violations over the years still shocks. It includes persistent torture of vocal opponents, routine use of the death penalty to deter opposition, mass executions as punishment and deterrent, relentless persecution of religious leaders, whose very existence highlights alternatives to Saddam's regime, and genocide against minorities.
Resolution 688 demands that Iraq put an end to repression and ensure respect for the political and human rights of all Iraqi citizens. Our insistence that Iraq comply with its obligations does not mean that we ignore or attempt to deny the suffering of the Iraqi people--that was an important part of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow--but we reject the view that lays the blame for their suffering at the door of the international community rather than where it properly belongs--at the door of Saddam Hussein and his regime.
Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield):
Allowing for everything that the Minister has said, what was achieved by the bombing? Are we at war with Iraq? Is it the Government's view that Israel, Turkey or any other country in the world could use the same resolution to attack Iraq? What is the basis of Government policy, other than the fact that they follow Washington and do everything that it tells them to do?
Mr. Lloyd:
My right hon. Friend would not expect me to agree with him. This is a well-travelled road and he has been along it on a number of occasions with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and others. He well knows that the Government entered into the recent actions against Iraq, first, to deter Iraq, but also to degrade its weapons capacity. That is exactly what was achieved.
I return to sanctions, which my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow was particularly keen to discuss. Max van der Stoel, the UN rapporteur on Iraq, talked about the horrendous human rights situation in that country and recorded a catalogue of detail about continued repression and humanitarian abuse in Iraq. He talked about primary responsibility for the precarious food and health situation laying with Iraq and the report gives the reasons for that judgment: Iraq refused to take advantage of the oil for food programme for five years while failing to bring about the lifting of sanctions by refusing to fulfil its obligations.
The report also discusses Iraq's prevarication in negotiations, which caused regular interruption of oil sales, which in turn interrupted the flow of humanitarian supplies. It mentions Iraq's discrimination against those living outside Baghdad in terms of access to medical supplies, and Iraq's restrictions on UN observers of the Iraqi distribution programme, to the extent that areas designated as sensitive areas by the Iraqi Government are rarely, if ever, visited.
While Saddam's regime has allowed the Iraqi people to suffer, the international community, aware of the requirement to find effective ways to meet the needs of the Iraqi people, has sought to protect them from the effects of the embargo, and from the cynical policies of the regime. The sanctions resolutions never prohibited the import of food, medicines and other essential
humanitarian supplies. The Security Council is now considering ways of further improving the oil for food programme to offset the effects on the programme of the drop in oil prices, and other ways in which more revenue can be made available for essential humanitarian supplies. Britain has contributed a number of proposals, including a proposal for the removal of the ceiling on the amount of oil that can be sold, and the speeding of approvals through the sanctions committee. We are also suggesting that the European Union should re-examine ways in which it might complement the UN programme.
While we and the rest of the international community strive to help the Iraqi people, however, Saddam has shown over the years that his only interest in the Iraqi people is as a tool of propaganda. His priorities remain to keep the regime in power, and to sustain his armed forces for continued internal repression in preparation for new foreign adventures.
Mr. Galloway:
If the international community is trying so hard to shield the civilian population from the effects of the embargo, why does the Minister think that, on the reckoning of Dennis Halliday--a man living and working there--between 6,000 and 7,000 Iraqi children under five, or 250 or more every single day, are dying as a direct result of the sanctions?
Mr. Lloyd:
I shall come to that precise point. For a start, the Iraqi Government have chosen, as I said, to ignore the opportunities presented by the oil for food programme. For example, they refuse--despite constant encouragement from the United Nations--to make any effort to prioritise properly what is purchased for the humanitarian programme, or to target the programme on the most vulnerable. They have, for instance, persistently refused to implement targeted feeding programmes for infants, despite evidence of infant malnutrition; nor do they make any attempt to improve the distribution system for humanitarian goods inside Baghdad-controlled Iraq.
It is noticeable that oil for food has had a substantially greater impact on the humanitarian situation in northern Iraq, where the programme is outside the control of Baghdad. We know that the Iraqi Government smuggle large quantities of oil products out of the country for illegal sale. The proceeds of that go to Saddam and his regime, rather than benefiting his long-suffering people.
Let us look at the way in which Iraq tries to prioritise spending of oil for food money. The Iraqi distribution plan for the present six-month phase in the programme allocates less food than it did when the programme was worth only $2 billion; it is now worth some $5.3 billion. It reduces the daily food ration from 2,200 calories to 2,050, and reduces spending on medicine.
The answer to my hon. Friend's question is that this is political choice made by Saddam Hussein against his own people. That is an undeniable consequence of the way in which he manipulates those programmes.
"diplomatic solution in implementing all relevant Security Council resolutions",
and urged
"the Iraqi Government to co-operate with the Security Council in implementing them."
They also urged the Security Council to restore the relationship between the UN and the Iraqi Government in a way that guarantees implementation of the Security Council resolutions properly and objectively.
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