| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
22 Jan 2003 : Column 363—continued
Mr. Gerald Howarth indicated dissent.
Mrs. Mahon: The Opposition spokesman shakes his head.
From the moment that resolution 1441 was passed, both the United States and our Government have sought to interpret it as a vote to make war possible, and not a vote for peace. It has not brought the United States back under the umbrella of international law, as many hoped that it would, and the central issue remains: will the British Government defend international law, and by that I mean the charter—not a resolution that has been arrived at by arm twisting, by bribing, by intimidation—which says that when we are not being threatened we should not pre-emptively attack? Or will that fall as a result of United States muscle?
Throughout all this, the Government have refused to recognise the dangers inherent in allowing an unchecked US superpower to set the international agenda. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) for a brilliant speech about that; I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh). Both set out the position with great clarity.
It is a shame that the Prime Minister appears to be set on following President Bush. I think that the Government have shown a great deal of dishonesty in today's debate, and a great deal of cowardice. Not for the first time, they are not prepared to put their position to the vote—but we will call a vote today. I believe that this is our last chance to do so before a war against Iraq.
The Government know that they are prepared to take Britain into a war with Iraq if, or should I say when, President Bush decides to go, and they are prepared to
do so regardless of the UN. I believe that when the Prime Minister visited the ranch in Texas he promised that he would give that support. A deception has been carried on for months. I think the Government are too cowardly to face up to opposition among the electorate and admit the truth. They are too cowardly to face up to opposition within their own party, and they are too cowardly to face up to the hostility expressed by many of our constituents.It is worth going back to the Security Council, many of whose members were against any kind of resolution. They wanted the weapons inspectors to return. During the negotiations on resolution 1441, they supported France's proposal committing Washington to seeking Security Council authorisation. The United States had to do an awful lot of arm twisting to get the resolution through. I think I know why it succeeded.
Some may recall what happened in 1991, when Yemen dared to vote against the first Gulf war. The United States made sure that it withdrew all aid from that impoverished country, and persuaded the Saudis to send the guest workers back, thus wrecking the country's economy. The United States wields enormous economic as well as military clout, and things are no different today. We are left relying on Germany and France, which might be able to use its veto. I think that China will be threatened with the withdrawal of trade with America, on which it relies heavily. The Russians, of course, are worried about oil contracts.
The truth is that the United States, being the only superpower, is corrupting the one international organisation that we should all be protecting. We should be honest about the UN charter: it does not provide for pre-emptive attacks.
I want to say a little about why the United States is going to all this trouble to wage war on Iraq. The point has been well made that the US could not catch Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda, and needs another villain. But when we talk about Iraq, it is also worth talking about oil. The United States already imports 50 per cent. of the oil that it needs, and that need will increase in the next 20 years. According to the Cheney report—named after the American Vice-President—America will need to import more than 60 per cent. more oil in 2020 than it imports today.
Oil is not just an old bit of economic policy; it is indispensable to a modern economy. The protection of oil is a central plank of America's foreign policy. Washington says it wants to eliminate any threat of interruption of the flow of oil, to ensure that it will be accessible to US oil companies and will not be controlled by Russia, China or any European firms. A different and more compliant Government in Iraq would make that possible.
The Americans say that weapons of mass destruction, not regime change, are the issue. Sometimes they change their minds; we hear different versions. We must ask ourselves, why we would bomb Iraq if some weapons were found. Why have we sent the inspectors in? Have we not sent them in to destroy the weapons if they find any? Why do we have to slaughter hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians if we can get at the weapons and contain the regime? The latest UN figures
on projected casualties and refugees make war absolutely unthinkable. How much will going to war so that America can get access to oil cost this country?
Mr. Joyce: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Mahon: No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. He can make his own war-like speech, and I am sure that he will.
How many more recruits will al-Qaeda have if we go to war? What strategy have we to deal with the huge numbers of Kurds and Iraqis who will seek asylum in Britain? When will the Secretary of State for International Development come to tell us about contingency plans? Should the Government be putting taxpayers' money into a needless war when they say that we cannot afford decent public services and when our firefighters are going on strike? Today, we have introduced proposals that will make the price so high that those from low-income families cannot go to the best universities in the country, regardless of talent.
War is not a computer game. I advise my hon. Friends, particularly those who want to sit here and send our young service men and women to war, to read "War Brought us Here"—a Save the Children report on what happens to the children and many millions of innocent victims when we decide to unleash such weaponry on civilians.
I remind the House that it is civilians who die now in any war. People 20,000 ft in the air are relatively safe. Sitting in an inadequate bunker, trying to protect children, or trying to put them to bed somewhere so that they might be alive in the morning, is entirely different. I cannot bear to think about the sheer terror of the parents and mothers in Baghdad at the moment, as the most awesome force in the world surrounds their country and makes ever-more threatening noises.
Little publicity has been given to the civilians who died in Afghanistan. Those people seem to be invisible. I asked the Library how many civilians had died during the successful war in Afghanistan. I believe that the jury is still well and truly out on whether it was a success. Professor Marc Herold of the university of New Hampshire has estimated that, as of 16 January 2003, there have been between 3,100 and 3,600 civilians deaths as a consequence of the US-led war in Afghanistan. Some people think that the figures might be as high as 8,000. The victims of cluster bombs, daisy cutters and depleted uranium should not be invisible. Now and again, we should visit them and have a look at them.
I get tired of people saying that we would not defend ourselves, and I want to give the last word to a man who defended his country. He is one of the bravest men and one of my heroes—after my father. Simon Weston says:
- "This war is wrong. Where is the proof? There is no heart for this one. There is no belief."
4.18 pm
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire): The speech made by the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) has one virtue: consistency. I do not share her anti-United States feelings, but I do wish to concentrate on the possible war in Iraq.
Some 17 years ago, on 6 June 1985, I warned the House of the dangers of Iraq and similar states. I said that
- "if nuclear war ever broke out it would be initiated not by the superpowers but by a nation without any sense of responsibility, where power is concentrated in the hands of the evil, the insane, or the bigoted dictator". —[Official Report, 6 June 1985; Vol. 80, c. 537.]
In terms of international law, Iraq compounds substantial and undeniable violations in many different areas in ways few states can match. Saddam Hussein has used chemical and biological weapons, and, given the leakage of fissile material from the former Soviet Union, it is likely that he is very close to producing atomic weapons. I am in no doubt that he must be denied the ability to do us harm, and if in that process he and his regime are destroyed, hardly anyone anywhere in the world, including the Arab world, will weep.
However, can a defensive war really be justified on the grounds of possibility? Is there a greater threat from Iraq now than there was before 11 September 2001, and what new evidence is there of proven links between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda? I accept that it is impossible to disclose publicly all intelligence without endangering the very sources of that intelligence. But if that vital intelligence exists, it should, as I proposed to the Prime Minister last week, at the very least be made available to the Intelligence and Security Committee, a Committee that the Prime Minister accepts does not leak. To date the Government have not made the case for war or done enough to dispel the impression of the inevitability of a possibly unnecessary war.
So for me the essential questions remain, and asking them should be interpreted as an act not of disloyalty to the armed forces, to which I once belonged, but of rational concern for our enlightened self-interest.
They are as follows. First, can we achieve what our own safety compels us to achieve, short of war? Can we, by showing continued determination and reasoned restraint, make less likely a fundamentalist Islamic backlash manufactured by the political rhetoric of victimisation? If there is a chance that all we need can be delivered without the death of thousands of oppressed Iraqis, should we not at least try all these political possibilities?
We must acknowledge that, however surgical and technologically inspired a war in Iraq may be, however careful we are to safeguard our own troops and accurately target our own munitions, many in Iraq will perish or lose their families, their homes or their livelihood. Saddam Hussein will undoubtedly continue to place legitimate military targets close to population centres, and we shall have to destroy those targets in order to safeguard our own personnel. Every television company will broadcast to the world, including the Arab world, harrowing pictures of the human catastrophe that warfare leaves in its wake, and the closer war comes to Baghdad, the greater will be the innocent casualties.
I have no doubt that pressure on Iraq, reinforced by the clear threat of military action, is necessary. I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein must not labour under any misapprehension as to international determination. But I believe that before the final decision is taken, we should intensify the pressure on the Iraqi regime so that we can achieve what we need without Iraqi and British lives being lost.
So what measures could we consider? I should like to suggest just a few. First, the no-fly zone should cover the whole of Iraq for all Iraqi military fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, and friendly aircraft should have complete freedom to roam those skies and destroy any Iraqi military aircraft that leaves the ground.
Secondly, all Iraqi military installations should be listed, and its military personnel and equipment should be required to return to barracks or agreed positions. Any major military excursion should be met by immediate force.
There should be no limit on the number of weapons inspectors or on their capacity to carry out their tasks and there should be no time constraint. At the discretion of the inspectors, interviews with Iraqi personnel should be in private and take place outside Iraq. We must make, what Saddam Hussein will never make—every attempt to protect the lives of the innocent, be they our own people threatened by the upsurge of Islamic terrorism, or those who have for so long been oppressed in Iraq.
If we can achieve what is necessary by peaceful, albeit admittedly, draconian means, that is clearly preferable. The Iraqi regime must be in no doubt that non-compliance would reap dire repercussions, but it is in our own interests that we demonstrate that war is our last resort.
If Iraq is to return to the amity of nations, it will not be enough to disarm it and leave. Much has been said about the need for the future state of Iraq to retain, after any action, the shape and form that it has now. Such decisions should not be a matter for us, Turkey, or anyone other than a free Iraqi people, with the advice of those experienced in democratic reconstruction. It may well be that, given the three or more different areas and ethnic groupings of Iraq, a loose federation of autonomous or semi-autonomous regions might be preferred. If we want to ensure a Balkans-type war in the middle east, we need only impose an unnatural or unwanted union, a democratic facade maintained by our own troops in order to indulge and assuage Turkish fears of a Kurdish state.
If, on the other hand, we are concerned, as we should be, that a new Iraq offers its people safety, prosperity and opportunity, we must make real the empty principle contained in the declaration to the Seven concerning the partition of the Arab states in 1918
- —"the consent of the governed".
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |