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Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife): I thank the Foreign Secretary for early sight of his statement. Like him, I agree that we should be unstinting in our support for UK forces, and unstinting indeed in our sympathy for those who have died or been wounded in Iraq. The whole House will welcome, as he rightly predicted, the progress in civil affairs that he was able to outline.
May I ask the Foreign Secretary a number of specific questions? What is the Government's view on the number of British forces that will be required to remain in Iraq, and for how long? Are UK forces in the same position as the forces of the US, whose tour of duty has today been extended indefinitely? How many of the dead and missing date from when the UK Government supported Saddam Hussein, who was by then already steeped in the blood of his own countrymen and countrywomen?
The Foreign Secretary will not be surprised if I return to the issue of an inquiry. I ask him to consider this: does not the absence of chemical and biological weapons, the embarrassing and apparently escalating dispute between Washington and London over Niger, the failure to find Scud missiles and the controversy over the February dossier make an irresistible case for an inquiry independent of Parliament and led by a senior judge? If the Government's position is as strong as he has set it out to be, both here today and elsewhere, what do they have to fear? Finally, might I ask him this question? If he was in opposition, would he not be expressing exactly the same view?
Mr. Straw: On the number of British forces, as I have told the House, there are 11,000 in theatre. The number is kept under review, as is the duration of their deployment, but we have already made it clear that the forces will be there as long as is necessary, but no longer, to secure a viable democratic, representative Government who in turn can secure their own security.
I am sorry, but I did not answer the question asked by the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) about the role of NATO, which is being used in Afghanistan. All I say to him is that that is under discussion. As he will know, there are 18 members on NATO's military committee and 19 on the NATO Council itself. Decisions have to be made by unanimity, which he strongly supports in other contexts.
Mr. Menzies Campbell: Qualified majority voting.
Mr. Straw: If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is proposing QMV for NATO, let him come forward. It makes for swifter decisions but, in this field, it produces a certain amount of discontent.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (North Essex): An acquis.
Mr. Straw: The hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) is muttering that we need an acquis.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked how many of those who have been found dead or declared missing by the Red Cross were killed or went missing many years ago. I do not know what the time lines are. We know that up until Saddam Hussein's demise in mid-April, he ruled the country by terror, not consent. His main methods were imprisonment, torture, the denial of the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and, when necessary, death. Many people were killed under that brutal regime.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked about an inquiry. We have debated that before and we shall debate it tomorrow. I was not in the same position as him when I was in opposition. I supported the Falklands war at its beginning and end—I was right to do so. An inquiry on the Falklands that was separate from the House had to be established because the House did not have the mechanism to hold its own inquiries. I believe that the combination of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee is appropriate. The House accepted the establishment of the ISC without a vote. I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to consider the members of the Committee, who are as eminent as those who served on the Franks committee, and to have some faith in the ability of such eminent Members from all parties in both Houses to reach independent judgments.
Donald Anderson (Swansea, East): My right hon. Friend has given a positive report on the progress of the reconstruction of both physical infrastructure, such as electricity and water supplies, and governance, with the establishment of the new council. Is he therefore worried that the picture that our media give the British public is one of looting, shooting and general mayhem in which the population wants the end of the coalition forces' presence? Returning British civil servants reject the gloomy doomsayers and paint a picture of a talented people who are getting back to work and want to make a success of their country after the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. Will my right hon. Friend try to strengthen the information side of the coalition provisional authority so that a rather more balanced picture may be conveyed to the British public?
Mr. Straw: I am grateful for what my right hon. Friend says. We accept the need to strengthen further the communication strategy of the coalition provisional authority and, as the shadow Foreign Secretary said, to ensure that the governing council—quite rightly that has more natural legitimacy with the Iraqi people—will be able to communicate. However, Ministers in a democracy are not responsible for how the media report, and nor should we be. I venture the opinion that it would take rather more than improved communications in Baghdad to get the focus of British newspapers away from where it is at present—no doubt they are pursing their own specific agendas—and for them instead to tell their readers about the situation on the ground. As my right hon. Friend said, that situation is rather different from that portrayed in several newspapers.
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire): If the governing council or the Iraqi people decide that they would like Iraq to be divided into three autonomous or
semi-autonomous regions, notwithstanding likely Turkish objections, would the Government support the decision?
Mr. Straw: We would not support that. The United Nations made it clear in resolutions 1441 and 1483 that it would not support anything that would undermine the current territorial integrity of Iraq. Despite that, there are opportunities for various degrees of devolution to occur. I made the point to a group of Iraqi leaders two weeks ago that our experience shows that devolution need not occur on a symmetrical basis. Indeed, I believe the fact that we have developed asymmetrical systems is the reason why we have been better able to bind the Union. That is a lesson as the Iraqis develop their own constitution.
Mr. Ernie Ross (Dundee, West): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. When our colleagues were alleging that they were concerned about the Iraqi people before voting against the only means of giving them their freedom, we made the point that when the people of Iraq were free, their ability to run their country would be demonstrated. That message is flowing through the middle east and people are finding out that we are living up to our words. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is having an impact on the middle east peace process by helping the Palestinians and Israelis to resolve that problem?
Mr. Straw: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not resile from the fact that that was not the principal basis for the House's decision to go to war on 18 March, but it is worth bearing in mind that resolution 1441 deplored Saddam's appalling human rights record. The simple fact is that containment was not resolving the problem and that it was getting worse and worse. Irrespective of the arguments about whether military action was appropriate, if we had continued with a policy of containment, the atrocities perpetrated by Saddam Hussein would have continued—that is just reality.
On my hon. Friend's second point, it is true that we were told that if military action were taken in Iraq, there would be "conflagration" throughout the region. That has not happened. There was not a single Arab or Islamic leader who did not himself want to see the back of Saddam Hussein. There is no doubt in my mind that the removal of Saddam Hussein has made progress toward a peaceful solution for the Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians infinitely easier in practice.
Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling): Will the Foreign Secretary acknowledge that UN resolution 1441 refers not only to weapons of mass destruction programmes but to the weapons themselves? Does he further agree that the basis on which the House voted for war in Iraq was to disarm not merely Saddam Hussein's programmes of weapons of mass destruction but the weapons themselves?
Mr. Straw: Yes. The resolution is quite clear. There were 15 members of the Security Council. Two members—the UK and the US—took part in the military action and 13 did not, as a matter of record. Those members reached separate conclusions about the
threat posed by Saddam Hussein and it was they who said that the proliferation of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and long-range missile systems and his defiance of the United Nations posed a threat to international peace and security.
Mr. George Mudie (Leeds, East): I wonder whether the Foreign Secretary has noted the statement issued by the new Iraqi governing council that savaged the Arab media for romanticising the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. It also attacked the BBC for
- "not telling the truth about Iraq."
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