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Mr. Salmond: The right hon. and learned Gentleman examines such things extremely carefully, so he will have noticed that the Government amendment refers to the existing command structure, as did President Bush's "Come and join us" appeal earlier this week. Will he confirm that he is not in favour of the existing command structure being sanctioned by the UN, but rather that he is looking for one that is properly authorised by the UN?
Mr. Campbell: I thought that I had already said that, but if it is necessary to repeat it, I want a command structure based on that for Gulf war one, which was both legitimate in terms of the legal powers that it created and politically acceptable because it required the command to be answerable to the Security Council. That is why I responded to the hon. Member for Ceredigion by saying that we were much more likely to achieve those objectives through the UN than by following the existing arrangements outside the UN.
Such a force with such a mandate ought to be able to attract contributors from militarily capable nations such as France, Germany, India, Pakistan and even perhaps Turkey. I used the words "militarily capable" deliberately; it is one thing to have troops assigned from a member of the UN to a command of that kind, but we
must have troops that are properly led, properly equipped and properly trained. Some hon. Members will remember the lessons of Bosnia where troops were assigned to a UN force—a blue-helmet force—with inadequate provision by all three of the criteria to which I referred. Troops were arriving without personal weapons and without boots. If we are to restructure the command as I have suggested, we must do so in a way that will attract troops from militarily capable nations.That of itself will not be enough to attract such support, as some of the preliminary observations made by the representatives of those countries at the UN made clear. There will have to be parallel political development. Even with an expanded and more representative security force, there will be no shortcuts to stability in Iraq. Stability and security will depend on political progress and on the civil administration in Iraq being the responsibility not of the coalition—increasingly seen as occupiers— but of the UN, which would, in my view, enjoy a far greater legitimacy and acceptability.
For those who are students of such matters, I fancy that the next fortnight in New York would be a most interesting occasion if one could participate, even silently, in all the meetings that will take place, because they will essentially involve that peculiar UN operation of barter and exchange, negotiation, offer and counter-offer. However, any new resolution, as finally agreed, must provide the vital role for the UN promised by both President Bush and the Prime Minister, not just in words, but in substance as well. It must embrace the urgent objective of restoring sovereignty and democratic control to the Iraqi people. It must ensure that the process of transition from the present arrangements comes under the auspices of the UN. We should ensure that the responsibility for economic reconstruction and rebuilding in Iraq is as soon as possible placed with an Iraqi provisional Government, assisted by the UN.
The deployment of British forces can be justified against such clear objectives. I also want to make it clear that a desire to rescue the deteriorating situation in Iraq, which virtually everyone now recognises, is no endorsement of the action that has given rise to that position. I said at the outset that my scepticism remains undimmed. Analogies in these matters are always deeply dangerous, but let me suggest that the doctor who treats the victim of a serious assault neither endorses nor justifies that assault in so doing.
I cannot believe that it is in the interests of the people of the United Kingdom, whom we are sent here to represent, that Iraq should further deteriorate and that there should be instability in that country, which would inevitably have consequences for the stability of the whole region. We have a moral obligation, but there is also a deeply pragmatic obligation as well.
Firmly rooting remedial action in the UN is, in my judgment, an acknowledgement of the UN's pre-eminence, for which Liberal Democrat Members at least have consistently argued, and far from being an endorsement of military action, which I still believe was unjustified at the time that it was taken, it is in truth an implied rebuke to all those who sidelined the UN. I have said before—I am flattered that the Foreign Secretary has quoted it from time to time—that the UN is no more or less than the sum of its members. It is not a third party
to whom we can contract out our security or, indeed, that of the Iraqi people. It requires our engagement, and if, as we do in the motion, we set out a series of steps that we regard as essential, we have an obligation to recognise that we have to continue to engage, and, if necessary, we have to engage with further resources in the form of troops and—who knows?—perhaps even in the form of financial support.When Sergio Vieira de Mello and Fiona Watson, who was one of my former constituents—incidentally, her coffin was draped with the UN flag at her funeral—were both brutally murdered, they were acting for us and in our name, as much as were any of those in uniform who have been so tragically killed.
The UN is not and never will be a perfect instrument, but it is the best means available now by which to ameliorate the present condition of the Iraqi people and to improve it to the point at which they can resume full responsibility for themselves. That is why I commend the motion to the House.
4.44 pm
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Jack Straw) : I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
- "supports the vital role played by the United Nations in Iraq as endorsed by UN Security Council Resolutions 1483 and 1500 (2003); pays tribute to the Secretary General's Special Representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello and his colleagues brutally murdered in the terrorist atrocity of 19th August; welcomes the determination of the United Nations Secretary General to remain engaged in Iraq; further welcomes the initiation of discussions on a new UN Security Council Resolution on Iraq, which aims to reaffirm the United Nations' support for the work of the governing council, calls on the governing council to submit a timetable and programme for the drafting of a new constitution for Iraq and for the holding of democratic elections, proposes a United Nations-mandated multinational force under existing unified command arrangements and encourages UN Member States and international organisations to help the Iraqi people by providing resources for rehabilitation and reconstruction at next month's conference in Madrid."
The role of the UN has been at the heart of the issue with Iraq for more than a dozen years. During that time, Iraq achieved the unique distinction of having more mandatory Security Council resolutions against it than any other country in the United Nations' history. Its record of defiance in response to the Security Council's demands put Saddam Hussein's regime into a category of its own. That unenviable record led the House to make the decision on 18 March, by a majority of 263,
that the only way to deal effectively with that defiance and the threat that the Security Council had already agreed that it posed to international peace and security was through military action.This time last year, we were involved with our Security Council partners in an intensive dialogue as to how we could enforce the writ of United Nations resolutions in Iraq. That dialogue became a negotiation, which led on 8 November to the unanimous adoption of resolution 1441. It is worth reminding ourselves of the key elements of that resolution. It declared that Iraq represented a threat to international peace and security, which is a key trigger for the use of chapter VII powers. It gave Iraq a "final opportunity" to bring itself into compliance, and it spelled out how it was to do so in the clearest possible terms. If Iraq failed to meet the conditions, 1441 warned that "serious consequences" would follow. Diplomatic parlance is notoriously ambiguous, but that phrase was understood to have only one meaning—military action. I say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that it was understood to be interchangeable with "necessary means" or "necessary measures".
I do not downplay the significance of the United Nations' subsequent failure to agree on the so-called second resolution in March. Indeed, it was a matter of great personal regret to me. I travelled to New York four times between January and March in an attempt to a secure a consensus on the need to enforce those terms of the resolution. We all worked hard to try to achieve that consensus, but we were unable to do so. Divisions were also apparent in this House in that momentous debate on 18 March. Some took the view that containment was working, or, alongside that, that more time should be granted to the United Nations inspectors. The Government's view was that that would simply play into the hands of a regime that wanted time without end. As I have already mentioned, the House therefore endorsed the Government's position and decided to enforce those "serious consequences".
In the aftermath of coalition military intervention, the immediate challenge facing the international community is to bring peace and the rule of law to a country that has been brutalised for almost a quarter of a century. Our task is to help the Iraqi people rapidly build a nation from the ashes of Saddam's dictatorship and to do so with the United Nations. In April, at the Hillsborough summit, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and President Bush called on the United Nations to play a vital role in the reconstruction of Iraq. It has been doing so ever since. The World Food Programme, with its Iraqi counterparts, got the public distribution system for food rations fully up and running in June. UNICEF and the World Health Organisation have made major contributions to the restoration of health services, which have included the successful containment of the cholera outbreak in the south of the country, maintaining supplies of essential medicines and resuming child vaccination programmes. The United Nations Development Programme has been helping to restore electricity services, and the Government, through the Department for International Development, have been providing very considerable support. DFID has committed £113 million to the United Nations' work in Iraq, alongside other funds in respect of other programmes.
In all this work, particularly in the south of the country, the work of the civilian agencies has been supported and in some instances made possible by the exceptional work of British troops. I cannot emphasis often enough—I know that I have the approbation of the whole House—the admiration that we all have for the skill, expertise, courage and determination of our troops. It happens that by chance on Saturday I met a group of service personnel who were literally about to leave for Basra. Some were with their families. Tears were being shed. It was striking in the brief conversations that I had what stoicism our troops were showing, and what commitment to the cause and to the highest traditions of the British armed forces.
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