Examination of Witnesses(Questions 1-19)
WEDNESDAY 12 FEBRUARY 2003
RT HON
CLARE SHORT
MP, MR ALISTAIR
FERNIE AND
MR PETER
TROY
Chairman
1. Secretary of State, thank you very much for
at really very short notice coming and giving evidence to the
Committee and thank you very much also for the memorandum which
members of the Committee received this morning which obviously
will be published with the minutes of today's hearing and circulated.
The Prime Minister said last week that there needed to be a humanitarian
campaign as viable and as worked up in detail as the military
campaign, and I think we are interested to try and understand
what is happening on the humanitarian front. There are no value
judgments inherent in us doing that, we collectively just want
to try and have a better understanding of what is happening, although
I think it is common ground, and I notice that the Economist
last week said that many aspects of the war hanging over Iraq
are unpredictable but one is not; the unusual vulnerability of
the civilian population. There are two reasons for this. Firstly,
about 60% of the population, or 16 million people, are 100% dependent
on central government for basic needs. They survive only because
the government provides them with a food ration each month. Secondly,
after two wars and decades of mis-government and 12 years of exacting
sanctions there is no fat to rely on. I think we are all conscious
that the background is pretty grim. What assessment has DFID made
of the likely humanitarian consequences of an attack on Iraq?
Of what has that assessment been made and are there lessons that
can still be learned from what happened during the Gulf War?
(Clare Short) The most important point that we have
been working to get all the potential actors to face is that there
is not one scenario. The knee-jerk, the first approach of all,
was to talk about aftermath and day after, but if there is to
be military action, how it comes about and is organised will affect
massively the humanitarian considerations and anything that happens
thereafter. It is not military over here in one box and humanitarian
comes along afterwards, but that is the mind-set of commentators—we
saw it in the debate in the Commons last week—and indeed
of international systems. This is a new kind of conflict, it was
true in Kosovo, it was true in Afghanistan, it is massively true
here, and I think the British military are getting better at thinking
in that way, but systems are bad at it, and it has taken us a
lot of effort to get some of those engaged in contingency planning
for military action to think about the humanitarian consequences
of how they undertake the military action. So there are a lot
of people predicting a short campaign where the people of Iraq
welcome liberation from Saddam Hussain—that is the most
optimistic scenario—they will fall away from his authority
and things go quickly and then there will be a big effort to keep
things moving, because of course 60% of the population are dependent
on Oil-for-Food, so there are big humanitarian consequences on
that optimistic scenario. But clearly you cannot plan only on
optimistic scenarios, and there are very considerable risks, as
we indicate in the memorandum. The NGOs have highlighted that
initial bombing to take out electronic capacity and so on could
lead to destruction of a lot of basic infrastructure which is
in bad shape anyway, and that will affect the population which
is in very bad shape, and disruption of Oil-for-Food could leave
a lot of people without the very basic necessities of life. There
is a risk of the use of chemical and biological weapons, which
is the most dreadfully serious scenario in which humanitarian
organisations would not be present and the military would have
to deal with it—what would it be and how many people and
how do you do it. It is one of the worst scenarios. So this is
a very complex emergency to try to plan for. We need to be as
clear as we can, and get all actors, including the military, to
think through the consequences for people and have a lot of flexibility
in the preparations, and that is what we are trying do.
2. I will ask a very short machinery of government
question following that. Clearly there is lots of military planning
going on because the Secretary of State for Defence keeps coming
to the House and telling us about more and more troop deployments
and so on and so forth. How are DFID officials linked into the
military planning? Who is talking to people in the MoD? How at
the machinery of government level is that working?
(Clare Short) We are linked in but we had a bit of
a struggle to get fully linked in, and we are linked in with other
UK departments in discussions with the US but getting the US military
to take on humanitarian considerations was very difficult in Afghanistan,
where it was very apparent because we had 9 million people having
to be fed by the World Food Programme before the crisis and throughout.
So progress is being made but it is difficult and it is not just
in this crisis that it has been difficult, it was difficult in
Afghanistan, we are making progress now and there is more and
more facing up to some of the humanitarian risks. I would not
say it is complete and it is fully in place but we have made some
progress in recent weeks.
Hugh Bayley
3. Can I move on to the UN agencies? In the
eventuality that a veto is used in the UN Security Council against
a further resolution on Iraq, what would the legal position be
in relation to UN agencies such as UNHCR, the World Food Programme,
UNICEF and the WHO? Would they be able legally to provide humanitarian
relief? More generally, how well prepared do you think UN agencies
are, how well resourced are they, how well funded are they, and
how willing are Iraq's neighbours to allow the humanitarian agencies
to prepare for providing humanitarian assistance on their soil,
in other words, to stockpile food and vehicles and so on in neighbouring
countries?
(Clare Short) I am not aware of the legal position
but I cannot believe for a second that any difference of view
in the Security Council or anywhere else about UN authorisation
for potential military action would affect the humanitarian duties
and the humanitarian system because that duty lies there at all
times for all people, whatever side of any conflict people are
on. I think that is overwhelming and would be clear. The big question
is how much authority would the UN system have in leading any
recovery, and we all know the position in Afghanistan and the
legitimacy of the new government flowing from the UN's legitimacy,
and those issues have not been settled and they are very big,
very important issues. If the UN is not the leading authority
it would make the situation complex for UN agencies, but I think
they would still take it as their duty to engage if they could
reasonably engage. How well prepared? The contingency planning
is very complicated because the different scenarios are very different
and no-one can be certain. We have to prepare for the high risk
although obviously the low risk is the easiest to be organised
for. I think the UN system also had a lot of difficulty early
on in starting preparations because it did not want to appear
to be preparing for a war that it did not want, so there was a
bit of slowness at the beginning but I think for some months now
the UN system has said, "No, of course we have got to think
of all eventualities and prepare for them and that does not pre-suppose
military action", but of course their projections of need
vary enormously. The possible numbers of refugees could be very
high or much lower, that is one obvious example. They have put
out some financial appeals and they are pre-positioning stocks.
The financial appeals are fairly recent and have not been fulfilled.
They put out a $37 million one and then a bigger one of $93 million.
They are drawing down on some of their own resources to pre-position
materials.
(Mr Troy) There has been some degree of confusion
about the UN funding figures in terms of their appeal. Their original
appeal was for about $37 million, which was based on one of their
lower case scenarios. Subsequently, UNHCR increased their planning
assumptions in terms of numbers of case load it would be called
for them to deal with, so their figure went up from $11 million
to $60 million in terms of requirements—this is adding in
all of the UN agencies—and the current total requirement
is about $93 million. There are figures used of $154 million which
I have seen but that is based on calculations over a six month
period. We are working on the basis of $93 million.
(Clare Short) The other thing to say is that some
UN agencies are more accurate in their appeals than others. Some
are well-known for (in any emergency) maximising their demand,
so you have to take some sort of account of that. We fund all
these agencies and have made a contribution recently to the preparations,
but there is a real problem here of the enormous strains on the
international humanitarian system, which are very considerable,
we have got so many crises around the world, both in funding and
in the capacity of people and institutions to provide food and
reach people who are in need. I think there is also a problem
of willingness to provide funding when the political situation
is divisive. That is a further problem for the UN. As yet they
are preparing and pre-positioning and not being prevented from
taking preparatory action. The final question that Hugh asked
was regarding neighbours allowing preparations. All the neighbouring
countries have got great difficulties with their public opinion,
which are very great indeed for them, and they do not want to
be seen to be preparing for a conflict to which their public are
overwhelmingly opposed. There is no problem with pre-positioning
stocks. I have not heard of any problem and you would not expect
that problem. In terms of preparations for potential refugee movements,
there are problems. There are problems of experience from last
time. I think the only country that has openly said it would open
its borders is Syria, so contingency planning is complicated and
some of the borders are desert areas. This is very difficult.
4. We will come to refugees later, but in relation
to the role of the UN agencies, should there be a veto from some
UN Member States, in other words should military action be taking
place without an explicit UN Security Council mandate, there are
of course circumstances when a conflict is going on when humanitarian
agencies have to work with the military, for instance if there
is believed to be a chemical weapons attack you would want information
from the military about what chemicals, over what area, and what
the consequences are and what the casualties are in order to consider
what the humanitarian response would be. In circumstances where
the military campaign is not a UN-sanctioned military campaign,
could that kind of co-operation nevertheless go on between UN
agencies and any military leadership?
(Clare Short) As I have said, I think the UN's humanitarian
mandates are an obligation whatever, but the complications of
the actual situation might be very great. For example, the possible
use of chemical and biological weapons is enormously complicated.
Most agencies would remove their staff. They have no way of protecting
them so there would not be humanitarian operators there. I think
it is highly likely, if that were to happen and civilians were
to be hurt that the military would have to provide help and support
for people who had been hurt. It is very likely that many humanitarian
agencies in the practicalities of these agencies would not be
able to protect their own staff, and of course in certain scenarios
in military conflict one of the risks is a lot of disorder and
then, being such a tyrannised country, you could get a lot of
fighting and disorder and then it would be very difficult for
humanitarians to operate. So you could get order breaking down,
which is very difficult for humanitarian systems to operate in.
Those are some of the very difficult scenarios where again you
would expect military personnel, whatever military personnel they
were, to be the first providers of basic food and order and care
for people. You will remember that in Afghanistan humanitarian
practice and the law wants very clear rules about the role of
the military and the separate role of the humanitarians. I think
if there were military rule without UN authority, in good humanitarian
practice—and I will ask Peter to come in on this—that
will create a lot of strains and trouble for humanitarians who
want to do their proper job but not be agents of the military.
Of course if the military action is seen as less legitimate in
terms of UN authorisation, I think that complication would be
greater.
(Mr Troy) If I may just add to that. Clearly you will
be talking to the NGOs later and they will have their view to
represent, which they have a right to give. As far as UN agencies
are concerned, the humanitarian principle that they would tend
to apply is that they would not want to use the assets of what
you might call belligerents in any event, so they would be looking
to utilise assets from non-combatant nations. That pre-supposes,
of course, that those assets are available to use. That is the
position that UN OCHA would state as its humanitarian principle.
Alistair Burt
5. I would like to stay in the same area briefly,
if I may. You referred at the start of your answer just now to
the fact that should there be action then the humanitarian issues
and the military action will not be in separate departments but
they will be rather messed about together. What is your understanding
at the moment of the degree of co-ordination between international
agencies and NGOs and the military in terms of their planning
for this, and in particular the fears that NGOs and others raise
about the blurring of the lines between humanitarian and military
boundaries? How well prepared are you for that? As far as our
own military is concerned, who is taking the lead in deciding
what our own army will be involved in should it come to the bit
in terms of their humanitarian work? Will this be left to the
military side or is your Department closely involved in that?
Lastly, what assessment have you made of the effectiveness of
the UN Disaster Group and the disaster management teams?
(Clare Short) I think myself that the significant
role for NGOs will not be in the first phases if there is military
action. Because of the complications and because of the risks,
it is unlikely that it will be so orderly that there will be a
big NGO role during that very complex phase and, of course, in
terms of preparations for all of that, there are great difficulties
because the military are not willing—any military—to
talk openly about their plans, so for NGOs to plan, which would
need to be alongside what scenarios there might be, is very difficult
indeed. I understand the US has been meeting with their NGOs but
I do not know what their meetings have been like. With the struggle—although
we had made progress—for my Department to get into detailed
discussion with the military, it would not be possible to open
that up to British NGOs. What we say in the submission is that
we will be as open as we can be as things develop and on whatever
scenario NGOs will be properly briefed when the time comes. The
other thing to remember is that, unlike Afghanistan, there are
very few NGOs operating in Baghdad-controlled Iraq so the number
of people out there already is very limited in number. So there
is some liaison with NGOs and we have liaison with the ones we
already fund and we will have some more liaison, but what can
be talked about in some of the detail about the risk of military
action is really very limited currently. In terms of the military
and the UN system, I do not know what the current arrangements
are. In the case of Afghanistan, we had the whole international
system, we had lots of humanitarians represented at CENTCOM, the
co-ordinating headquarters for the US, but they were all on the
fringes. There is not yet anything like that, is there?
(Mr Fernie) UN agencies are in contact with the UK
government and the US government. They are very keen not to presume
anything and to preserve their independence and neutrality but
there are also discussions about learning lessons from Afghanistan
and ensuring that humanitarian agencies, including UN agencies,
can play their proper role, not necessarily co-operating with
the military but working alongside doing distinct functions. Those
discussions are taking place.
(Clare Short) They are a bit general in the nature
of these things because of course the role of the UN post any
potential conflict is not settled, and that is a further complication
obviously, as to where the leadership lies and therefore what
any co-ordination might be or might not be, given the humanitarian
principle of not being dependent on military assets. In terms
of my own Department and USAID and so on, within our governments
we are talking and liaising and, as I said at the beginning, that
talk is improving. In terms of the UK there has to be clear agreement
on what the objectives of any military intervention might be,
and we are talking very seriously with our own military about
ensuring that humanitarian considerations are fully inserted into
any proposals for the purposes of any action.
6. One of the agonies for you here must be that
you make the point about no-one making any presumptions about
what will happen, and that must surely be the case, but action
could follow a UN resolution (or not) terribly quickly and what
you are describing is so many things that are not being done now
and cannot be done now because no-one wants to make a presumption
but that is going to mean a very short period of time in which
those key decisions and deployment have to take place. Will there
be enough time?
(Clare Short) Indeed, but there has been a speeding
up in the last weeks in terms of pre-positioning, thinking through
scenarios, being ready to act, and there has been a speeding up
in getting the military to think about humanitarian risks. It
is not as full or as complete as I would like it to be but it
is intensifying very deeply. The danger is that there is not full
preparation for the risks. There is preparation for what is the
hopeful scenario but that is not good enough—what happens
if something goes wrong and we need more effort? You are holding
this inquiry and I welcome it and that is why I welcomed the debate
on the floor of the House. The mind of the world regarding when
there is going to be a military action is still on very old-fashioned
military action and the humanitarian angle is a totally separate
thing that happens afterwards. With the complex emergencies we
get now, that is not so, and we have trouble each time, but we
have made progress and I think this inquiry will help again.
Tony Worthington
7. Could I follow on from that because I am
finding this very useful. The Secretary General of Amnesty International
held a press conference yesterday urging that the Security Council
of the United Nations should be discussing the humanitarian consequences,
and South Africa has said it is willing to put that forward. Personally
I think it is utterly irresponsible to embark on action without
thinking about the consequences on an international scale. What
would the British response be to a request for discussion at the
United Nations on the humanitarian consequences of this action?
(Clare Short) I cannot speak for the Foreign Office
who lead on giving instructions to our mission in the Security
Council, but there is a genuine commitment in our Government to
think through and try to have the humanitarian considerations
fully taken on board, and my own view is if there is to be a second
resolution it is massively desirable for the world, and indeed
for the people of Iraq, that there is united and considered UN-authorised
action, if there is to be action, and that any such authorisation
would have to take account of the needs of the people. 60% of
the population need Oil-for-Food for pure survival and the people
are in very bad shape, children are very malnourished and any
military action is likely to disrupt that. I do not see how the
UN could think of authorising without considering things such
as who is going to have the authority to keep things running,
what is going is going to happen if there is no oil, and how is
food going to be purchased. That has not been taken forward very
much up to now but I think there is going to be serious consideration
in the second resolution, and humanitarian considerations simply
have to be taken into account.
8. You mention that 60% are dependent for food
already on outside resources. We have had discussions recently
with James Morris of the World Food Programme and we know about
the situation in Southern Africa and in Angola and in Ethiopia
and Eritrea and so on. The issue is about, firstly, can sufficient
food be delivered to meet the needs of any war in Iraq, and secondly,
can it be delivered without damaging other needs, because what
James Morris was saying to us was perhaps for the first time in
food issues it was not about clearing the pipeline to get the
food through, it was about whether the food was there.
(Clare Short) I saw James Morris recently in Addis
Ababa and I really admire the World Food Programme's achievements
in Kosovo and Afghanistan. I really thought the pipeline was going
to break in Southern Africa. We worked very hard to help there
and they have done extremely well in my view, but they are very
constrained in money and pure resources because of the number
of crises we have got in the world. There is that problem. There
is a funding strain on the organisation. They are pre-positioning
stocks, but there are all sorts of potential problems because
if Oil-for-Food can keep working that is one scenario but if it
were to completely break down then where is the food coming from?
It would have to be procured and if there is a lot of military
activity you get blockages of ports and so on. It will be a very
complex problem with very great dangers and it will require enormous
concentration and resources to make sure food gets through.
(Mr Troy) We do understand that there is quite a degree
of stockpiling going on within the centre of South Iraq. I have
heard figures of three months' supplies being stockpiled by families.
Whether that is verifiable and correct remains to be seen.
(Clare Short) Hang on, so many people are so poor,
I think that would be wealthy people. Given the poverty and hunger
of children, those families whose children are so chronically
malnourished, what we read in the newspapers about stockpiling,
it cannot be everyone, it is just impossible.
(Mr Troy) The Secretary of State is correct of course.
(Clare Short) Of course!
(Mr Troy) Just some figures of what the World Food
Programme are planning on. They have an initial case load of something
between 4.9 million to 9.6 million people but that includes Iran,
Turkey, Syria and Jordan as well. For those figures we are talking
about a six-month programme of food assistance from $300 million
to $578 million, so there are pipeline and funding issues and
potentially difficulties over delivery issues as well.
9. There are issues related to the temperature
in the area. They say troops cannot function adequately when it
is over 40 degrees centigrade. Are there any aid issues and food
supply issues or non-food supply issues that are affected by the
terrain and the temperature?
(Clare Short) There is a very serious issue of potential
refugee movements in desert type areas with not enough water that
have been thought about, and I am not sure anyone has got solutions
in place. That could be very serious.
(Mr Troy) The delivery mechanisms and systems that
exist are primarily run by national staff who are obviously more
familiar and able to cope with the extremes of temperatures. On
the assumption that those national staff remain and are able to
continue in their work, there is at least a resource base to continue
food deliveries.
(Clare Short) You remember in Afghanistan there were
Afghans doing the delivery at the end of the line, Afghan lorry
drivers too. If you can possibly keep the local networks they
are much the best because they know the people and know how to
operate. The aim ought to be even if the top of whoever runs Oil-for-Food
is not there any more, the networks stay in place so that the
basic medical supplies and food can get through to families right
across the country.
10. This is a lorry network?
(Mr Fernie) It is worth emphasising the immense scale
and superb organisation of the Oil-for-Food system. It is the
biggest food distribution system in the world. It is bigger than
the whole of WFP operations elsewhere in the world and it is largely
run by Iraqis. There are 50,000 Iraqis who are running warehouses
and running delivery systems with lorries. They have got an incredibly
complicated and well functioning computerised database system
to inventorise what they have got, where it is coming from the
port, and how it is getting distributed. They have got rationing
systems. They have eliminated a lot of the problems with food
distribution systems elsewhere in the world. On top of that, you
have got a relatively small number of people from the UN in the
Centre South who are monitoring it. The key issue is to minimise
and, if possible, avoid completely, and that might not be possible,
the disruption period when that Iraqi system is not operating.
There may be a need for WFP and other elements of the international
community to fill in some gap. The key priority is to try and
make sure that Oil-for-Food in the short and medium term continues
to operate in some system and the Iraqi people know how to operate
it and make sure there is a management and financing system in
place so they can continue to operate it until something else
can be put in place.
(Clare Short) There are a lot of educated Iraqis,
there is a lot of institutional competence in the country and
it would be great to try and preserve that and use those Iraqi
systems to make sure people are being cared for in the short-term,
otherwise we could have terrible disruption and disaster.
Tony Worthington
11. Who commands the distribution system, Saddam
Hussein?
(Clare Short) It is under the UN, it is under Oil-for-Food.
There are rules about that, there might be relatively few in terms
of who delivers but there are quite a lot of UN people round the
system trying to keep it going. There has been some improvement
in the sort of allegations there have been over the years.
12. It is difficult to believe in the middle
of a war that Saddam Hussein is going to allow people to distribute
food.
(Clare Short) Indeed. Of course if areas of the country
were to fall away from his control and not welcome or be loyal
to him you would not expect any central authority to wish to be
helpful to them. You could imagine that all of the Iraqis working
in the network would want the food and basic medicine to still
get through to the people who lived in their part of the country
and the job would be to try to keep the mechanisms working that
deliver to people across the country working. It would be complex
but that would be the thing to go for.
Mr Colman
13. Secretary of State, you spoke at the beginning
about a scenario that the bombing would take out the infrastructure,
are you confident that the hospitals, residential areas, vital
energy sources will not be bombed even if the Iraqi troops are
near by? Do you think there is a role for DFID in terms of the
joint planning of potential targets? Is there a way that military
options can be refined to minimise humanitarian consequences?
(Clare Short) As you know in the Gulf War that took
place bombing destroyed masses of the infrastructure. We are discussing
and trying to ensure that targeting takes account of the frailty
of the infrastructure and the needs of the people of Iraq, the
weakness of the sanitation and the water systems and the dangers.
People are just about keeping going through what basic systems
there are there, that they are not destroyed or if there is any
destruction that there are pretty quick repairs is essential otherwise
we could have sewage, a lack of clean water and then terrible
illness, and those crises could develop rapidly. We are trying
hard to get them to listen I cannot guarantee our success but
we are engaging with those issues.
14. Are you involved in an assessment of the
humanitarian consequences of targeting electricity supplies or
taking out roads and bridges?
(Clare Short) We are making the humanitarian points
and being listened to by our military.
Mr Battle
15. Could I ask questions about potential refugees,
in the last Gulf conflict there was an estimated 1.8 million displaced
people from a population in Iraq of 26.5 million, and unlike Afghanistan
most are living in urban centres. The UNHCR estimates that there
could be 900,000 refugees, 100,000 in need of immediate assistance,
and they also go on to estimate there could be half a million
in camps on the borders, that may be in those desert areas to
which you referred. What is your Department's estimate of displacement
refugees as a result of the crisis?
(Clare Short) You are right that UNHCR has scenarios,
and it needs to. It seems to me there is no way anyone can predict
how many refugees there could be because there are so many different
scenarios. The most optimistic scenario is that the region would
persuade Saddam Hussein to go into exile, that could be one scenario,
and he would agree to have all of his chemical, biological and
nuclear efforts dismantled by the inspectors then one would expect
very few refugees. The worse kind of complicated military scenario,
say with the use of chemical and biological weapons, is you might
get very large numbers of displaced people—8 million people
live in Baghdad. UNHCR has to prepare for a range of possibilities
and has some scenarios on numbers. My point is that it has to
be flexible planning, you have to try and minimise the disruption
that leads to vast movements of people, because that probably
means they are moving away from pretty awful things, but you have
to prepare for the danger.
16. I think you said that only Syria said it
would open its borders. Turkey is taking completely the opposite
view, that it will protect its borders and not let anybody move
across. Is it likely that people will move to Iran? Have there
been conversations with the authorities in Iran to plan for border
camps or great transitions of movement across that border? Are
there plans to have people in camps in Iraq?
(Clare Short) There are still refugees from the Gulf
War in Iran and we are involved in supporting them. It is UNHCR
that talks with the neighbouring countries about these plans.
There is a sensitivity, which I referred to earlier, about making
public statements about neighbouring countries' plans. Have neighbouring
countries apart from Syria made their position public?
(Mr Troy) The High Commissioner for refugees has written
to all of the neighbouring countries to remind them of their responsibilities
with regard to refugees and potential refugees. It is their responsibility.
(Clare Short) I think some of them are not planning
to have open borders. You will remember we had that in Afghanistan
too because Pakistan already had a lot of refugees and they said
they did not want any and they did not want to open their borders.
That was an issue in that crisis and it is likely to be similar
here.
17. It just strikes me that we never manage
refugee crises well, particularly when we mix it with a conflict.
For example in Afghanistan there were camps in Pakistan, then
post the conflict people were moving back and there were views
that they were being moved back too quickly and it would have
been better to hold camps in Afghanistan. The Islamic republic
in Iran is saying they want to persuade refugees to remain within
Iraqi territory in safe areas, are those part of the planning
for safe areas in Iraq?
(Clare Short) It is UNHCR who are making the plans.
I am in some difficulty here because I do not want to say things
that governments in surrounding countries do not want said. There
is some planning and contingencies of camps near borders, but
not over borders, and countries are reminded of their international
obligations. All of those things are being prepared for, and they
need to be. I think the handling of the refugee crisis in Kosovo
after the disaster at the border when the Macedonian Government
would not let people through was pretty good. People came out,
settled and have gone back home. It was a big effort but I think
it was pretty good and the Kosovans were amazing and got home
and rebuilt for themselves, so it is not always disastrous.
Mr Battle: Fair point.
Ann Clwyd
18. As one of the few people who saw what happened
when the refugees fled over the borders of Iraq in 1991 in the
direction of Iran I hope I never see what happened on that occasion
again, when they were not ready to receive them, although Iran
was better than most other countries because it did keep its borders
open. The chaos that ensued on the mountain tops as the Kurds
were fleeing in particular was a dreadful sight and many people
died unnecessarily because the assistance was not there to receive
them. I would hope that all the bordering countries can be persuaded
to keep their borders open because Turkey, as you know, in 1991
brought its borders down very quickly and stopped refugees fleeing
across there. I do not think Iran was ever properly appreciated
for what it did for the Kurdish refugees in 1991. I saw the very
well leaked UN Report and they estimate about 900,000 refugees.
There is also some concern about the heavily mined border areas
and the belief that people will be fleeing all over the place,
or they could be, in one scenario, and there will be a lot of
wounding because of unexploded ordinance. I wonder how much account
had been taken of that and what preparation is being made to show
where people can exit to without causing too much damage?
(Clare Short) I am going to comment generally and
then bring Peter in particularly on the mines question. I think
these considerations underline the overwhelming case for a Security
Council resolution if there is to be action. The complexity of
all of this if there is not a unity internationally will be dreadful
and the possibility of things being well prepared will be much
more difficult. Although these contingency plans are being made,
and I have made the point about the best possible scenario having
a very limited number of refugees, but military action got complicated
and went wrong are, to a degree, likely to lead to high numbers
of refugees and if there is not pretty strong united support for
military action then dealing with some of the consequences in
terms of who is willing to contribute to it will be even more
complicated.
(Mr Troy) Perhaps I might initially comment that I
concur that the Iranian Government has an excellent record in
hosting refugees in enormous numbers. As far as mines are concerned
there is a very serious potential difficulty with mines along
the borders, whether Kuwait or else where. At the moment there
is no United Nations mine action service programme within Iraq.
They are geared up and ready to respond as needed but the thing
about mine clearance is it can be a rather slow process, so the
threat to fleeing displaced refugees is something that we will
have to confront and deal with. This is something that we have
raised in our discussions with the Ministry of Defence as part
of refining the military options, ensuring they do address the
fact that there is a serious risk to civilian populations, and
no doubt to themselves as well. We would expect the military to
do initial mine clearance but their standards of military mine
clearance are not the same as humanitarian mine clearance, so
there will need to be some fuller programme on that.
Alistair Burt
19. We have spoken about refugees but in addition
there are about 1 million odd internally displaced people in Iran
and UNHCR does not have a remit for them. Who will have a remit
for internally displaced persons in the event of conflict?
(Mr Troy) We would presume that UNHCR would be given
that responsibility. I do not think that is determined at the
moment. One thing I did not mention earlier is there is a conference
to be held in Geneva this weekend hosted by the Swiss Government
where all of the UN agencies, a good number of the donor countries
as well, we will be represented, and some of the neighbouring
countries of Iraq will also be there. This is a unique, very helpful
and useful opportunity to raise a number of points that we have
been discussing here today.
(Clare Short) Let me repeat, the question of if there
is an action and afterwards and if the present regime falls or
is removed in some way how will the country be managed and where
will the leadership be if the UN is not settled. We have talked
about the UN agencies engaging anyway but I think the complexity
of them engaging if there is military leadership will be very
difficult.
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