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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 65-ii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

Defence committee

 

 

Iraq

 

 

Wednesday 26 January 2005

MR MARTIN HOWARD, LT GENERAL JOHN MCCOLL CBE DSO,

MAJOR GENERAL NICK HOUGHTON CBE and MAJOR GENERAL BILL ROLLO CBE

Evidence heard in Public Questions 308 - 332

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee

on Wednesday 26 January 2005

Members present

Mr Bruce George, in the chair

Mike Gapes

Mr Dai Havard

Richard Ottaway

Mr Peter Viggers

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Witnesses: Mr Martin Howard, Director General, Operational Policy MoD, Lt General John McColl CBE DSO, former British Military Representative in Iraq, Major General Nick Houghton CBE, Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff (Operations) and Major General Bill Rollo CBE former GOC MND (SE), examined.

 

Chairman: Welcome to this further evidence session that is focused on continuing operations in Iraq. The inquiry follows last year's inquiry by the Committee into lessons of Iraq. In late 2004 we took evidence from the Secretary of State principally on the deployment of the Black Watch at Camp Dogwood. Following the session we had the opportunity to visit the troops when we went to Iraq in early December. This afternoon's session will cover a wide range of issues all related to the Coalition's efforts to stabilise Iraq, including security sector reform. In the run up to the elections in Iraq these are very topical issues. We expect to be interrupted by a series of divisions in the House at about quarter to five. If we have not managed to complete our session at that point - which we will not - then I understand that you are able to come back on 2 February and we are very grateful to you. The first question is from Peter Viggers.

Q308 Mr Viggers: It is convenient to start with the military to police cooperation issue as we took evidence on this subject this morning from several witnesses. The policing dimension of the operation in Iraq was not considered until the fall of Baghdad when the Association of Chief Police Officers received the first call from the Home Office. What specific lessons for international policing would you say have been learned as a result of Operation Telic?

Mr Howard: Perhaps I could start and then I will ask my colleagues to join in and give more expert testimony. I think that we have gone through a process of recognising in Iraq that we needed to provide support for the formation and training of a police force. That has gone through a series of stages. We have actually deployed police officers into MND(SE) and they also operated more broadly across Iraq from a number of nations. I think that we have had to take into account the security situation as we found it and there is a sense in which it has been necessary to focus on policing to deal with the specific security situation which has tended to be more at the law and order end and preserving law and order rather than necessarily community policing and so on and so forth. Our training and advice has focused on that. That is evolving and will continue to evolve and will of course vary across different parts of Iraq. In terms of lessons learnt I think policing is perhaps one of a number of post-conflict lessons which we have learnt from both Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the things that the Government has done is to announce the formation of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and DfID. The director of that has been appointed, as you know, and we are expecting the Unit itself to have an initial operating capability later this year. It is not only concerned with policing but it is intended to deal with a range of, if you like, non-military issues in the immediate post-conflict stabilisation phase and certainly dealing with policing as well as immediate reconstruction will be one of the issues it would deal with. We would imagine that as the Unit develops that it would identify officers that might be available for deployment into a post-conflict situation. I think that will probably be one of the main strategic lessons we have learned but I could ask Major General Rollo to say something about his experiences as GOC in MND(SE) and then perhaps Lt General McColl to talk more generally about the Civilian Police Advisory and Training Team which was based in Baghdad.

Major General Rollo: From my perspective you have to look at each situation as it comes. It seems to me to be more important to adapt to what you find rather than necessarily to say that there is a firm, clear doctrine which says we should do this every time. Coming to it in July I found there was a large police force backed up by a relatively small but relatively well-trained national guard. We went from there through August and the upsurge of violence then. That went away after Najaf and Sistani's intervention. The things that were important to me were to improve the quality of the police force and that had both an immediate and a longer term component. The immediate component was to make sure that, should there be a return to violence, there was a section of the police force which we were completely certain we could rely on for public order. Therefore we re-enforced the development of what we call a tactical support unit of about five hundred people and expanded the concept across all four provinces. In the longer term there were measures to improve both the command and control of the police force and also the quality of the people in it and there was a Baghdad driven programme to do that. The other aspect was counter-terrorism and some of the more specialist provision. That, again, became more possible as we had increasing numbers of police available to act as instructors through the Armor Group and Dynacore. There are a number of strands you could take forward but the key was to adapt to what we found and adapt it to the circumstances.

Q309 Mr Viggers: Perhaps before you answer further, General, I read last week that the Ministry of Defence handbook on the treatment of prisoners of war runs to 106 pages and I realise the extent to which it is an inherent part of military operations to plan for other aspects of the battle, to plan in detail for how you would handle prisoners of war. Surely there should have been similar planning for handling policing matters.

Mr Howard: I endorse what Major General Rollo says; it is a question of the situation that we found on the ground at the time. I think that one of the things that happened at the end of the combat phase of Operation Telic which was not really expected was the extent to which the existing Iraqi security forces - and you have to recognise that the Iraqi police before the war were a rather different animal from the police now - as a whole very largely melted away. We found ourselves in a situation where there was a very large security vacuum. There was a vacuum in other areas as well in terms of civil governance. As Bill said, what we had to do was deal with the situation on the ground as we found it. I believe that the Coalition actually moved quite quickly to try to recruit Iraqis locally to provide rudimentary police services. It is not the way ideally we would have gone about it, but, as I say that was how we reacted to the situation on the ground. Perhaps I could ask John to say something about the Baghdad perspective on this.

Lt General McColl: The Iraqi police training was wrapped up within MNSTCI run from Baghdad; the Multi-National Support Training Command based in Iraq had an element in it which was devoted to the training of the police. The numbers of those police were revised during the six months I was there last year; they were revised upwards. I think the point about reassessing the requirement and adjusting to the circumstances we found ourselves in is absolutely right. Not only that, but there was also the requirement to alter the way in which the police were perceived and the idea of police primacy which certainly was not something which was the case in the posts at Almeira; the police were very much the bottom of the pile which explains some of the problems we had about the quality of the people we initially had in the police. There was a requirement over time to review that and try to improve it; that is still going on. In terms of lessons that came out of it, I do not think this is something which the police were able to do on their own in the particular circumstances of Iraq and I think the same thing is true in Afghanistan. I don't think it is something the police can do on their own. I think the lesson is that there is a requirement for an integrated approach - police and military - which varies depending on the circumstances.

Q310 Mr Viggers: Are you now confident that the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit will be given the mandate and the funding and the place in the Whitehall policy process to be effective?

Mr Howard: That is certainly our intention. I am on the board which supervises it as a representative of the Ministry of Defence and we are very keen that this Unit is a Unit which actually delivers effect on the ground when it is needed. So yes, that is our intention, but it is still developing; we are still recruiting staff. In particular we need to develop the database of outside experts that the Unit can call on to be deployed. Of course, that is not just police as I said; it is a variety of experts. I am confident that that is what we would want to do and that is what we will aim to do.

Q311 Mike Gapes: Mr Howard, can I ask you about the MoD's perceptions in March of 2003 as to what was going to happen with regard to this situation? In the evidence session this morning it became quite clear that the Foreign Office and the Home Office had not done anything or thought about this question of policing and you referred to the collapse of the Ba'athist regime. Did the Ministry of Defence have any prior thought about that issue? Did you talk to the Home Office or the FCO before the actual start of the operations in March?

Mr Howard: I was not in this post at that time. In fact I was in a related post, I was Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence at the time which was pre-war. I was certainly aware of intelligence assessments of the possible course of conflict if it should start. I do not recall anything from those assessments which suggested the complete disintegration and disappearance of the Iraqi security forces that we actually experienced. However, those were from a military or a defensive perspective and obviously the focus was primarily on Iraqi combat units rather than the police service which, as John has said, was very much the lowest of the low and really did not figure in our calculations. I am not aware of anything from my knowledge where we explicitly looked at how we should deal with policing in the aftermath of conflict. I think in general we were thinking about how we would work with the civil authorities in Basra which was obviously the principal city that we would be occupying. Obviously security was part of that. I do not recall anything specifically about policing but I could research that for you and come back to you.

Q312 Mike Gapes: That would be helpful because clearly there is a real lesson to be learned here for future operations, a gap where you have to start again with the training -we have seen the training that goes on and the various other things when we visited - and there is that period where there is nothing. That is part of the problem. The legacy of that is what we are still dealing with today. It amazes me that no-one in any of the departments seems to have given any forethought to that issue in February and March of 2003.

Mr Howard: All I would say, to repeat what I said earlier, I do not think anyone expected the sheer extent to which the security forces and the bodies that would supply security in Iraq would simply just disappear. It would have been not unreasonable to have expected some of those still to be have been intact for us to plug into and help manage with the local civil authorities, but in fact there were none. While I accept there are lessons to be learned I think we need to be careful that we do not draw an absolute doctrinaire lesson from the particular circumstances of Iraq. General Rollo was very eloquent on that point.

Q313 Mr Havard: We took a lot of evidence this morning - you can read it later - that we have a Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit, a lot of talk with the police this morning about the Strategic Task Force (which seems to be going to do a lot of things between now and July) largely run by the Foreign Office but with the rest of you involved. There was a lot of talk by the police about doctrine to deal with these issues. There is military doctrine but they need some sort of doctrine centre to understand how they go on and how these things mesh together. There are all these processes being unveiled to us which we are being told would obviate the problem that we saw last time, which is that some of these things were not necessarily done as quickly as they should have been. I have a local chief constable who says to me that the police were actually asking to get involved in this process and yet the process did not allow them the involvement as they would like it. It is a question about embedding people, is it not? You had military people from Britain embedded in the American planning process and vice versa, so how is this process embedded in? How are they going to be involved? You then meet circumstances which change so how then do they adjust? We did not seem to have processes to deal with that; we seemed to be dysfunctional. Has that lesson (a) been identified: yes; (b) learned: maybe; and (c) applied? That is the bit I am after.

Mr Howard: I think you are right about processes.

Q314 Mr Havard: So are they going to be involved in the planning next time?

Mr Howard: I would like to think so. Of course, this is not necessarily something for the Ministry of Defence.

Major General Houghton: You are quite right to identify that nationally we have not previously held a standing deployable capability of police instructors or trainers; this has been done on an opportune basis, a voluntary basis at the time. As we have gone into a conflict situation we have relied upon our own military police capability and the ability of our military to train domestic police in skills appropriate to immediate post-conflict situations to bide time for this more voluntary effort to be generated within the UK but also in an international context. There are other nations who do have deployable police capabilities: the Italian Carbonari and French Gendarmerie and those sorts of things. I think, as Martin said earlier, the identification that this was a national shortcoming is represented by the formation of the PCRU and the fact that they will now proactively be involved in the planning for the post-conflict phase ab initio and at the time that the conflict phase is embarked upon they will be starting to join up those capabilities - not just police but more widely within the civil sector - that are needed to be employed rapidly in the post-conflict phase. With some degree of assurance, but only as viewed through Ministry of Defence eyes, the advent of the PCRU and the work it has embarked on should go a long way before rectifying this identified shortfall.

Mr Howard: An important point to add perhaps is that we would expect the PCRU to be very closely involved in planning for any future operations - this is an essential part of what we do - so that they are aware of what the military planning is and can plan accordingly.

Q315 Richard Ottaway: I appreciate that lessons have been learnt, but you almost seem to be admitting that there was no planning at all for the post-war conflict period so far as the police were concerned.

Mr Howard: As I have said, I would need to check that in our records to see if there are any documents. I should make the point that in the Ministry of Defence our primary concern was, in the first instance, the defeat of the Iraqi forces, and also the general provision of security. Our interest would have been, as quickly as possible, to be able to hand over to appropriate civil authorities on the ground. The fact that those civil authorities - including the police - simply were not there was a factor that we had to deal with at the time. I do not think planning for establishing from scratch a civilian police force would have been one of the things that we would have assumed we would have to do prior going into Iraq.

Q316 Chairman: Any future operation - which will not take the form of Iraq - will need to be up and running far quicker because that fatal couple of weeks had long-term consequences. The next conflict is not the same as the last one, but the luxury of training people like in Bosnia or Kosova is a luxury we cannot expect as a matter of routine. We will come back to this next week and, as Mr Havard has said, the session this morning was very interesting and I am sure you will have a look at it before you come next week. I have a question in two parts - one is now and the second part will be the first question I will ask next Wednesday - and that is about the elections. The determination of the Coalition and the interim government to hold the election is matched by the resolve of the insurgents and their terrorist allies to disrupt the election. I am not going to fall into the trap of what I would accuse the media of, of being obsessed with the negative side and neglecting the positive side. There are 125 political parties which I think is positive in the Iraqi context and there is excitement about voting and the will to vote despite the negative side of people getting killed and maimed in order to exert their pressure on a future Iraqi government. Without wishing to let the enemy know what the planning is - which is not something I would particularly relish and you would not fall into the trap if I were setting it, which I am not - is please can you tell us what you believe the strategy to be overall in Iraq and certainly in our own area of the different layers of defence and the fact that in one area a lot of policemen have not turned up for their duty? In some areas there will be far too few police officers which I hope is a gap which will be filled by the Coalition troops who are there. Obviously being very careful, perhaps you can give us a few insights and then next week the first question is: congratulations, it all went all; or where were the mistakes made?

Mr Howard: You are quite right to say that it would be inappropriate to go into detail, but I would like to make two points. Firstly, the security situation will vary enormously across different parts of Iraq and so there is no one size fits all here. The second point in principal is that as far as possible we want security for the elections to have an Iraqi face rather than a Coalition face and that the Coalition should be there in support of the Iraqi providing the first line of security.

Major General Houghton: I absolutely endorse what Martin has just said. The nature of the security operation will differ from place to place and one of the guiding principles is that the security should wear an Iraqi face. If one likes to tier the levels of security that will be provided then it would be at the ballot boxes in the polling stations - of which I think there are 5300 - that that would be an Iraqi police face because that would be the most normal level if a relatively normal level of security was in that particular area. The second level is that of Iraqi reaction forces primarily held within the army - although some with police - whether or not within the Iraqi intervention force whether the Iraqi National Guard or Iraqi national units. Then as a backup to that multi-national core forces more held back as a mobile reserve so that they could move to have an effect in time and place in a particular area where they might be a particular security problem. However, I think more widely you need to put the context of the security of the elections into the nature of the security campaign as a whole. For example, the decision to mount the operation in Faluja before Christmas was seen very much as a need to break some of the resistance of the insurgency and shatter and dislocated them in a way that they would be put on a back foot at the time of the elections themselves. The nature of the security operation has been building for some time. There are also certain resorts to emergency powers that Mr Allawi's government intends to take. You might have heard them in the press in terms of restrictions of movements and motor cars and this sort of thing, so that it would be easier for Iraqi security forces and Coalition forces to interdict potential suicide bombs, vehicle borne IEDs on the move. I think the final thing I would say without straying into anything that is too secure, is that the nature of the security operation for the elections does not end with the closing of the polling booths late on the day of the elections. There is the need to preserve the security of the ballot boxes and all that as they are moved to centralised collection and that sort of thing. I think within the constraints of security that is as much as I could sensible give as a flavour for the sort of security that will be laid down.

Q317 Chairman: You did not mention the UN protection force protecting ballot officials. Are they an important element in this?

Major General Houghton: The UN protection force is there purely to act as either inner- or mid-ring security for UN personnel, not for the IECI personnel.

Mr Howard: IECI personnel are Iraqi and it is essentially an Iraqi operation although it is sponsored by the UN.

Chairman: All right, we will move away from that. All I can do is to express the hope that all these brave people who are coming out to vote will be in sufficient numbers to create legitimacy for the election and I hope that our forces and other coalition forces will be very secure. It is not going to be an election as one would find in Switzerland or Norway but I hope it will provide sufficient legitimacy for any new administration. That is my personal view.

Q318 Mike Gapes: The United States is sending a retired four-star army general, Gary Luck, to do a complete assessment open-ended review of its entire military operations in Iraq which, as I understand it, includes troop levels, training programmes, what they are doing for the Iraqi security and also counter-insurgency. Can you tell us, is our Government in any way - or are British officers involved in any way - in that process? Will they be working with that assessment team over the next few weeks? Do we have any civil servants involved or is this a purely American operation?

Major General Houghton: The Luck Commission has been and gone and is now back. He returned last week. We have had, as it were, a hot de-brief of its findings. The UK contribution to it was two-fold. We had a naval captain, Bob Sanguinetti, as part of the military element of the team; we also, on behalf of the UK, had a senior policeman, Colin Smith, ACC from Hampshire. You are quite right in the nature and scope of the mission: it was to do some sort of audit purely about the security line of operation and not the overall nature of the campaign which clearly involves many other lines of operation. Its principal focus was an evaluation on how well capacity and capability building was going within the Iraqi security forces. It is probably premature to reveal the considered view of that because it has not yet been formally briefed in through an American chain of command and we really only have the read-out from our element of it which did not have access to every single piece of that mission's activity. I think that the bottom line would be that by and large the nature of the ISF capacity training capability plan in overall terms is fine. There are no silver bullet solutions yet to be unearthed but there are definitely some elements of focus which, over the next twelve months, the capability and capacity building needs to focus on. I think I would perhaps summarise that as being less a concern with numbers, less a concern with the kit, training and recruiting bit; greater emphasis on leadership, greater emphasis on mentoring and battle and operational inoculation and a greater emphasis on growing those elements of security capability which are fundamental to the Iraqi security forces inheriting the responsibility for the prosecution of a complex counter-insurgency. By these things I definitely mean the operationalisation of an Iraqi C2 mechanism and greater capacity within its intelligence gathering capability.

Q319 Mike Gapes: Is there actually a report that has been completed as a result of this visit or are you just talking about verbal impressions?

Major General Houghton: It is not the intention of General Luck to commit to paper a written report.

Q320 Mike Gapes: So I cannot ask for a copy?

Major General Houghton: No, in hugely cultural American style he is producing a PowerPoint presentation. The degree to which he might subsequently be required to commit some of it to paper one does not know.

Q321 Mike Gapes: Have you seen the PowerPoint presentation?

Major General Houghton: We have seen some extracts from the PowerPoint presentation but they are stamped, as it were, "Not yet for release".

Mr Howard: It would be unreasonable for us to say more when even the President has not been properly briefed. The point I would add to that is that it also includes the development of the relevant security ministries as well; that is an important part of it. It is also worth saying that we have been doing our own thinking and have reached very similar conclusions as it happens. We think about these things as we go along as well.

Lt General McColl: You asked about the British contribution and I would like to make the observation that in the course of these consultations in theatre he would also have had contributions from British staff officers and British commanders who are embedded within the multi-national force of Iraq and the MNSTCI organisations that I referred to earlier. In terms of influencing and informing the outcome of the PowerPoint presentation that is being produced there would have been a British contribution in that sense.

Q322 Mike Gapes: I have also understood that there is a separate fact-finding mission including British people studying Iraqi policing. Is that true?

Mr Howard: It may well be the case; I do not think it is sponsored by the Ministry of Defence.

Q323 Mike Gapes: I was just wondering if the MoD was involved in any way in giving advice on that.

Mr Howard: It has not come across to me.

Q324 Mr Havard: I want to turn my attention to force levels. We seem to see a situation - as I understand it and I may have it wrong in which case you can correct me - where the United States in particular is now making declarations about maintaining or bringing its force levels to a particular status for 2006. We have seen the President talking about potential four year periods. Force levels are related to exit strategies and all the rest of it and maintenance in between. Given the circumstances on the ground, we have now committed an extra four hundred with the Fusilliers going out and so on. Do we have sufficient resource there now? Are sufficient troops on the ground to do the job? Is that the assessment or are we going to see some more additions in the near future?

Mr Howard: I think in broad terms it is very difficult to speculate precisely what is going to happen in months ahead and the deployment of the Fusilliers has a very specific mission which is to do with the elections and that obviously makes complete sense. I think in overall terms we certainly would not anticipate any significant increase in force levels. What I think we may see is a continuation of the process which is already happening, which is an increasing emphasis on support, advice and training for the Iraqi security forces which in turn will increase their ability to actually deal with the operational security issues which means in turn that we should be able to do less of that. That may mean that we may change the detailed structure of our forces. Indeed, that has evolved over many months. At the moment we do not have any plans for major changes either downwards or upwards in force numbers and I think - maybe General Rollo might want to comment here - that in general the numbers we have on the ground are about right.

Major General Rollo: It was not a major issue for me; I felt I had enough people. What did occur during the time I was there was that the task evolved. We started focusing on security assistance; we had to take people off that in August to deal with al-Sadr's people and then gradually over September, October, November we were able to take people out and put them back into the training task which was really our main effort in improving the Iraqi forces. I am sure that direction will continue into the New Year.

Q325 Mr Havard: Once the elections are out of the way and the force formations are as they are to deal with the current circumstances, we have a number of nations who are part of the Coalition who are making quite clear declarations that they are going to withdraw in the period shortly after the elections. Whatever exactly that means for each one is slightly different. The question really - one of the big ones for the British I would imagine - is the question about the Dutch withdrawing from Al Muthanna. We heard from people on the ground about the potential there for the British dealing with that circumstance. You will have known it yourself and you will have experienced exactly the same thing: to a large degree we are policing and keeping that process going by consent. There is the whole question about the Dutch leaving and whether or not the Danes, for example, are going to replace them. What is going to happen as far as British deployment and other deployments are concerned to deal with that circumstance?

Mr Howard: The position with the Dutch is now pretty clear I think. The Dutch Prime Minister is on record as saying that their forces will leave in the middle of March. We will be sorry to see them go because we think they have actually done a really good job in Al Muthanna. It is also worth pointing out that Al Muthanna is one of the most benign provinces in Iraq which I think (a) reflects credit on the Dutch and the Japanese who have done a very good job there; and (b) it also means that it is not necessarily the major operation crisis that you might otherwise think. You are right in saying that the British have responsibility; of course we do because we are in charge of MND(SE) and this is all part of MND(SE) and the GOC as we speak is considering options for how we can replace the capability represented by the Dutch, not necessarily on a man for man or like for like basis. Those options will be considered and if it means a change in British force posture in MND(SE) we will obviously announce that to the House when we are ready.

Q326 Mr Havard: Are you talking about deployment within the resources that are currently there or are you talking about additional forces?

Mr Howard: I obviously would not want to speculate in advance any announcement made by the Secretary of State but obviously the GOC will have looked at a range of options and that will include looking at redeployment of forces.

Q327 Mr Havard: It is reconfiguration of deployment on the ground of existing resources or maybe changing the package within the overall numbers. I wonder whether there is a military assessment of that.

Major General Houghton: At the moment we have 8700 deployed to ground, that includes 400 from the EHRR that went out in order to provide the additional cover for the election period. We would hope that by the end of February they would be recovered bringing that figure down by another 400. Clearly the Dutch have made their statement. Currently the Dutch conduct that task with the deployment of about 1400 strong. The staff work assesses that actually by sensible redeployment of assets the Dutch could be backfilled using only a figure of perhaps an additional 200. That is no more than a contingency plan pending political decisions and subsequent announcements, but we are not talking about significant changes in numbers, primarily a redeployment to cover a change in tasks. Primarily it is an internal rearrangement and re-tasking.

Q328 Mr Havard: There is then the question of a UN protection force maybe making a contribution in different ways. We do not have the time to go into the detail of that, but has there been any discussion, what is the assessment of the UN protection force being able to contribute over the medium term and the longer term in terms of the numbers of people on the ground?

Major General Houghton: To get the terminology absolutely spot on, this is not as it were a UN protection force; it is a protection force for UN people. There is a difference and what we are talking about here is the provision of security for UN people deployed. There are effectively three levels of the security. There is what is called the inner ring security which has by and large been generated by new force contributors, for example, Fijians and I think Bulgarians (but I would have to come back and confirm that). They provide, as it were, the close personal security of UN personnel. Then there is the middle ring which by and large falls to either ISF or multi-national forces within compounds within which the UN live. Then the third is that outer ring security which is provided in depth by the normal pattern of security activity differing from place to place, generated either by multi-national core forces or by ISF forces.

Major General Rollo: If you look at Basra just to illustrate that, the outer ring is clearly the Iraqi police force, the national guard and ourselves around Basra. Around the particular location that they were considering operating there was already a secure perimeter for the various national consulates that were based there. There was then a requirement for so-called inner ring security and that was going to be filled by another nation. Things have moved on since I was there.

Q329 Mr Havard: Do you think that might be sufficient in that regard?

Major General Rollo: I would think so, yes. The outer ring clearly will vary from time to time but the middle ring is a secure perimeter already, that is the one that contains the consulates. The inner ring is double insurance, if you like.

Q330 Mr Havard: I want to ask you about the NATO contribution now which is about the training and so on. There are a lot of declarations about the training mission and who is involved, but I think the question is whether or not we are going to see switching from Coalition to NATO in some parts and whether that is going to be productive or not. Is this going to be new involvement or just differently deployed involvement?

Mr Howard: The first thing to say is that the planning for the NATO training mission has been very closely co-ordinated with the Coalition. We see the NATO mission as an important contribution to the training of Iraqi security forces and being complementary to what the Coalition is doing. I think it will be very much focussed - certainly in its more advanced stages - on things like officer and education, things like staff colleges and that sort of expertise. The work at the moment is more or less in its infancy, it is just developing. I think it will probably move from being directly under the Coalition to NATO. There are 60 staff at the moment and it will expand. There will also be quite a lot of people who will be there to provide protection as well from NATO nations. The focus, I think, will be very much on headquarters and ministry type institutions and also on providing officer training for the Iraqi security forces.

Q331 Mr Havard: The Iraqi Prime Minister talks about a possible - in inverted commas - "Islamic/Middle Eastern" Force and the development of such a thing to come in a do this because of the questions of political legitimacy as he would see it and so on. Is there any planning for a Force of that nature?

Mr Howard: The concept has emerged from time to time over the last eighteen months. It has never really so far got beyond the kind of diplomatic stage of working out whether it is politically acceptable. In terms of military planning I do not think we have ever actually factored into our forward military planning the likely or imminent arrival of an Islamic force. This is something you would probably need to speak to the Foreign Office about in terms of getting the up-to-date diplomatic picture, but I am not aware of any current initiatives. They have come and they have gone away. It is obviously politically very sensitive for the countries concerned. If the diplomacy and the politics could be resolved and if it were something that the Iraqis wanted - and this is the crucial point - then clearly we would support it.

Q332 Mr Havard: So in terms of force deployments the situation is as is. We are all waiting for the elections. We will have to see how the circumstances then develop. That is roughly where we are and that is all we can see at the moment, is it?

Mr Howard: The election is clearly a crucial point. I would not want to suggest a kind of cliff-edge: it happens, we get the results and everything changes in terms of security forces because we are already evolving our security posture and it will continue to evolve. The results of the election will be a factor will have to take account of.

Chairman: One of the reasons we are concerned about security for UN personnel is that one of the victims of the atrocity a year ago was a young lady who worked in the library in the defence and international relations section of the House of Commons library. Well, thank you very much for those answers. We look forward to seeing you again next Wednesday.