Uncorrected Evidence 209

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 209-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

DEFENCE COMMITTEE

and

foreign affairs committee

IRAQ

Thursday 11 January 2007

RT HON MARGARET BECKETT MP, RT HON DES BROWNE MP,

AIR CHIEF MARSHAL SIR JOCK STIRRUP GCB and MR NIGEL CASEY

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 106

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee

and the Foreign Affairs Committee

on Thursday 11 January 2007

Members present

Mr James Arbuthnot, in the Chair

Mr David S Borrow

Mr David Crausby

Mike Gapes

Linda Gilroy

Mr Mike Hancock

Mr Dai Havard

Mr David Heathcoat-Amory

Mr Adam Holloway

Mr John Horam

Mr Bernard Jenkin

Mr Kevan Jones

Mr Paul Keetch

Andrew Mackinlay

Mr Malcolm Moss

Mr Ken Purchase

Willie Rennie

Ms Gisela Stuart

Richard Younger-Ross

________________

Witnesses: Rt Hon Margaret Beckett, a Member of the House, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and Mr Nigel Casey, Head of Iraq Policy Unit, Foreign and Commonwealth Office; and Rt Hon Des Browne, a Member of the House, Secretary of State for Defence, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup GCB, Chief of Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: It is 3.30 and to this most unusual joint meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee, may I welcome our witnesses to talk about a crucial matter - the Foreign Secretary, Secretary of State, CDS and Mr Casey - thank you very much for coming. I cannot remember now whether the initiative to have both the Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Defence came from us or came from you but I think it is nevertheless a welcome move on a matter which does span at least the responsibilities of your two Departments and of our two Committees. I wonder whether I could begin by starting perhaps with you, Foreign Secretary, and if you Secretary of State would like to add anything you would be welcome to do so, to ask what the implications are for the United Kingdom of the changes in the United States' policy that were either announced or implied by the President in his speech last night?

Margaret Beckett: I think my own would be that the implications are somewhat limited in that obviously what is being proposed by the United States and the Iraqi Government together is an initiative in and around particularly Baghdad to deal with the security situation there. Where we are engaged in the South, as you know, we are already involved in various activities to deal with and to try to improve the security situation and indeed the rest of the situation there. So I think obviously it is an issue that people will look at, but I would say that it is a change in direction, as the President said, for the United States. It does not necessarily imply a change of direction for us.

Q2 Chairman: Secretary of State, would you like to add anything to that?

Des Browne: Thank you very much. Other than at the outset to agree with the Foreign Secretary that the United States' plans are entirely consistent with our objectives and activities in MND (SE). I think the media today already has been full of an analysis of the differences between Baghdad where, as the President said yesterday, 80 per cent of the violence in Iraq occurs within a 30-mile radius of that city, and the circumstances that we face in MND (SE). Members of both Committees and all honourable Members will know that we have been going through a process in MND (SE) which has seen already provincial Iraqi control of two of the four provinces there. Both the Foreign Secretary and I have expressed on many occasions in the House and otherwise our view of the progress that has been made towards provincial Iraqi control in Maysan, and as we will no doubt go into (but I will not at this stage) we have been in Basra Province and in Basra City in particular conducting a very particular operation in order to create the space for the Iraqis to take the lead not just militarily but in all other aspects of control of that city. Probably we are not now going to explain the differences that everybody knows, but we may go into that later on, in terms of the analysis of the security situation, so to that extent as the Secretary of State for Defence, in terms of our military strategy, the decisions that the President has made and announced overnight are entirely consistent with our position.

Chairman: Okay, thank you.

Q3 Mr Horam: I understand what you say, Secretary of State, when you say that the implications for the UK of President Bush's initiative were rather limited, except that insofar as we support this - and I presume from what you have said that we do - it will continue to have an effect on the UK overall in the Middle East in terms of our reputation and our ability to influence events in a way that our running support for President Bush over the last few years has had an effect on our reputation.

Margaret Beckett: I think one of the things that is really important to keep in mind throughout the conversation about this is the degree to which this is a set of proposals and a strategy that seems to have been worked out and to have the consent and the support of the Government of Iraq and so to that extent if that is understood, which I believe it should be, and indeed I think it is up to us partly to try and make sure that it is understood that that is the case, to the extent that there is an issue that you have referred to and identified there, it might actually somewhat improve things because it is quite clear that there has been extensive discussion and that this is an Iraqi Government and US Government strategy.

Q4 Mr Horam: Is that not a rather none too subtle attempt to shift the blame for failure to Iraq?

Margaret Beckett: No, not at all because I am actually not conceding that there is blame to be shifted. I would simply say to you that the Prime Minister of Iraq is on record today as saying that this is a strategy that has been extensively discussed, and as it happens our Ambassador went to see him this morning and he made clear that he is extremely supportive of the plans and proposals, so it is not a matter of passing any buck or any blame or whatever, it is a matter of recognising that Prime Minister al-Maliki has made plain that these issues have been extensively discussed with him and he hopes that this will work and is supportive of the plans to do so.

Q5 Mr Horam: Certainly, but he has done that as a result of the pressure put on him by the American President and his supporters, quite clearly, that there is a time link to American involvement, that the American public will get tired and impatient about all this and therefore he had better do something. In effect, if it fails, the Americans and you are able to say, "We did our best but the Iraqis let us down, they did not do it."

Margaret Beckett: I think that assumes that the Iraqi Government itself is not becoming increasingly anxious to assume greater responsibility, and that would be a mistaken assumption.

Q6 Mr Horam: Nonetheless, if they are hog-tied ---

Margaret Beckett: It has been increasingly clear that the Iraqis want to have a transfer of responsibility, that they are pushing faster and greater transfer of responsibility to themselves. It is not something that is being driven and forced on them by us or anybody else.

Des Browne: If I may remind the Committee that when President Bush met Prime Minister al-Maliki in Amman (and I am sorry but off the top of my head I cannot remember exactly when that was but it was very recently) the reports of that conversation, which we no doubt have all read, suggested that Prime Minister al-Maliki was urging upon President Bush an increase in the pace of the process of handover. Can I say to you from my own experience in meeting al-Maliki and his ministers that there is a growing desire among them for increased responsibility. The question of course that we have to answer - and sometimes we have to temper their urgency by reminding them of their capability and capacity - is at the end of the day everybody who is involved in the evolution and the development of this strategy and everybody who comments on it will say the same thing, and that is that the problems that Iraq has will not be resolved by military means alone

Q7 Mr Horam: Is that not why they ---

Des Browne: Just let me finish this sentence and then I will be happy to take the supplementary. So in fact building Iraqi capacity, Iraqis taking responsibility, allowing the politics to work, encouraging them to take responsibility for their own decisions and through the process of increasingly taking responsibility for security accepting that responsibility is all part of the process.

Q8 Mr Horam: But there is a difference of opinion here, is there not, between Prime Minister al-Maliki and President Bush in that he said in what you have just quoted that he did not want more troops but President Bush is now wishing on him 21,500 more troops.

Des Browne: I know that I have read today and I think the Foreign Secretary has already made reference to that reports of his contributions to the discussions and he has said directly to us and our representatives in Baghdad that he is foursquare behind this development and that he welcomes it.

Q9 Mr Keetch: Just to follow this line, can we be absolutely clear this is not the Iraqi Government plan and that this is the United States Government plan that is being supported by the Iraqi Government? Some commentators in the United States are saying that this is what the Iraqis have asked for. Is this what the Iraqis have asked for or is this an American-led plan, albeit supported by the Iraqi Government?

Margaret Beckett: I am being reminded that on Saturday, Prime Minister al-Maliki actually referred to the Baghdad Security Plan and talked about it in terms of the plans in which the Iraqi Government were involved.

Q10 Mr Keetch: I just want to see who has ownership. If this is an absolute glorious success, is it the glorious success of the President of the United States? I hope it is a glorious success for everybody, but I just want to know the ownership of where this comes from. Is it a US plan that has been supported by the Iraqi Government or is it an Iraqi Government plan that has been taken on by the Americans?

Margaret Beckett: One thing that is quite clear is that it is not our plan.

Q11 Mr Keetch: So you will not be claiming success.

Mr Casey: President Bush in his statement last night talks explicitly about the Iraqi Government in the lead with American support.

Q12 Mr Keetch: So if this is a glorious success the great fame for this lies with the Iraqis and not with the President of the United States and certainly not with the British Foreign Secretary?

Margaret Beckett: If it is a glorious success you will not be able to get in the door for people who are claiming credit for it.

Q13 Mr Keetch: Can I move back to the implications for the British sector because you seem to be suggesting, Foreign Secretary, that the implications will be somewhat limited. There has been a lot of concentration on the fact that there are 21,500 troops in Baghdad and 4,000 for Ambar, but what the President also said last night is that he will be going after Syrian and Iranian influence on the insurgents and the terrorists. If he seeks to do that, given that our province and the area we look after is bordering Iran and given the reported action today of US forces going into an Iranian consul building of some kind to make arrests, surely that will have an effect on what is happening in the province we are looking after because certainly when we were in Iraq earlier this year we were told quite clearly by British commanders on the ground that they believed there were Iranian influences to bear in and around Basra. Any attempt to reduce that Iranian influence, welcome as it might be, may well have an effect in our province.

Margaret Beckett: The implication of your question seems to be, if I may say so, that it would be a bad thing, the influence of Iranian and Syrian on events -- --

Q14 Mr Keetch: I would welcome it. I am simply disputing your view that it will have somewhat limited effect in and around Basra. If you are going to stop the Iranian insurgents, which is a very good thing to do, it will have a very big effect in Basra.

Margaret Beckett: I understood Mr Arbuthnot to be asking about whether the report was likely to drive a change in UK Government policy and I am saying no. You are asking now something different. You are asking about what the effect may be and all I can simply say to you is that there is pretty clear evidence on the part both of Iran and of Syria that they have had and are having a negative influence in those parts of Iraq where we are present and where we are trying to work with the Iraqis to bring about the kind of improvements that we seek, and so if that influence is diminished that will only be a good thing, a point made by many commentators.

Chairman: We will come back to the issue of the approach of the United States and the United Kingdom to Syria and Iran in a few minutes' time. I do not want to pursue that line just yet.

Q15 Mr Keetch: Just to clarify the situation, it seems to me that what you are saying, Foreign Secretary, is that what President Bush has announced last night will have a somewhat limited effected on the British posture in and around Basra. If that is the case, can we assume therefore that we have made no contingencies for any increases in violence that might be effected from terrorists being displaced from Baghdad, coming down to the South for example?

Margaret Beckett: No you cannot.

Des Browne: I make two points, firstly, the way in which you asked the question first was a variation on the theme of the way in which you asked the question the second time, which was that if you press the balloon here it may swell there.

Q16 Mr Keetch: Yes.

Des Browne: And that indeed to some degree is being represented over the last 24 hours as if somebody has discovered this and that the idea that military effect in one part of Iraq may produce an effect otherwise was not already in the thinking of those who are responsible for our strategy and indeed the tactics that underlie the strategy. That is fundamentally not true. Apart from anything else, Mr Keetch, the provinces that we have had responsibility for in MND (SE) have always been where they presently are and those that are on the border of Iran have always been on the border of Iran and we have had to live and deal with that in military terms. Indeed, you will recollect that one of the things that we did in Maysan recently, only months ago, was that we repostured our troops from a fixed position in Maysan onto the border of Maysan in order to deal exactly with that. Without going into operational security issues, you can take it from me that every single day our commanders in Basra Province and in Basra City are aware of the geography of what they have responsibility for and take that into account in the way in which they deploy their troops. Finally, in relation to the other point that is if you disturb the Shia in the Shia Sadr City in Baghdad will the Shia in the Shia flats in Basra rise up in arms? We are well aware of that possibility and that is why we continually assess the risk and we continually assess how we deploy our forces. All of these things are all part of the contingencies that are taken into account in terms of the way in which we plan. Because the President has said last night that they in Baghdad are now going to set about, with the Iraqis and with the Iraqi Government, dealing with their support politically, with certain militia which come out of the Shia, that is what we had hoped would be done some time and is all part of our contingency planning. Finally, can I just say - and this is at the heart of the question - it is wrong to assume, and I will ask the CDS to expand on this perhaps very specifically, that if we are able for example to reduce the number of troops that we have in MND (SE), that that will reduce our capacity to be able to create security.

Q17 Mr Keetch: Just a very last question so you can see, Secretary of State for Defence, that what the President has announced last night may have a direct effect - hopefully for the good, possibly for the bad - on the security situation for our forces in MND (SE)?.

Des Browne: We have always been aware that despite the fact that Basra and Baghdad are very different to each other in terms of what is happening at the minute, particularly in the nature of the violence and what needs to be dealt with in terms of security, that they are both part of the same country, so we have always been aware that Basra was part of the same country that Baghdad was the capital of and that it was sitting on the Iranian border.

Mr Keetch: Thank you.

Q18 Mr Hancock: Can I just ask the Foreign Secretary, I was curious about your response about the ownership of the plan being very much an Iraqi plan which the Americans had agreed to. If that was the case the Iraqis have had the forces available to them to co-operate with the Americans to deal with much of the militia problems that have emanated out of Baghdad but they have failed miserably to participate in that. What gives you confidence now that this plan is going to effectively change that? 17,000 more Americans in Baghdad - is that really going to make that much difference to encourage the Iraqis themselves to take ownership of the issue?

Margaret Beckett: I think that you are perhaps slightly over-egging the remarks that I made. I said that this was a plan which the Iraqi Government and the American Government had worked on together and that is plainly the case. That is what both the Iraqi Government and the American Government say. So that is the first point I would make. Secondly, I assume that one of the reasons that lies behind the fact that they have had these extensive discussions and are working on them together is because of their joint recognition of something which I think all of us recognise, which is that the attempts to have a successful security plan in Baghdad hitherto have not worked. President Bush identified in his remarks, as I am sure you will have seen, that this was because although the ground was cleared it was not then secured, and I assume that the conclusion to which they have come is that there is a change required and that this is a change that they hope and believe will help them to secure the ground in Baghdad in future.

Q19 Mr Hancock: Can I then ask a question, as the two leading players from the UK, about what involvement you have had over the last three weeks with the American Administration about the way in which this plan was brought into shape? What consultations have you had, for example, with your opposite numbers in the State Department and with the Secretary of State for Defense in the Pentagon about the way in which this plan evolved, was going to be implemented and what co-operation was sought from the British Government as part of the coalition because, after all, we are part of a coalition and one suspects that the coalition will still have to pull together?

Margaret Beckett: Of course, the coalition will still have to pull together. I will ask Des to answer for his own consultations with Secretary Gates in a moment but we have on-going general discussions about the position in Iraq about in fact the things we were referring to earlier, the increasing eagerness of the Iraqi Government to play a greater role. I regard this as wholly healthy, by the way, and what one would wish to see in what is, after all, a relatively new government, accustoming itself for the first time to operating in a democracy. They have only been in power, after all, for something like seven months. However, it is becoming increasingly clear not only that they have views about what will be effective in dealing with some of these issues but they want their views to be more and more to the fore and they want in consequence also to have a greater share of the responsibility so those kind of general discussions have certainly been taking place and I would anticipate that discussions of that kind about an evolving situation will continue in the normal and natural way.

Q20 Mr Hancock: Were you aware, Foreign Secretary, of the final plan before it was announced?

Margaret Beckett: Yes.

Q21 Mr Hancock: When?

Margaret Beckett: I cannot remember, a few days ago.

Des Browne: Can I answer this question in some detail but it is not exhaustive so although it is going to take a bit to answer it is not exhaustive, but it is descriptive and Members can explore elements of it if they want. I may ask the CDS to deal with some of the detail of that. I have regular meetings and discussions with my US counterparts. As people will know of course, my US counterpart has changed recently and I was not able to have any discussions with the new Defense Secretary until such time as he had been properly in post and then people know what he did and his availability. As a matter of fact, I spoke with him just yesterday and I expect to meet him in person within the next few days. In addition to all of that I think it is important for people to remember in terms of our contribution to the coalition that every single day in terms of this coalition at the military level we punch well above our weight. Every senior member of the US-led coalition has a UK military officer as their deputy. This includes General Casey, who is the Head of the Multi-National Force in Iraq and whose deputy presently is General Lamb, the deputy to General Dempsey, who is the Head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command, and the deputy to General Odierno who is Major General Mayall, who is the Head of the Multi-National Corps in all military operations in Iraq. Daily we have on-going contact with them, which is reported back to the Department through the appropriate military channels because, bear in mind, our Department is a military headquarters as well as a department of state. CDS can speak for himself but he has regular contact with the joint chiefs of staff and indeed with all of his equivalents in all of the other countries.

Q22 Chairman: Secretary of State, I want to keep you to the plan rather than to the general contact that we have.

Des Browne: The point is of course that as the plan was being discussed and evolving, all of these people were involved in the considerations and in the discussions. Officials met with the Iraq Study Group, whose work was the prompter of some of this plan, when they were in Baghdad and our officials. I met with them and I know that the Prime Minister gave evidence to them. Every single aspect of the structure of the way in which this coalition operates at a military level is reflected in agreements and in joint committee documents and we have a continuing role in the consideration of them and in the revision of them. All of this is on-going all the time.

Q23 Mr Hancock: Have you asked at any time during those negotiations - and maybe the CDS can answer - whether or not it would be possible to deploy British troops in other parts of Iraq?

Des Browne: We were never asked that but the CDS can answer.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I was never asked.

Des Browne: I am glad I got it right!

Chairman: Thank you, that is helpful. It is no surprise that we are already falling behind. You have to be away by 5.30 and we have got a lot to pack in before then, so David Heathcoat-Amory?

Q24 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: President Bush has announced not just a substantial increase in troop numbers but also a change of tactics. He is now talking about pacifying neighbourhoods and going into areas at present denied to Allied troops, so this is a very significant change of tactical policy. British policy has all been about drawdown and removing troops and handing over to the Iraqis. How can this be other than a clear division, a split of tactics between the two main allied forces?

Margaret Beckett: It is not.

Des Browne: In military terms it is not. I have before me the words that the President himself used. He described the difference between the operations that they are proposing and earlier operations and the Foreign Secretary has already said that the attempts in Baghdad to clear, to improve and to hold were defeated by their inability to be able to hold these areas that they had cleared. He goes on - you are perfectly right - to say in earlier operations political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighbourhoods that are home to those fuelling the sectarian violence. He says that this time Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighbourhoods et cetera. You say that that somehow distinguishes what he is proposing to do from what we are doing, which you characterise as being drawdown. In fact, our policy up until now has been the same as that strategy which is to build the Iraqi security forces, build the capacity, transition to Iraqi control, support economic regeneration, do it again in a conditions-based approach, and in particular in Basra, which is the city and the urban environment that we have responsibility for, to do it neighbourhood by neighbourhood and not to accept that there were neighbourhoods in Basra which were denied to us. We had the political support to do it there through the Provincial Council and through the Governor (who took a bit of persuading but came along) and we had the political support to do that there. It would have appear a much more challenging environment from what President Bush has said that he did not have the political support to be able to do it in the way in which we did but he now believes he has it.

Q25 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: You talk about Iraq as though it is divided between the area around Baghdad where the problems are and a pacified province around Basra, but Basra has continuing violence of a sectoral dissection within the Shi'ite population and this is a coalition effort to secure the whole of Iraq, so it is very important that the policy overall is seamless, but it clearly is not. Here is President Bush going further into Iraq when we are trying to get out. Surely this is a very damaging difference and more dangerously it is of real substance? Therefore can you undertake, following what you have just said, that British troops will not be withdrawn from Iraq during the coming year because it would obviously be absurd if the Americans are reinforcing and we are withdrawing?

Des Browne: I cannot of course. I do not accept the summary analysis that you have given of what the position is fundamentally. Your question is based on, with respect Mr Heathcoat-Amory, a fundamental misunderstanding either of what I am saying, which will no doubt be my fault, or alternatively of what is happening. What we are saying is, and I have already said this, I accept that Basra and Baghdad are part of the same country. That is implicit in the question that Mr Keetch asked and in my response to him that there is an acceptance that things that happen in other parts of the country can have an effect in the area that we have responsibility for. It would be a dereliction of our duty if we did not take that into account. That having been said, I cannot accept an analysis which requires me to pretend that the security challenge in Basra is exactly the same as the security challenge for 30 miles around about Baghdad and Baghdad itself when it is not, so no matter how much persuading you try to bring to bear I cannot accept that the reality is not the reality, they are different.

Q26 Chairman: Secretary of State, we will come back to the issue of British troops and numbers in due course.

Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Can I get an answer about troop level because I did specifically ask?

Des Browne: And I answered very specifically.

Q27 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: For the future for this year?

Des Browne: You will know that I made a long, detailed speech on 24 November about our military strategy in relation to Iraq and said in terms that our expectation was that if we continued to make the progress that we were making, we would get Basra and MND (SE) to the stage where our deployment there was such that we would be able to drawdown troops within the next 12 months, and indeed I said thousands.

Q28 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: That was the phrase I used - drawdown.

Des Browne: Well, that was the one accurate part of the question. The premise on which the question was based was, with respect, a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference and the nature of the difference and the nature of the different security challenges that we face.

Margaret Beckett: Can I just remind the Committee that in President Bush's statement last night one of the things he said was specifically if we increase our support at this crucial moment and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home. That is not a fundamental difference in our approach.

Q29 Andrew Mackinlay: LBJ said exactly the same thing.

Margaret Beckett: With respect, that was a slightly different conversation.

Chairman: We will come back to Vietnam no doubt in due course.

Q30 Mr Jenkin: Sir Jeremy Greenstock said on Radio Four at lunchtime today that effectively the future of Iraq will be won or lost in the suburbs of Baghdad. Does the British Government agree with that statement?

Margaret Beckett: Certainly if you cannot make headway in Baghdad then obviously you have very, very serious difficulties but that is exactly what these proposals are intended to achieve.

Q31 Mr Jenkin: And does the British Government now believe that the Americans have a winning doctrine, having adopted this new plan for taking the suburbs of Baghdad - the take, clear, hold and build strategy - do we believe that is going to work?

Margaret Beckett: Again, as I think we have already made plain, what clearly has happened is that there has been a reassessment of what has been done hitherto, the flaws and the difficulties that have beset it, and what have been the obstacles, and these proposals are intended to overcome these obstacles. If they do overcome those obstacles then clearly they have a prospect of success, which I would hope we would all wish to see.

Q32 Mr Jenkin: We certainly all wish to see it and I do not suppose there is an alternative plan available. Could I press the Chief of Defence Staff on this question of doctrine. We have the new Petraeus doctrine which seems to reflect something of the British military experience of 50 years counter insurgency warfare. The Petraeus doctrine talks about the need to apply yourself for the long-term, the need to be very persistent, the need for public support from your home country, the need to deny the enemy a home base. All these ingredients seem to be lacking. This is a short-term commitment. Iran and Syria provide safe havens for the terrorists to operate from. This is not helped by the fact that one of the key targets of the counter insurgency, the Shia militia in Sadr City is in fact one of the factions that keeps Nouri al-Maliki in power in the Iraqi Government. They hold the balance of power. If this was put up as an exercise at staff college on how to conduct a counter-insurgency war, how many marks would you give it?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Are you talking about the Petraeus doctrine?

Q33 Mr Jenkin: I am talking about comparing the Bush plan with the Petraeus doctrine and our own experience of conducting counter-insurgency warfare.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think the first thing I would say is that you have got to be very careful in applying doctrines as a simple template which will tell you how to carry out every operation. Basically doctrines set forth a series of principles and you have got to apply those in the particular circumstances in the particular environment in which you find yourself, so the solution to each individual case is itself going to be individual, even though the principles may be common across them. I think the work that has been done under General Petraeus on counter-insurgency in the United States has been extremely valuable and of course we have been privileged to engage in the debate and in the evolution of that work because we have been anxious to learn from it as well, so it is a very good piece of work. In terms of how it is to be applied in the Baghdad Security Plan, I think that there are important elements of that doctrine which you are emerging in the bones, which is all we have had at the moment, of what has been announced, but for me - and I have listened to the exchanges so far with some interest - the critical part in all of this is that it is not purely a military operation as everyone has said this time and time again, but we tend to forget it too easily. Somebody asked who is going to claim credit for this if it is a success. It will have to be everybody because everybody is going to have to do their part effectively if it is to be a success. It is not just about military operations, it is not just about providing the security space within the various suburbs of Baghdad; it is creating the effect on the ground, the sort of thing we have sought to do on operation SINBAD which is going to enable the Iraqi security force to take over that responsibility and allow on-going economic, social and political development.

Q34 Mr Jenkin: But we have got a very narrow window before the rising violence overtakes the consent for coalition forces to continue operating in Iraq.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think there is a fairly narrow window in that the President himself last night said that he still expects all provinces in Iraq to have transitioned to Iraqi control by November, so we are talking about quite a narrow window from that perspective.

Q35 Mr Holloway: On the wider terrorist threat, clearly it was there before 9/11 but if you speak to tens of millions of people around the world they would probably argue the threat was worse now despite some successes. Do we and our allies have a coherent, long-term global plan of campaign?

Margaret Beckett: Certainly part of the problem with the present direction of the activities of terrorists is that although they use the same tactics and they clearly learn from each other - spreading best practice I think we usually call it - in how they operate and there are similar characteristics, it is quite clear that the thing can spring up all over the place in different ways with different groups involved even if, as I say, they are to quite a large extent learning from each other and from each other's example. You asked about a global plan. You have to deal with initial explosions of terrorism, if I can put it that way, where they occur in the circumstances of the particular country that is affected, in terms of the particular region and what the overall impacts are, so you can have an overall approach to be opposed to such tactics and strive to counter for example the general narrative.

Q36 Mr Holloway: My question is do you have a coherent, long-term global plan with our allies in how we are going to deal with this over the next five, ten, 20, 50 years?

Margaret Beckett: This is certainly an issue which is much discussed but if you are asking me is there some kind of blueprint ---

Q37 Mr Holloway: --- I was not suggesting that and you know I was not.

Margaret Beckett: --- The answer to that question will certainly be no but there is a very widespread, very strongly shared concern and people are looking to see what can be done, who can tackle problems in particular areas and so on. Increasingly I think a greater degree of international co-operation than perhaps we have seen in the past in a whole variety of ways with different players and partners again than we have sometimes seen in the past.

Q38 Andrew Mackinlay: The US Iraq Study Group warned us that if the situation in Iraq continued to deteriorate it could - and I use the words used by the ISG "trigger the collapse of the Iraqi Government and cause a humanitarian catastrophe." What is your assessment as of this afternoon about the gravity of the situation in Iraq a) politically and b) militarily?

Margaret Beckett: It is a grave situation; no-one disputes that. I would not myself argue that we have seen a substantial deterioration from the point at which they made those comments. The situation continues to be extremely difficult but I for my own part take quite a bit of heart from the fact that the government of Iraq is showing this increased acceptance of the need to act and this increased willingness to play a more vigorous part than sometimes all elements of it have played in the past in trying to help to tackle and resolve some of these problems, because ultimately, no matter whether all provinces are handed over in November, no matter what happens in terms of the continuing involvement of members of the multinational forces, this is an issue and these are problems for the people and the government of Iraq. The fact that they are showing this greater willingness and preparedness to come to grips with them can only be a good thing.

Q39 Andrew Mackinlay: And the military, the gravity of the situation this afternoon?

Des Browne: The Committees, of course, have the advantage that when the Iraq Study Group report was published I was within a comparatively short period of time in the House answering questions and said in response to both the publication of the group's report and to questions that I shared broadly the analysis of the nature of the security situation in Iraq. Candidly, we can all see how serious it was in particular in certain parts. I have to qualify that by saying of course that not all of Iraq is like that, and we should remember that and it is important, and I have not seen anything since then in December to suggest that there has been a radical difference in that assessment or in my acceptance of that assessment, so I am still about the same place as I was then, although I can say, and you will understand why I want to point the Committee in this direction, that in, for example, Basra City the reported murder rate, which was quite substantial; I think it was 84 or thereabouts some months ago, is down to 29 per month and the number of kidnappings reported has halved, and that is an improvement. I think that our troops, the commanding officers, those who have designed and implemented the SINBAD operation, are entitled to a significant amount of the credit for that, and importantly that includes Iraqi security forces because in the two completed pulses of Operation SINBAD the Iraqi security forces have taken the lead. It seems to me, although there is still much more to be done, one does not want to be complacent about it; one does not want to overestimate how long that situation will be sustained, that that is an indication that you can build the capacity and deploy the capacity of Iraqi security forces in a difficult and challenging situation to effect over a period of time that progress. While I recognise the scale of the challenge, I say, and this is part of the difference that we face as opposed to what the Americans face, that the scale of the challenge is not as great where we are and that is a function of our ability to be able to address it.

Chairman: We will come back to this specific situation in Basra shortly.

Q40 Andrew Mackinlay: The nervousness of people in this room, both legislators and others, must be that the surge, I think the word is, or what the United States are triggering from today, will not be sufficient and then a little way down the road there will be arguments for the United States primarily but the United Kingdom as a junior partner in the coalition to go along with a further surge, and incrementally this will just be putting more and more assets to it almost with the hope or the belief or the assurances from various folk that we need one more heave and we will get on top of this and then the Iraq government's writ will run and it will be able to control its own areas through its own armed forces etc. To be candid, all of us are nervous that we are going to be here in a few months' time and it will not have worked.

Des Browne: This is, of course, a difficult and challenging environment and if you want to draw analogies from other conflicts then of course you can say, "Look at what happened", as you did, Mr Mackinlay, earlier in an interjection. The fact of the matter is that we are where we are. The scale of the challenge is, I think, properly recorded not just in the Iraq Study Group but realistically assessed by the President in what he said, and never at any stage have the Foreign Secretary or I in evidence here or in anything else sought to play that down or be complacent about it, but we are entitled, I think, to say that there is evidence in all of this of the ability to be able to make progress and to hold it. Of course you are right to say that only time will tell if that proves to be durable, but at the end of the day there are lots of other things about which we have to take into account, like, for example, the fact that this government, after decades of tyranny and oppression and exploitation of their people and brutality, has been set up democratically with all its laws for all of eight months. We have to understand the scale of the challenges that we are putting to these people and the experience and ability that they have.

Q41 Linda Gilroy: Foreign Secretary, you have made much of the increasing willingness of the Iraq government to take on responsibility but one of the weak points has been that Sunnis remain outside of the political process, in particular those that lost out following the de-Ba'athification of Iraq after Saddam Hussein's removal. Why do you think the Iraq Prime Minister Al-Maliki has so far been unable to bring the Sunni population of Iraq fully behind the Government and what do you think the prospects will be following the announcement yesterday for improving on that?

Margaret Beckett: We would take the view that although there is a policy of pursuing reconciliation perhaps there has not been quite the vigour in pursuing that policy that would be required to bring about the sorts of results that you are talking about. However, there are indications that that is recognised increasingly within the Iraqi government and in fact I have now found my text of an interview that Prime Minister Al-Maliki gave a couple of days ago on Al-Arabiya television. One of the points that he makes is to speak very strongly about the importance of reconciliation, about it being what he called a strategic option from which there is no retreat and the importance of bringing all groups together in the Iraq of the future. The Secretary of State for Defence and I have made the point a couple of times about the short period of time during which this government has been in office. Of course, there has been as I understand it no experience at all before in Iraq of trying to govern with the consent and the involvement of all of the different groups. This is something of which they have no past experience on which to draw, so they are trying to create from scratch, if you like, the kind of cohesive approach to all communities which, as you have got evidence of even closer to home, is not always easy, and certainly it is a difficult task for them. The recognition on their part of the need for this to be an important part of what they are doing is very clear. Incidentally, the Committees may be aware that one of the things that we have been doing lately is to get people here who have been engaged in the Northern Ireland peace process to share with them some of their experience and understanding.

Q42 Linda Gilroy: I think there is a big difference between the talk and walking the talk and we hope that it will encourage them to go on because they have got some really difficult situations to deal with going way beyond just the difficulties that are involving people in the political a process and the way in which in the early months, for instance, the NGO International Crisis have described the Interior Ministry as thriving on violence and counter-violence and gradually becoming warlords. Do you have information in the Foreign Office that supports the situation I have just described?

Margaret Beckett: I have not seen that particular set of observations, but certainly there has been a particular problem in the Interior Ministry; I do not think there is any question about that, and there are individuals there who have been involved in the sort of activities that one would never countenance, and it is one of the areas of considerable importance for the government of Iraq to tackle and deal with.

Q43 Linda Gilroy: It is all-important to reconciliation. What do you think the impact will be of the circumstances of the execution of Saddam Hussein on achieving reconciliation?

Margaret Beckett: It is quite interesting. I would actually recommend to the Committees, who may not have had a chance to see it, the transcript of this interview with Prime Minister Al-Maliki because he talks about the execution of Saddam Hussein and says that there is a good deal of evidence that although, obviously, there are sectors of the community which reacted strongly and are very unhappy about it, there is not strong evidence that it has caused a huge problem across the board and across all the communities in Iraq, and he makes very strongly indeed the point in this interview that every community in Iraq suffered under Saddam in very similar ways, that although there is a perception, and understandably so, that there were some communities which suffered more than others, there was no community which was left unscathed.

Q44 Chairman: Please would you let us have copies of that transcript?

Margaret Beckett: I would be very happy to.

Q45 Andrew Mackinlay: I received a letter from you this morning where you indicated that, I think the words were, "at the highest level" you have personally made representations on the eve of Saddam's execution expressing the United Kingdom Government's view on capital punishment, but also, I think, counselling against the prudence of the execution. You have sent me that letter so it is on the record, but are we doing a similar thing today, bearing in mind that there could be further executions? I am mindful of the fact that one execution might have the consequences which Prime Minister Al-Maliki referred to but a series of them could start creating a martyr situation, a 1916 type of scenario.

Margaret Beckett: We have continued since the execution of Saddam Hussein to express our concerns and our opposition to the implementation of the death penalty. My understanding is that the government of Iraq continues to take the view that this is a matter for them.

Q46 Andrew Mackinlay: But the consequences are a matter for us.

Margaret Beckett: I take the point.

Q47 Mike Gapes: Foreign Secretary, in November you were quoted as saying that it was important to draw Iran and Syria into being part of the solution instead of part of the problem. The Prime Minister presumably, when he gave evidence to the Iraq Study Group by video, was arguing a similar line, and the Iraq Study Group's report actually called on the Bush administration to engage directly with Iran and Syria without pre-conditions. Are you therefore disappointed that President Bush in his speech has completely rejected that approach?

Margaret Beckett: One of the phrases that you quoted at the end there, "without pre-conditions", is perhaps key. We continue to maintain contacts with both Iran and Syria and to recognise the potential they have to contribute to the solution. Equally though we continue to recognise, and we referred to this before in my answer to Mr Keetch or in his question, that they have the capacity and continue in many ways to play a very negative role. There is a very clear strategic choice before Iran and Syria. As to whether or not one should express disappointment as to where the American government is now, you will recall, I know, Mr Gapes, that part of the package of proposals that the EU-3 plus 3 put before the Iranian Government to incentivise them to move into negotiations about their use of nuclear power and the way in which they are developing their research and development on the use of nuclear materials, was indeed an offer to Iran on negotiations, not just on that issue but on a whole range of issues and that the United States would be a participant in that. I understand that since President Bush spoke today in the United States in a press conference, Dr Rice has said that if Iran would suspend their process of reprocessing and enrichment she would "go anywhere, any place, any time" to talk to the representatives of the Iranian Government.

Q48 Mike Gapes: But, Foreign Secretary, can I put it to you that the whole language of President Bush is very blunt and hostile towards Syria and Iran, and there are understandable reasons because of the role that you have referred to. However, that is totally contrary to what the Iraq Study Group's language was and it is also contrary to the approach that our Government has been pursuing for many months, in fact for years. Can I put it to you that this is a watershed and that President Bush has taken the position of the American Enterprise Institute rather than a large body of people from his father's administration and from the Clinton administration and many other people in the US, and this does not augur well for trying to get a solution in the Middle East or the engagement of the neighbours to try and solve the problem in Iraq?

Margaret Beckett: With respect, we have, as I say, and have had for a long time greater direct engagement with Iran and Syria, but the messages that we are conveying are not different. As for the messages of hostility to their interference in ways which actually affect our troops and our involvement in Iraq and in Afghanistan and others across the region, their involvement in the Middle East peace process, everyone is giving Iran and Syria the same messages about this. Depending on the circumstances and the occasion one may stress more the problems and the hostility to the problems that they are causing or on the other hand the real opportunities that there are if they decide to be more collegiate in their approach to the international community, so I do not detect the stark difference that you are identifying in the approach of anyone, and that again includes the government of Iraq who have had some extremely robust exchanges, from what they tell me of late, both with the government of Iran and with the government of Syria about the role that they are playing in Iraq.

Q49 Mike Gapes: Let me try another angle on it then. The speech last night does not mention Israel and makes only passing reference to the Palestinians. In a 20-minute speech there is nothing about the importance of reactivating the Middle East peace process, the emphasis that we have been putting that is in the Iraq Study Group's report. Are you disappointed that the American administration, although they might be sending Condoleezza Rice to the region, is actually not seriously engaging with some of these wider regional issues which are related to the complexity of the difficulties that we have got in the Arab and Muslim world?

Margaret Beckett: I would be disappointed if I thought that that were the case but first, as I think you recognise, President Bush did refer to the fact that Dr Rice is to go to the region shortly. She and I have discussed on a number of occasions recently what she hopes to achieve by doing so and I know that it is her view that there should be a greater degree of engagement and that that is part of what she wants to be able to pursue, not obviously in one visit but to identify what are the ways in which engagement can indeed make a difference in the future. I repeat: if I thought that the American government had put on one side the issue of the Middle East peace process and Israel/Palestine and all of that, then I would indeed be extremely disappointed, but they have not.

Q50 Mr Purchase: Forgive me for pressing virtually the same point, but can I read to you precisely what President Bush said last night and ask whether you can condone in any way his statement in talking about Syria and Iran: "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces, we will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria", and, crucially, he then says, "We will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq". Given the efforts that the British Government has made on the diplomatic front and the recent foray of Nigel Sheinwald into the area, how on earth is that kind of --- well, is it hyperbole? I wish it were just hyperbole. How is that compatible with the approach that we have been taking in order to bring about, as you have said, the position where Iran and Syria are part of the solution, not part of the problem? This is language which is absolutely outwith any diplomatic understanding I have ever had.

Margaret Beckett: With respect, Mr Purchase, do I understand, because this is the second or third question from the Committees that draws on this area, that the Committees are opposed to tackling the interference and the actions of Iran and Syria?

Q51 Mr Purchase: He says, "We will seek out and destroy".

Margaret Beckett: Yes.

Q52 Mr Purchase: Does this mean invading Syria?

Margaret Beckett: Yes, I am in favour of that.

Q53 Mr Purchase: Invading Syria?

Margaret Beckett: No. I am not speaking on behalf of the American Government but I think I can be pretty confident in saying they are not proposing to invade Syria. Destroying the networks that are - what is the phraseology? - providing advanced weaponry to our enemies in Iraq: well, that is what our troops are trying to do. That is what we are looking for various ways to do, surely. This is something that we want to achieve.

Q54 Mr Moss: Following on that, are you saying that the British forces in their sectors in southern Iraq are indeed preventing the flow of material support, in President Bush's own words, for the Shi'ite regimes and Shi'ite militias in southern Iraq?

Margaret Beckett: I would not claim they are totally successful but they are doing their best.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Yes, they are.

Q55 Mr Moss: So at the moment they are being successful. If you then downgrade the presence and you move out of Maysan province, for example, which borders Iran, should there not therefore be an increase in the movement of material support across that border if you reduce your troops there?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: There are two things. First of all, I may have misunderstood your question. If your question was are we successfully reducing all supplies from outside Iraq to those who want to cause mischief, the answer of course is no. Nobody is 100 per cent successful in this but are we doing it? The answer is yes. Clearly we would be derelict not to. The second part of your question seems to imply that we are going to be withdrawing from Maysan and as far as I am aware nobody has ever made such a proposition.

Q56 Mr Moss: My understanding is that several thousand troops are coming out of Maysan province and it is being handed over to the Iraq security forces.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We withdrew from the fixed base in Maysan where we were achieving very little in the way of military effect, in large part so that we could concentrate our forces to much greater effect carrying out the kinds of tasks that we have just been discussing. There is no proposition at all that we should stop doing that. Let me just re-emphasise that the intention, of course, is for the Iraqi security forces, the Iraqi army in this case and the Iraq border force, to take on responsibility for their own security and their own country, so our key effort is in developing their capacity to be able to achieve those effects.

Q57 Mr Moss: But is it not true also that the Iraqi forces in the south will be Shi'ite forces because there is not any movement of Iraqi forces cross-border or region to region, and if there are Shi'ite forces and Iraqi forces will they not therefore be predisposed to helping out their Shi'ite brothers across the border?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I think that is a non sequitur.

Margaret Beckett: I will just ask Mr Casey to add something on Syria.

Mr Casey: In respect of Syria, if I may, since Nigel Sheinwald was in Damascus there have been some positive signs of movement. The Syrian Foreign Minister visited Baghdad, re-established full diplomatic relations with Baghdad, the Iraqi Interior Minister has since been to Damascus and they have had detailed talks to an Iraqi agenda about precisely this issue, disrupting what the Iraqis perceived to be the flow of people and material across the Syrian/Iraqi border, so this is not just about our perceptions.

Q58 Mr Hancock: I am interested in two things. One is the success of stopping infiltration from Iran in the south. What evidence is there that you have been successful in doing that, and you said you were, Air Marshal? I would like to know if there was evidence, and, Foreign Secretary, who is it, if it is not us or the Europeans and the Russians, who would be most capable in your opinion of influencing the Iranians to change their stance or do you believe that is an absolute lost cause?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: On the first part I would not want to address that operational intelligence detail in open forum but we can certainly let the Committees have some classified information.

Q59 Mr Hancock: That would be helpful; thank you.

Margaret Beckett: With regard to your second question about influencing the Iranians on the whole nuclear issue, funnily enough that is a knock-on effect of the degree to which the Iranians have isolated themselves from many in the international community. It is quite hard to think of people who have real influence with them. This whole concern about developing the enrichment and reprocessing seems to be very much a domestic concern. Indeed, there are those who argue that it is a deliberate diversion from the economic problems of Iran and so it is very much a domestic issue. As to the wider question as to who might influence them, paradoxically it is possible that among those who might have influence with them are indeed the Iraqis as their relationships, hopefully, improve. Nigel has referred to some of the moves for greater contacts with the government of Syria and the government of Iraq but also there are greater contacts, and I know that there are going to be more in the next week or so, between the government of Iran and the government of Iraq, and I think the government of Iran has been reluctant to accept that anyone else thinks there is a problem with what they are doing and actually I think has been astonished on every occasion when the Security Council has stayed united and carried a resolution, as we did again the other day, because they keep thinking, and indeed they keep saying, that it is only the government of the United States or it is only the Government of the United Kingdom who are worried about this. Not so; everybody is worried about it.

Q60 Chairman: Foreign Secretary, please could you comment on my summary of the position? The United States and the United Kingdom agree that Iran is behaving extremely badly in relation to nuclear development and in relation to its relations, for example, with Israel. However, the Iraq Study Group suggested a policy of constructive engagement with Iran and with Syria. Britain believes in a policy of constructive engagement with Iran and Syria, but from President Bush's last night's speech it would seem that he does not. Is that accurate?

Margaret Beckett: With respect, I am not sure it is wholly accurate. With regard to all of the first part, yes, we are concerned, and, as I say, not only the United States and the United Kingdom but the whole international community right across the board and all the other players in the region are extremely concerned and alarmed at what they fear are Iran's intentions. There is also great concern at their approach to Israel and indeed to Lebanon, to that whole area of policy concern. Yes, you are right that the Iraq Study Group suggested constructive engagement and it is true too that we have sought to pursue it. I take your point, and indeed I take Mr Purchase's point about the strength of the language President Bush used yesterday, but (a) he is in that context talking about the negative side of Iran and Syria's involvement in the region and it is bound to be addressed in strong terms because it is very damaging indeed, but (b) again I say that not only is President Bush party to the offer that was made to Iran of widespread negotiations. If you look at the proposals that were put to the government of Iran by the six of us it is widespread engagement across the board, including, for example, an offer to discuss issues of reasonable security with the government of Iran on the grounds that they are important players potentially. Dr Rice has indeed publicly restated that willingness today, so I do not think one can say --- it is the policy of the United States Government to engage with Iran if Iran creates the opportunity for them to do so.

Chairman: Okay, thank you. I will get no more out of you on that, I suspect. We will move on to Basra.

Q61 Richard Younger-Ross: I want to talk about the security situation in the south east area. However, if I just might follow on slightly from the last question, the language the President used was very strong, and certainly there will be people outside and in this room who interpret that as a threat of a military strike on Iranian or Syrian territory if there is a clear and visible terrorist target. What would be the diplomatic impact of such an attack?

Margaret Beckett: Any diplomatic or other impact of such an attack would obviously be very substantial, but I know of no evidence to support the suggestion that that is what the wording in President Bush's statement implies.

Q62 Richard Younger-Ross: I might beg to differ. On the situation in south east Iraq could you give us a briefing of what the current security situation is, and could you say whether that has improved over the last six months or is static, and in particular what were the consequences of both the PISA and THYME operations?

Des Browne: In relation to the specific consequences of individual operations I will defer to the CDS to the extent that we are prepared to discuss the operational aspects of them, but the fact of the matter is that Basra, as everyone knows, saw a significant level of violence in the summer and in the autumn of last year. This has recently reduced but, in order to keep things in their proper perspective, even at its peak it amounted to two per cent of the attacks that there were in Iraq. We acknowledge that there has been a worrying increase in the level of indirect fire upon our bases and we continue to address this at a number of levels including air cover and indirect fire patrolling, and the struggle between the Shia groups for power and money continues to dominate the security environment in the south east. That is the nature of the violence that is there and it is a struggle for political power and economic power. The positive points from our operations, including Operation SINBAD and the operations that you refer to, were all part of that context, that we have improved at least effectiveness throughout Operation SINBAD. Against the metrics of improvement that we use to try to assess whether the Iraqi security forces are capable of looking after the security of the area we have the benchmark for the capability of police stations in a particular province, and I use this as an example. There are many others but I have already used, incorrectly actually, statistics about reported murders because it was 149 in the month of June and 29 in the month of December, which is an indication of an improving effect, albeit, and to be entirely candid about it, there is a seasonal effect which is discernible in violence in Iraq and we would have expected it to reduce but not by that significant proportion. If we go to the effect of our operations, including the operation at the al-Jameat police station, our current assessment is that well into 60-odd per cent, perhaps 69 per cent of police stations in Basra province are at operational capability and we are 50-odd per cent of those in Basra City itself. We were starting in both places at 50 and 25 respectively before we embarked upon these operations, and 72 per cent is the metric for provincial Iraqi control, so we have made some significant progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done and it is the ability of the Iraqi security forces themselves to hold what we have achieved and the ability of the government's economic development that has gone with what we have been doing to hold that which will test whether we have been successful.

Q63 Richard Younger-Ross: One of my colleagues will come back to the policing situation in a minute. What I was after was whether there was a reaction. When the Foreign Affairs Select Committee was there a year ago there had been some arrests and the consequence of that was that we were not allowed outside of the base because it was no longer safe. With these operations is there still that kind of reaction where there are increased attacks upon British personnel?

Des Browne: Generally Operation SINBAD has been welcomed into areas, not just by the police and by the security forces themselves, and I have already told the Committees that in the last two pulses the Iraq security forces took the lead and by and large did all the work and we were there with them, but it has also been welcomed by the people and, as has been reported to these Committees and reported otherwise in any event, while we were in the early stages of the pulses of SINBAD people were coming to us from other areas and saying, "When are you coming to us?", so generally the approach of the people of Basra has been positive. That is not to overplay this, that you can by these processes clean up and leave it. It has to be sustained and it has to be built on. We are talking about creating opportunities here, in particular opportunities for Iraqi indigenous forces and their government to build on that, to create the opportunity for them to put the investment in that needs to be put in. We can create short term thousands of jobs, and have, in clearing up areas and in other projects. We can put millions of pounds of investment in, as we have been doing, some of our money, some of the American money, but this needs to be sustained and the Iraqis need to be able to build upon that, and that is the challenge, but in relation to the al-Jameat police station operation, that was an operation that we of course planned to do to clean up the Serious Crime Unit. We not only had to be able to get the capability and the capacity to be able to do it ourselves and then the Iraqi Security Forces, but we needed the political support. When we got the political support we went and did it. We did it very overtly, we did it very overtly in a way that sent a very strong message to the people of Basra, that the icon of their oppression was being destroyed, and it had that effect on a significant number of people but it undoubtedly caused some of the politicians who had been supporting us to get cold feet.

Chairman: Can we come back to that in a few minutes?

Q64 Richard Younger-Ross: If I could move on to the provinces we have moved out of, could you tell us where we are in terms of Muthanna and Dhi Qar? Has the security situation there remained stable, improved or got slightly worse?

Des Browne: Our assessment is that the security situation in Dhi Qar and Muthanna where the Australians, if I am correct, with the Romanians are providing the over-watch since they have been passed to provincial Iraqi control, and both of them are doing a very good job, and I have to be careful that the record shows that it was both the Australians and the Romanians because I have been criticised in the past for forgetting about the Romanians who are doing this work. There are still elements in both areas that will seek to promote instability and the Iraqi security forces need to act decisively on occasion and have done so, and I will give you an example. In Samawa within a couple of weeks the security forces had to demonstrate their ability to deal with militia, and they did, and the situation was dealt with entirely by the Iraqi security forces and offers of MNF support were politely but firmly declined by them. They said that they could deal with it so while, in the words of my predecessor, "They are not exactly Hampshire", we have sustained the position.

Q65 Richard Younger-Ross: That is going fairly well. What is the situation in Maysan and in Basra?

Des Browne: The situation in Maysan is that there was a force I think some months ago now in the main city of Maysan. There was an attack on the police station. The test, of course, of whether or not the security forces are capable of dealing with the threat, which is part of the two conditions of the transfer, although it has not been passed over, is whether their security forces can deal with it. That test was responded to within 24 hours by their own domestic security forces without our help, although we were there available to them if they had wanted us, but they did not need us, but importantly I say to you that it was done not just with the deployment of security of military force but with the engagement of local politicians, and it worked.

Q66 Richard Younger-Ross: So when can we pull out?

Des Browne: We have a continuing problem on the border there that we have discussed and we have deployed a battle group there on that border that continues to patrol with some degree of success, which we will let the Committees have the detail of privately, and I have to say, with respect, Chairman, that we have been discussing quite a lot about Basra province and Basra City and I would be in danger of repeating myself. I am quite prepared to do but I would be in danger of repeating myself.

Chairman: I am sure you would not, Secretary of State.

Q67 Mr Borrow: Could we briefly move on to the political situation in Basra in the south? Have we got any information on the likelihood and dates of local elections to be held in Basra? I would also be interested in your views on the apparent tension between the government in Baghdad and the various arms and governments in Basra City and Basra province?

Margaret Beckett: First of all I certainly do not have any dates for potential provincial elections, but I think we do anticipate that they will be held in the not so very distant future.

Mr Casey: There is no set date. They would have to happen at the same time all over Iraq. That requires a new election law to be passed by the Council of Representatives which we hope will be passed soon. We hope that will enable provincial elections to take place some time in the autumn.

Margaret Beckett: And with regard to your question about tensions between the political elements in the capital and in Basra, actually it is our impression that that has eased quite substantially of late and that things have settled down to quite a fair degree, and I think this may be one of the reasons why - and I do not know which comes first - we are seeing a degree of consent to the process of Operation SINBAD because things have become both calmer and more co-operative in general.

Q68 Mr Borrow: Certainly in the past there have been examples of military operations in Basra which have been supported strongly by the central government that led to statements from the governor and local politicians in opposition.

Margaret Beckett: That has improved.

Q69 Mr Borrow: Are you saying that as the process of Operation SINBAD etc. goes ahead that in itself changes the political dynamic?

Margaret Beckett: I do not say there have been no problems but what I would say is things are an awful lot better than they were.

Des Browne: It is no secret that we had our concerns about co-operation with the governor and, indeed, with the provincial council in Basra, those concerns are on record. On visits to Basra twice now I have met the governor to make it plain to him what his responsibilities as the leader of local government there are and what the expectation will be and also, I might say, as a politician reminding him of the effect that an improved province could have on his abilities to be able to be re-elected when the elections come round. I do not claim that significantly affected him, it may have done, but our observation is the combination of the operational effect of SINBAD and the conduct of SINBAD has won over the governor and the provincial council and they have been co-operating. That is not to say there are not occasions when they wobble and after the al-Jameat police station operation they did wobble. Part of the consequence of that has been that the later pulses of SINBAD we have had to conduct without the level of co-operation from the police that we would have expected, but we believe that we will get through that, we have had these problems before, they are a function of the nature of the violence that is associated with some of the politics of that part of Iraq and we have to work through them. I am confident that our commanding officer there, who is our interlocutor on these issues, will be able to work his way through them. We have made improvements but things can go back depending on what the sense of threat is that local politicians feel.

Chairman: It is now ten to five and we have got little time left. Provincial Reconstruction Teams, Dai Havard.

Q70 Mr Havard: I looked at the Whitehouse website and looked at the key elements document and it goes through the various sections, not least of which is economic. We have got the Petraeus doctrine mixed together with unfortunate parts of the Kagan doctrine, it seems to me, but nevertheless a conceptual shift. The National Security Council itself is saying they have got a series of key tactical shifts here, not least of which is actually trying to deal with what has traditionally been, and what we have perceived in the past as being, a particularly dysfunctional set of activities in terms of dealing with how you create a situation with things like we were operating, and still are as I understand it, Provincial Reconstruction Teams. They are talking about doubling this, they are talking about embedding people, they are talking about in the doctrine the PRTs within manoeuvre groups of brigade combat teams and so on, much more integration. What I really want to know is what is the effect of all of that as far as our sector is concerned because when we visited Basra it was quite clear it is largely an economic engine for the country, there is good work going on in relation to that as far as the British are concerned, but traditionally that has been hampered to some extent by a lack of understanding perhaps in the centre. I understand that some co-ordinator is going to be appointed in order to do all of this for the US and what I want to know is that we are not going to see Bremmer rewritten in another form. Can you answer that?

Margaret Beckett: I do not think that is the intention.

Mr Casey: We have to find out more from our US colleagues in the coming days but I think that the intention of the announcement last night is that the extra PRTs will be focused with the extra troops that will be deployed in Baghdad and Anbar. I do not expect it to have a direct impact on our PRT in Basra.

Q71 Mr Havard: Can I just ask one question then. Does that mean there is going to be more of a flow of money for this sort of activity in our sector because if that is just going to be confined to the areas that they are going to operate in in and around Baghdad and Anbar where does that leave the distribution of similar monies for reconstruction elsewhere?

Margaret Beckett: The money that has been identified and that was referred to is, I understand, money that is already in the budget for this kind of work. I do not think we are talking about new money.

Mr Casey: So it is the existing money.

Q72 Mr Havard: That is not my understanding, but there we are. I thought they were committing seriously additional amounts of money.

Margaret Beckett: That is already there.

Des Browne: My understanding of it is that there is a commitment from Prime Minister al-Malaki and his government to invest in the context of this changed approach an additional $10 billion of their money. It is money which is already in the Iraqi budget.

Q73 Mr Havard: Matched by additional American money.

Des Browne: I do not understand that to be the case but it does not detract from the point which is that the engine of the economy of Iraq, particularly in terms of the oil, is substantially in the area that we have responsibility for and that is starved of investment, and has been and was quite deliberately starved of investment as an area by Saddam Hussein, which is why these two cities are so dramatically different when you look at them and fly over them in particular in terms of investment. It is the case that the ability of the Iraqi Government to be able to put money down into the south is an important part of our plan for that area. That is our hope, and indeed and that was why in the visit of the Chancellor of the Exchequer he went to Basra and asked Barham Saleh to meet him there, and he did, and he discussed the economic regeneration of that area. Our focus is consistently on reminding the Iraqis that they have a responsibility to invest money south of Baghdad and in particular in that area, not just in the interests of the investment that we have put in terms of people and money in that area but in the interests of their own economy since a substantial part of their GDP is either generated through or in it.

Margaret Beckett: If I could just add very briefly, part of the work that people in our PRT and some of the technical people we have got there are helping to do is in Iraq is much less a question of money being available, it is using the money, it is the actual delivery of capacity.

Q74 Mr Havard: It is where it has gone.

Margaret Beckett: That is one of the things that we are seeking to work on and develop.

Chairman: We have still got a lot of ground to cover.

Q75 Mr Jones: Can you clarify one thing, Secretary of State. According to President Bush's statement, he is going to ask Congress for $6.8 billion for the new deployment and then 1.2 billion for rebuilding and development with the emphasis on job creation. Will any of that money actually be diverted to the south or is that just for Baghdad?

Mr Casey: I think that money, again, is specifically earmarked for the Baghdad and Anbar extra effort but we will have to find out for you. We are already benefiting from substantial US money through our PRT. The main focus, as the Secretary of State has said, is on unlocking Iraqi resources and our PRT has helped them in recent months to approve over 220 of their own projects for which they need funding from Baghdad. Our focus has been on helping in that respect.

Mr Havard: When he says commanders and civilians will have greater flexibility to spend this money, we have seen our military saying our commanders' funds are small. We can spend this money, we can put reconstruction teams together, but if there is going to be more flexibility and more money washing around for it in that area I would like us to make sure that we are getting that money to do what we need to do as well and consolidate the position where we are.

Q76 Chairman: Mr Casey, when you find out the answer to that question please would you let us know as to whether any of this money is going to go south.

Mr Casey: Yes.

Des Browne: Just very quickly can I say one sentence because I would not want to move off from this with the impression that the Americans do not allow us access in MND(SE) to their resource in order to invest; they do. If the joint committee does not have this information it may be that we need to get it for them. I would not want people to move away from this question on the basis that the Americans spend all their money in one area.

Chairman: Thank you very much. David Crausby.

Q77 Mr Crausby: Thank you, Chairman. Turning back to Armed Forces personnel, there are currently just over 7,000 UK Armed Forces personnel in Iraq, so can you update us on where these are based and how their footprint has been affected by the transition to provincial Iraqi control in Muthanna and Dhi Qar?

Des Browne: May I ask the CDS to deal with this.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: They are substantially based, as far as the UK military personnel are concerned, in and around Basra. We have a battle group allocated of course to Maysan but it is no longer based in Camp Abu Naji as it used to be but is more mobile and acts very much to secure and interdict the border with Iran. As far as the two provinces that have been handed over to British Iraqi control are concerned, Muthanna and Dhi Qar, as the Secretary of State has indicated, operational over-watch is being provided by the Australians and the Romanians with a small element of UK forces providing the command element. At the moment the UK troops are essentially in bases in and around Basra City itself, the air base and Shaibah Logs Base.

Q78 Mr Crausby: How would you describe the UK Forces' purpose in South East Iraq? More importantly, how is that likely to change as a result of the transition process?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: This was one of the fundamental purposes of Operation SINBAD. Operation SINBAD sought to do two things: to improve the security situation in Basra City but also to increase the capacity of the 10th Division of the Iraqi Army to deal with that security situation and to bring those two elements to intersection. It is important to remember both sides of that particular coin. The Secretary of State earlier referred to some of the successes in SINBAD and it has had a substantial effect on the ground. I think it is just worth pointing out, because we did not get a chance to earlier, what the Basra people themselves think about Operation SINBAD. In December the polling showed that 92 per cent of the people in the city felt secure in their own neighbourhoods and that only two per cent of them had suffered some form of intimidation in the preceding month. Interestingly, 70 per cent of them perceived the financial situation to be manageable or better. I think these next statistics are important in answering your question. 50 per cent of them believed that the Iraqi Police Service are very effective at protecting their neighbourhoods and that is up from 39 per cent at the beginning of the operation. 75 per cent of them believed that the Iraqi Police Service will be better this year and 67 per cent believed that the Iraqi Police Service are capable and professional, up from 49 per cent at the beginning of the operation. So it has had a substantial impact not just on the security situation on the ground but also on the perception of the Basrawis themselves. As far as 10 Division is concerned, they have made substantial progress over the course of Operation SINBAD to the extent that, as the Secretary of State said, they have been in the lead in the latter pulses of the operation and as the operation draws to a close it can truly now be described as an Iraqi operation, not a UK operation. We started off SINBAD with the UK forces providing security on the ground assisted by 10 Division Iraqi Army; we are now in a position where 10 Division is providing that security with the UK support. So the role of the UK military in MND(SE), as has always been planned, will transition from delivering security to supporting the Iraqi Army principally through mentoring, training and logistics support.

Q79 Chairman: CDS, would it be possible for you to give us the full results of that opinion survey?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: Certainly.

Chairman: Thank you.

Mr Crausby: Just one last question, Chairman. Sir Richard Dannatt was reported in October as saying that the presence of UK Forces in Iraq were exacerbating the situation. Was he right then and has that changed?

Q80 Andrew Mackinlay: What did he say?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I am not here to talk about what other people have said but I will tell you my own view.

Q81 Andrew Mackinlay: You are in charge, are you not?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: When you deploy on these sorts of operations you always have a certain level of consent to start with and that level of consent over time tends to decline because people really would rather get on with their own lives and not have other forces there. That is absolutely a natural consequence in any environment you care to name. At the same time, of course, the forces you have deployed there are doing some important things in developing security and helping that country back onto its feet, so it is always a question of balance of cost and benefit. There will always be a downside to having our forces there and there will always be an upside and the question is are you getting more benefit than you are not. So far we are still continuing, as I think I have demonstrated with the statistics from Operation SINBAD, to contribute far more than we are causing a problem.

Q82 Mr Crausby: As time goes on, as you say, if they are there longer will they exacerbate the situation more?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: As time goes on the level of consent inevitably declines and it is important to finish the job before you get to that stage. That has always been the case, it is not news, we knew it and we said it when we started the operation.

Q83 Willie Rennie: What is the projected drawdown of UK Forces in Iraq this year and next year?

Des Browne: The situation in relation to drawdown is that we are still operating on a conditions-based approach to this and I think it is important to say, without going through all of the conditions, our position is that we will make an assessment against the conditions that are now well-known and everybody who has an interest in Iraq is able to repeat in terms of threat, the ability to be able to deal with threat, the nature of government and our ability to be able to respond to any requests for support. When we get to that stage we will be able to move to provincial Iraqi control as we have done in two of the four provinces. When we get to that stage that will have consequences for the number of troops. But there is the additional consideration that we plan to redeploy our troops from a number of different bases in Basra to one. It is well-known that we plan to do that and that we are intending to do that over the immediate future. Other than to say what I said in November, which was that it is my expectation that we will be able to see that process through and that over the course of the coming months in this year that we are now in we can expect to see a reduction in our troops by a matter of thousands, at this stage I am not prepared to say any more. There are a number of reasons for that. One is that when the work is done and we have made the assessments then I will be able to report fully to the House and it does not seem to me to serve the operational security of those who are working and doing a very dangerous job there if we give people who have a malign attitude towards our troops some kind of framework within which to work. In particular, I am very reluctant to give them the opportunity to claim that they have achieved what we plan to do. I may just say in answer to the earlier point that was being made that my understanding of the concept of presence exacerbating is a function of that particular problem.

Q84 Willie Rennie: Assuming there are thousands, as you say, getting drawn down, what will happen to those troops? Everywhere I go when I do defence business I get complaints from all the forces who complain about not really having any guidelines - you would call it stretch, I would call it overstretch - the real pressure upon training, which is having an effect on morale. What is anticipated for those troop numbers? Will they go off to Afghanistan to support there? Will they be brought back? Will the pressure be taken off? What is anticipated?

Des Browne: At the risk of getting into this, with respect, somewhat tedious discussion about what is the definition of "stretch" as opposed to "overstretch", we all know what the situation is and there is no doubt that if we were able to reduce our commitment to Iraq then bringing those troops home we would be able to reduce the pressure on our own Armed Forces at the moment in order to serve these two substantial commitments which have been going now in each case for a period of time. The deployment of troops into any operational theatre is in response to the assessment made by the military of what is necessary to carry out the task that is asked of them. That is an evolving process. Even in the eight months that I have been the Secretary of State I have seen the need to make changes, to announce to the House that I am responding to circumstances that come back, operations change, but these assessments will have to be made in each theatre in relation to each theatre. At the end of the day our ability to be able to deploy troops relies on our having them to deploy, there is no question about that, and people understand that. For example, in the near future we are bringing troops back from Bosnia because the troops that we have presently deployed in Bosnia are, in fact, doing policing work there and that has moved on and it will not be necessary for us to do that. Hopefully this year with the political process in Northern Ireland we will look forward to being able to reduce our commitment in relation to Operation BANNER and, indeed, perhaps bringing it to a conclusion. If we continue to move along the path we have been moving along we look forward to being able to reduce our commitment in terms of numbers to Iraq and all of that will have an effect on our ability to do other things that we need to do.

Q85 Willie Rennie: Is it the intention to learn the lessons about over-commitment? Is that the intention and not to actually stretch our forces in the way that we have been doing?

Des Browne: To learn the lessons of over-commitment, the fact of the matter is our forces are being asked to do what they are able to do. There is no doubt that if we were to sustain that level of commitment over a period of time then that would have a long-term effect on our ability to be able to deploy forces at some time in the future. With respect, what I have already said suggests that it is not our intention nor our plan to continue with that level over the long-term, not even over the next year. It is our plan and our intention to be able to relieve some of that commitment and, of course, then to be able to allow those troops who have been committed to rest, recuperate and retrain and avoid the very dire consequences that some people want to concentrate on rather than what we are asking our troops to do at the moment.

Chairman: Moving on to the infrastructure of Basra.

Q86 Willie Rennie: What progress has been made in developing the facilities at Basrah Air Station and are you satisfied with the level of protection provided?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: There is a very comprehensive and detailed programme of work to bring the infrastructure at Basrah Air Station to the level that is needed for its projected future occupation and, indeed, to provide the appropriate level of protection for our troops. I am absolutely satisfied that people are working 100 per cent to do that as soon as is possible.

Q87 Willie Rennie: What about the Shaibah Logistics Base, when do you expect that to be handed over to Iraqi control?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I cannot give you a precise date at the moment because it is a complex series of moves to relocate staff from Shaibah and one or two of them have had to be delayed for a number of reasons, but it will be in the not too distant future put it that way.

Q88 Chairman: Are we talking weeks or months?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We are talking certainly not more than a couple of months at the moment.

Q89 Willie Rennie: When do you expect all the UK Forces in South East Iraq to move to Basrah Air Station?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: We do not have a date for that at the moment.

Q90 Willie Rennie: Roughly?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I would not want to speculate at the moment on a precise date because the plans are currently being drawn up and we must let the commanders on the ground do the detailed work rather than impose arbitrary timescales on them.

Des Browne: Can I just say that we also have to have discussions with the other members of the coalition because there are other countries represented in the area who work with us, we have to have discussions with them but, most importantly, we have to have discussions with the Iraqi authorities, the provincial government, the Iraqi Government, the Iraqi security forces, all of these processes have to be gone through and until they are we will not be in a position to make any announcements. As soon as I am in a position to be able to say to Parliament what we are doing then I will do that.

Q91 Mr Havard: It is heavily trailed in the press today that you are going to have an assessment in February of all of these sorts of aspects, is that right? Is that when it is roughly going to happen, so from that we will get a rough idea, or is the press being the usual press and it will be tomorrow's chip paper?

Des Browne: If you had been present at Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday you might have ----

Q92 Mr Havard: I was not, no.

Des Browne: ---- had some indication from the Prime Minister's answer that when it comes to the end of Operation SINBAD there will be a process of assessment and he himself said that he will make a statement to House. With respect to Mr Harding in The Telegraph, it did not take a genius to work out that something might be happening and a process of assessment might be going on. It does not help until we have done the preparatory work and in particular, and I am very conscious of this, for the operational security of those who are deployed in the South East for us to be speculating or suggesting because, apart from anything else, there are people there who will take advantage of that very set of circumstances to create a level of attack so that they then can claim that they achieved it, is not helpful. I cannot stop people speculating, I cannot stop people guessing. There is quite a lot of information in the public domain, people can work things out for themselves, but there are no announcements about this and no decisions have been made.

Chairman: Can we now move on because we have very little time left?

Q93 Mr Jones: Can I turn to security sector reform? One of the important points about that transition is going to be the effectiveness of the Iraqi Army and security services. When we were there in June, we met General Latif who is the commander of the 10^th Division of the Iraqi Army and one of the criticisms he had was lack of equipment and fire power. Can you just give us an overview of where we are in terms of both training and the reform, particularly ensuring that the Iraqi Army is not just Shia but represents all the different parts? One of the things which has been reported is the fact that various groups will not operate outside their home areas and I wonder if you could give us a response to that?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: I will speak about Ten Div in the MND South East area. First of all, they are very well positioned with regard to the rest of the Iraqi Army. They are well manned, they are 103 per cent manned, but there are of course some shortages, particularly of officers where they are about 17 per cent short and NCOs where they are about 39 per cent short. These reflect long-term structural problems which flow from the history of the army itself and there is no way these can be fixed overnight, it is a question of developing the skills and capacities over time. Ten Division has in excess of 100 per cent of each item on its equipment table with the exception of one heavy water tanker which is for expeditionary operations and so is not a serious weakness for them at the moment. There are two further areas of equipment development. The first one is in terms of protective mobility and they have now taken delivery of 142 out of a total of 242 armoured humvees which they will be equipped with. They should get the remainder of those by March of this year. They do have an aspiration for some further heavy weapons but it is an aspiration and it is not actually part of their equipment table at the moment and the Iraqi Army is looking at what they ought to do in terms of scaling that. There is one additional point which is of course that the Iraqi Army is being increased in size overall and a fifth brigade is being recruited as we speak for the division itself. So overall Ten Division is extremely well placed. The Iraqi Army has on average greater shortfalls than we experience in Ten Division. With regard to the levels of training, as I said earlier, the experiences of Operation SINBAD have shown an increasing capacity in Ten Div to take on increasingly complex tasks. There are still weaknesses, they still require substantial mentoring in terms of overall leadership, particularly for the complex operations, and they still require a great deal of assistance in terms of logistic support. With regard to the issue of deployability, we have to remember the even-numbered divisions were originally recruited purely as territorial forces and had no expectation of being employed other than in the area in which they were recruited. However, there have been a number of measures put in place including additional training, including consideration of bonuses for deploying out of your base area, and so the intention is to move the Iraqi Army over time to a posture where all divisions will be deployable across Iraq.

Q94 Mr Jones: In the Government's response to our report last year, it was envisaged that operational command would be transferred to Iraqi ground forces by December 2006. Has that happened?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: They are in the process of transferring command. The Iraqi Army believes that it is able to take operational control of Ten Division but that has still to go through all the formal processes before it is done and dusted.

Q95 Mr Jones: What is the problem and what is the timescale for transition?

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup: It should be in the near future, but there are certain processes which have to be gone through both in terms of the coalition and in terms of the Iraqi Army itself and these can be somewhat bureaucratic, but it is going through the process at the moment. It is on the cusp, is how I would describe it.

Q96 Ms Stuart: One political rather than military question. Since the war in March, April 2003, we have gone through a whole series of stages from writing a constitution to having elections, forming a government and handing over to a government. In response to the Foreign Affairs Committee, Foreign Secretary, when we asked how long our troops would be there, you gave what on the face of it was a very straightforward answer, you said, "Until the job is done." I fully agree with what you have said about artificial deadlines and datelines, but what are your parameters for determining when the job is done as viewed from the outside? What are the kind of things we are looking for where we could tell that security has been established to such an extent? Or is simply that we are there until the Iraqis ask us to leave?

Margaret Beckett: Actually I had forgotten that I said that but I think the answer should have been, until the job is done or indeed until the Iraqi Government decide they do not feel they need our support any more, whichever comes first. As the Secretary of State for Defence said in some of his earlier evidence, there are the parameters that we use to assess the process of handover of provinces, and they are in part the kind of parameters we use for how long we are involved. This is also something on which they may have something to say. Basically, we are expecting that they will want us to continue to help and support them even when the provinces have been handed over to their formal control for a period of time. That certainly seems to be their view at the present time and it is something I think we should be willing and prepared to do. I cannot say to you what the time line is for that. As to the judgment about what we hope to be able to have achieved, it is that Iraq has a properly functioning government, that it has a far greater degree of security and stability than has been the case actually for a very long time, not just in the recent past, and that we have seen the process of repair of infrastructure, in the health service, education, seeing the provision of electricity and water and all of that and economic development all gradually taking effect. I would hope too that one of the things we will see is the passage of the hydrocarbons law which will give scope for new investment, which is much needed in the Iraqi oil industry, and also will give scope for some sharing of revenue of a kind which has not happened before. I know many of those who are particularly engaged with economic development in Iraq feel that this is a very crucial step which could be key not only to a better future for Iraq but to shaping that Iraq in a way which is much more positive than in the past. It has been put to me, for example, that one of the things which allowed Saddam to take control in the way he did was he was able to get his hands on all the oil revenue and control it. A fair process of revenue-sharing would mean that nobody could do that in the future and that would be a very good thing.

Q97 Ms Stuart: When we went to Iraq what was quite clear was that to have fair revenue sharing what would also be required would be the establishment of a functioning taxation system. Do you have any information as to the extent that is actually coming into place?

Margaret Beckett: I do not have it at my fingertips. I will look at that, if I may.

Q98 Mike Gapes: Can I ask you what the implications will be for the withdrawal of our forces and the running down of our forces in the south? Do you think it will lead to an increase in Iranian influence? In that context, have you been concerned at some recent reports, emanating from Saudi Arabia, that they are involved in an internal debate - and some personnel have been removed, including the ambassador in Washington - about support for the Sunni community in Iraq after the reduction or withdrawal of the coalition forces?

Margaret Beckett: First of all, do I think there will be an increase in Iranian influence? I would say it probably depends very much on how Iran plays it. I mentioned earlier that different ministers, a number of ministers, in the Government of Iraq have made plain to me that they have robust exchanges with the Government of Iran at what they see as a very negative role that Iraq has been playing in some respects. I think there was a question earlier about whether or not there would be a natural Shia to Shia sympathy which people in the south would be likely to welcome. My impression is that people in the south of Iraq, like people in the north or anywhere in Iraq, are very much Iraqis and they have no greater desire to see another country running their affairs than most countries in the world do. I think that is an element which is perhaps overlooked and under-estimated. My answer to you is that if the Government of Iran comes good on the positive steps they have made about ceasing to interfere negatively in Iraq, about being supportive of the Iraqi Government - which actually we would argue is very much in their own long-term interests; for the whole region and particularly for Iraq's neighbours, an unstable, undamaged and insecure Iraq is not good news - maybe they will have a friendly influence. But I do not necessarily assume they will in some way behind the scenes be running Iraq.

Q99 Mike Gapes: If not, is there not a real danger, as King Abdullah of Jordan said when he spoke to both Houses in November, of neighbours of Iraq intervening, whether it is the Saudis or the Turks, coming in because they feel a disintegration, a conflict, internally will lead to outside regional intervention in Iraq? Is that not a real danger at this time?

Margaret Beckett: That presumes that all the predictions and anxieties, which are understandable, of the different communities in Iraq splintering apart do actually begin to take place. It is my view as well as my hope that there is actually a very strong recognition, perhaps an increasing recognition, in all communities in Iraq that actually their best interests lie in working to maintain a unified country and to support their government. Some months ago I recall that it was felt there was an imperative for us to encourage other elements in Iraqi society to recognise that their best interests lay with supporting and working with the government that they have. Certainly it is my impression that that message has actually been accepted and understood and that people are trying to work in the overall interests of their country, as indeed one would hope they would.

Q100 Linda Gilroy: Foreign Secretary, on detainees, I think I am right in saying overall there is still a similar number now as there was last year, about 14-15,000. The Americans appear to be happy to see them released, so what is the problem, what is getting in the way of releases and what influence have we tried to bring to bear on that?

Margaret Beckett: I do not have the figures that you have because the figures I have are related to any detainees that we have.

Q101 Linda Gilroy: Could you let us have a note about the current situation?

Mr Casey: The figures you refer to are principally those detained in Iraqi detention, and the problems associated with the flow of people through the Iraqi judicial system relate to the well-known shortcomings and delays in that system, which we and others are doing our best to help address, so that the process is speeded up. You probably know we have ourselves a very, very small number of detainees.

Q102 Linda Gilroy: Is there anything emerging from the statement yesterday which is likely to help move that forward, because it is a very deep-seated problem which has caused a lot of angst?

Margaret Beckett: We have been and so have others involved, over some time, seeking to retrain and support through the courts and judicial system and so on, just as we have with the police and prison service and so on. I do not myself see anything in what was said yesterday which makes any difference to that.

Q103 Linda Gilroy: A couple of quick questions to the Secretary of State for Defence, how many detainees are there currently held by UK forces and will you now consider providing the figure regularly to Parliament rather than just making it available to journalists?

Des Browne: There are 100 presently. I was not aware we were not providing this figure to Parliament ---

Q104 Linda Gilroy: That was in your response.

Des Browne: Nor, I have to say, was I aware we were providing it to journalists. If it is felt that it would be helpful for people to understand the full extent of what we are doing and what is happening, if we can find a way of regularly reporting that, then I will find a way of regularly reporting that.

Q105 Chairman: How long will we hold them?

Des Browne: Obviously we hold detainees for varying times and it is not the same people now we had perhaps sometime ago although it was less than 100. There are processes which reflect the agreement we have in terms of the Security Council resolution, now involving the Iraqis themselves, which review the detention and this was an issue that was dealt with by the Committee in its last report and we responded to it. Since we are running out of time, I will write to the Committee, up-dating them on our response to the last report in relation to the issue of detainees and I will find a regular way of reporting to Parliament.

Q106 Linda Gilroy: Can you let us know what the position is on the plan to open a detention facility at Basrah Air Station and how many detainees that is designed to accommodate? Is it planned that the Iraqis will keep the Shaibah facility open?

Des Browne: Chairman, I will answer all those questions in correspondence to the Committee. If the Clerk could be in touch with my office about any other supplementaries in this area, I will try to deal with them all in a comparatively short period of time in the one piece of correspondence.

Margaret Beckett: Could we briefly remind the Committee though, Chairman, that the Red Cross and the ministry have access to those detainees.

Des Browne: We are going to some lengths to ensure that the detention facility, the temporary detention facility we will build because we perceive we need one, will be compliant with the Red Cross's standards and with the Geneva Convention and all the necessary human rights' standards. May I say on this, this issue of defence is very important in terms of the ability of the Iraqi Government to be able to sustain a reconciliation going forward. The figures which have been used thus far are not fully reflective of the scale of the problem; it is a significant problem.

Chairman: It is now 5.31. I never thought we would do it and we have not. Since we are a minute late, I apologise. I am grateful to the witnesses and to both Committees for a good deal of co-operation in covering a lot of ground and for the information we have discussed. Thank you very much indeed.