§ Mr. Dave Nellist (Coventry, South-East)At the end of a long parliamentary day, I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for returning to the Chair for what is likely to be the last scheduled debate on the middle east and the Gulf before the expiry of the deadline set by the western powers of midnight, 15 January 1991, for Iraq to leave Kuwait.
I do not claim to speak in the debate on behalf of the parliamentary Labour party. However, 49 Labour Members either voted against or sponsored motions against the Government's support for the possible use of force, and therefore a substantial minority in the parliamentary Labour party is against the use of force. In the Labour party outside we are a bigger factor, and possibly even form a majority.
An opinion poll in The Independent about six days ago showed that 41 per cent. of Labour voters questioned about their attitude to a possible war in the Gulf insisted on the complete withdrawal of Iraq, even if that meant war. However, 49 per cent. opposed war. In the most recent polls conducted by the New York Times and CBS, 45 per cent. were in favour of war and 48 per cent. wanted more time for sanctions. The number of people opposed to war will increase, especially in America where people had the experience of Vietnam. War would result in horrific death and disfigurement. I shall deal with that later.
In the past few days the pendulum has swung between war and peace. Western hostages have been released—we were especially pleased to see the release of British hostages—but on the other hand there have been bellicose statements from leaders in America. It is ironic that on almost the last parliamentary day before Christmas and at this time of the year we should be considering what could be the most serious military conflict since the second world war.
In a number of meetings that I have had since 2 October, opposing the Government's support of possible war, I have begun each of those meetings as I begin my speech this morning, with a condemnation of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the taking of hostages. I should have thought that that would go without question. However, the speeches that I have heard from leaders from all sorts of countries have the stench of hypocrisy. I think that it was Disraeli who said that a Tory Government was organised hypocrisy, so I suppose that I should not be too surprised.
We are now told that Iraq is in a direct line from Hitler. It went into a war in Iran. It invaded part of Iran and during the 1980s it received backing from those powers that today criticise its invasion of Kuwait. There were differences then. Iraq was seen as a moderating influence against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism after the Iranian revolution at the end of the 1970s. Because of that, in the 1970s and 1980s, France supplied $25,000 million worth of weapons to Iraq. America gave free intelligence from satellites, $5 billion worth of food subsidies and $2.5 billon of export guarantees. The Soviet Union provided huge amounts of armaments, as did Germany, Switzerland and others. Latterly, Britain was keen to have trade, including trade in weapons.
Therefore, the arms that allowed Iraq to build itself up to the point at which it could invade Kuwait, threaten to invade Saudi Arabia, and be in a stand-off against the 497 army of the greatest military power that the world has ever seen—America—were largely built up by the western powers that today criticise Iraq.
I hope that those of my hon. Friends who are here, or who may read the report of the debate, will consider my next point. One of the tasks of the next Labour Government will be to stem the export of arms throughout the world. The middle east has been the most lucrative market for arms sales in recent decades. Half the oil revenues from all the Arab countries has been spent on battlefields in the past 40 or 50 years. That should stop. The Labour party should be considering closing the defence sales organisation. I speak as a Member of Parliament who represents a city—Coventry—which, with Bristol, has the highest number of factories dependent on arms jobs. My party should be considering public ownership of those firms and changing them to produce socially useful items instead of arms, which will end up on battlefields and, as we shall no doubt find all too soon, can be turned even against our young men and women. In such a big change, jobs must be guaranteed.
No doubt the Minister will repeat the points made earlier in the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), in which he said that Saddam Hussein is a dictator. I am astonished by the Government's seeming surprise at the Iraqi regime in Kuwait. The savagery of that regime has been known for many years, as has its treatment of its people, particularly the Kurdish minority. On 17 March 1988, Iraq bombed the Kurdish village of Halabja, and 5,000 people were killed. That was not unknown to the Government. When 10,000 died later in the year, in the villages north of Basra, which were bombed with chemical weapons, that was not unknown.
The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave), now the Secretary of State for Health, was then a junior Minister in the Foreign Office. He said that the Government were annoyed and upset and would be taking action. It was on 27 October 1988 that the Minister made a statement in which he said, for example, that the Government were against the use of chemical weapons. Ten days later, on 8 November, doors opened for increased trade with Iraq. A press statement was issued by the Department of Trade and Industry stating that the Government were offering an extra £400 million-worth of credits to British firms to increase trade with a regime that had so recently been condemned by the Foreign Office for the way in which it treated its citizens.
Yesterday, along with many other hon. Members, no doubt, I received material from the Free Kuwait campaign. One of the quotes in the material was from an Iraqi army captain who had deserted. He was interviewed on 14 November in Turkey, and he described the actions of the Iraqi troops in Kuwait. He said:
It is like a butcher's shop.I do not doubt that statement from the Iraqi captain or those made by the Free Kuwait campaign. I do not doubt what the Minister may quote when replying to the debate. The Amnesty International report of 19 December states that thousands have been killed or tortured, including over 300 premature babies. The same report tells us that while the brutality of the Iraqi forces has shocked many in Kuwait, 498such abuses have been the norm for people in Iraq for more than a decade.We are not dealing with a regime that suddenly changed its spots on 2 August. It is a regime that has treated its citizens brutally within its own borders, and that has been known for many years.I and several other hon. Friends and hon. Members representing other Opposition parties have tried to do our bit to support the campaign against repression and for democracy in Iraq—CARDI. In May 1989, 91 Members from six political parties tabled a motion that opposed Government financial support for 17 British firms at the Baghdad arms fair. We opposed that support because the firms were engaged in selling arms to a regime with an appalling human rights record. Not one Tory Member signed the motion, yet there is almost unanimity now among Tory Members on the human rights record of the Iraqi regime. The regime is not new; it is not something that has suddenly dropped out of the sky.
I still fear that there will be a war in the early part of the new year. It will not be a war about democracy. It will do the Government no good to refer, as the Minister probably will this morning, to the three main aims of the United Nations. One of the aims—the release of hostages—has been realised in recent days. The second is the complete withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait, and the third is the restoration of the "legitimate" Government of Kuwait.
I do not regard the as-Sabah dynasty as particularly legitimate. Even before the invasion, there was precious little real democracy in Kuwait. Only 8.5 per cent. of the male population of Kuwait was entitled to a vote. That entitlement was restricted to those who could trace their lineage back to males who lived in Kuwait before 1920. They amounted to only 60,000 of the three quarters of a million Kuwaitis. That is besides the hundreds of thousands who originate from other countries who have lived in Kuwait all their lives. They include up to 1 million from Egypt. There are probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. There are many from the Philippines. There are about 75,000 Sri Lankan housemaids. These people had no democratic or civil rights. Women did not have the vote in Kuwait.
Even if 8.5 per cent. of the male Kuwaitis had the vote, that did not do much good. The emir abolished the national assembly in 1986 and it has not met since. Many thousands of people in Kuwait were slaves. The migrant workers had no real rights. Kuwait was one of the richest countries in the world with a notional $13,000 per head of population. There are 41 countries with per capita wealth of less than $300. I speak from memory, but I think that Mozambique is at the bottom of the list with $150. A country with a notional $13,000 per head is enormously rich. It was concentrated in a relatively small number of feudal families, rather than being distributed evenly among the population.
I know that the Minister will not like the repetition, but the crisis is not about democracy; it is about the strategic importance of oil and about the control by western powers—American and British—of the oil supplies. It is not just me saying that. The former American assistant secretary for defence, Lawrence Korb, said:
What it amounts to is the great powers settling their interests. If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn!That is the truth.The New York Times says that America is interested in
cheap oil and stable monarchies.499 I do not doubt that America wants to topple Saddam Hussein, but in favour of what? It is certainly not in favour of a better or fairer society. It is in favour of what The Times editorial described recently as another section of the Baghdad elite. In other words, it is an officers' coup; another secret policeman. As long as he tortures and murders, arrests and imprisons within the boundaries of Iraq, he will be allowed to do what he wants.What does Iraq want out of this crisis? I do not think that it wants war. I agree that it wants the spoils of its invasion of Kuwait, in particular the part that includes the northern oilfield in Kuwait—the southern part of Iraq. It wants the two islands and it wants access to the waterway so that it can build a new Iraqi port. Anyone who looks at the map and understands the nature of the Gulf and the depth of the water will recognise the importance of that. Iraq wants to control an extra 20 per cent. of the world's oil reserves.
Even more important is the fact that because of the devastating war with Iran, when Iraq ran up huge debts of $300 billion, it wants an external diversion to take the attention of millions of people in Iraq away from the horrors of the future. Our Government complain about having to raise interest rates because inflation is about 10 per cent.; it is 300 per cent. in Iraq. In 1980, Iraq was receiving$26 billion a year in oil revenues. By 1989 that had dropped to $14 billion. It is mainly for those economic and political reasons that Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Iraq grafts on to that an element of justification. I am not here as an appeaser or as an apologist. However, it was not Iraq that decided the boundaries. Most of the boundaries in the Arabian peninsula were carved up by Britain and France following the first world war.
I have read a few biographies of Sir Arnold Wilson, Sir Percy Cox and Lord Curzon. It was the pencil of Sir Percy Cox, drawing what has been described as a wavering line on an inaccurate map in 1922, that created the present-day boundaries of Kuwait. Churchill approved them. It was Lord Curzon who said that he wanted the Persian Gulf to be a British lake. It was Britain and France that put people like Faisal on the throne of Iraq and created the artefacts of Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and the Emirates after the fall of the Ottoman empire. That exacerbated the divisions between the Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and the Maronite Christians and between the Druse and the Jews, which later created in Israel what one British commentator described as a loyal little Jewish Ulster.
That drawing of the map has for decades exacerbated the feelings of the Arab people that they were the playthings of the imperialist interests of France and Britain.
On the other side of the coin is the British and American legal justification. In case the Minister quotes from the United Nations resolutions, I can tell him that I have read all of them and the two documents published by the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The legal justification appears in article 51, in resolution 660 and in subsequent resolutions. It includes self-defence and Operation Desert Shield, being invited in by Saudi Arabia.
But those pale into insignificance in the light of the Turkish invasion and colonisation of Cyprus in 1974; after America went into Grenada, a Commonwealth country, into Libya, interfered in Nicaragua, or bombed and killed 7,000 people in Panama; or the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and the west bank for the past 23 years. On 500 8 October, 21 Palestinians were killed and 150 badly injured in the police action at the Temple Mount, the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
There were five days of debate at the United Nations and at the end of that there was a decision to send three secretaries from the Secretary-General's office to carry out an investigation. What an insult. Why has no task force been sent to implement United Nations resolution 242? Could it be the unworthy idea that in growing olives and citrus fruits the Palestinians might not grow many carrots, in Lawrence Korb's words, but nor do they have any oil for America or Britain to worry about?
If the United Nations is such a worthy organisation, why is America $600 million in arrears on its subscriptions? Why do the Government do nothing—other than answer my parliamentary questions on occasions—about the reports and actions of the Israeli Government in the occupied territories?
I have read parts of Amnesty International's report arid I agree that the actions of the Iraqi troops in Kuwait are horrible. I have mentioned some of them already. On 12 December the Minister told me and the House that the Government estimate that, since the outbreak of the intifada in the occupied territories just over three years ago, 858 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli defence forces, 58 deported and about 10,000 held in administrative detention. Figures for the wounded range from an Israeli estimate of about 13,000 to a Palestinian human rights information centre estimate of about 100,000. One quarter of those killed are children under the age of 16.
The Save the Children Fund—not a particularly left-wing organisation—described the composite picture of the average child killed by tear gas. It showed a Gaza refugee infant girl at home in bed when soldiers threw a tear gas canister into her room, causing immediate and extreme respiratory stress, cyanosis and heavy mucus discharge from the mouth and nose leading to death from asphyxia and circulatory failure within 12 hours. Where is the difference between the death of such a child in Gaza and the death of the children in Kuwait? Why do not the Government have the same attitude to the hostilities conducted against the Palestinian people and others such as the Kurds in the middle east as they have shown in the past few weeks towards Iraq?
The Government's policy has had consequences in the middle east and for workers in my constituency. Recently, Matrix Churchill, a company in Coventry, received encouragement to export to Iraq and is now paying the penalty after the United Nations resolutions. Under the sanctions, the company's ownership by the Iraqi secret service has caused many other companies not to deal with it and redundancies are the reward for the people of Coventry.
We appear to be moving in the next couple of weeks towards a Rubicon which we would cross for the first time for 50 years in terms of a war on a world scale. The consequences of that war would be horrific.
Given all that has been said in recent days, one cannot rule out successful negotiations, but still the British and American Governments, and the Iraqi dictator, appear to adopt entrenched positions. It seems unlikely that the substantial forces now in the Gulf will sit there doing nothing and rotting away for many more months.
The situation has developed over the months from an American demand that the Iraqis pull out of Kuwait to an 501 insistence not only that Saddam Hussein must go, but that there should be something along the lines of the Nuremberg trials and the dismantling of weapons. That could be achieved only by both a military defeat of Iraq and military occupation of that country for months, if not years, thereafter.
A war would be horrific. Sir Peter de la Billiere talks of a swift war, and replying to me on 4 September, the Secretary of State for Defence spoke of an operation that would be "short, sharp and quick".
President Johnson was told the same at the beginning of the Vietnam war. He was assured that in 12 days the Vietcong's military depots could be bombed out of existence, yet 12 years later—after 350,000 bombing raids, the dropping of 8 million tonnes of bombs, and the loss of 57,000 American troops and 2 million Vietnamese—America was defeated.
Iraq does not possess the same kind of ragged, ill-equipped army that fought for North Vietnam in the 1960s, precisely because it has been so well-equipped by Russia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Britain, China, America and the rest.
This Christmas, 90,000 mince pies are being sent from Britain to the Gulf, together with 10,000 body bags. America is sending 100,000 body bags. The Pentagon has plans to send 800 gallons of blood a day to the Gulf, and it has made available 5,000 military beds. There are also three American navy hospitals. Described as prepacked and climatically controlled, they are said to offer the most sophisticated facilities in the world. Each has 500 beds, six operating theatres and 950 medical staff.
Think of the good that such a facility could do in Asia or Africa, or even nearer to home. About a week ago, the Prime Minister admitted to me that there are four American air force hospitals on former RAF sites in this country. One in the Cotswolds has 1,500 beds, with everything from the soap to the linen wrapped in plastic and ready for world war three—or perhaps now, for when war breaks out in the Gulf. Imagine how those facilities could have been used to shorten Britain's hospital waiting lists.
A war in the Gulf will not be "short, sharp and quick". The Pentagon estimates that 30,000 Americans and 90,000 Iraqi troops would be injured within the first 12 days. The French Defence Minister spoke of 100,000 injured. At the end of November, The Daily Telegraph wrote of hundreds of thousands of lives being lost on the Iraqi side, and The Independent estimated 400 British dead a day. Let us see what public opinion will be when those bodies arrive back at Northolt.
The most decorated American soldier in North Vietnam, Colonel David Hackworth, has spoken of 50,000 casualties in the first two weeks of a Gulf war, and Brigadier Patrick Cordingley was quoted in an article in the Evening Standard that appeared under the elegant headine,
Prepare for a blood bath.That is the prospect for the young men and women of Britain, America and Iraq if a war breaks out in the early weeks of 1991. That is the scale of the loss of life that could be the consequence of such a war.Other consequences were touched on earlier, in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow. He spoke of the ecological repercussions if only 30 of 300 502 Kuwaiti oil wells apparently deep-mined by the Iraqis are destroyed. As to the use of chemical weapons, we learnt from Chernobyl of the years of distress that can result from one major explosion. We saw that in the hill areas of Wales and Scotland, as livestock died over a lengthy period. We saw enough of the results of the factory explosion at Bhopal to realise what a conflagration of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons could mean in the middle east.
The economic consequences should not be pushed aside as though they were less important than the loss of life. Many of the economic consequences for countries in the so-called third world and in eastern Europe could lead to a loss of life in a sharp winter. Poland spends 30 per cent. of its hard currency on oil, but in two weeks' time the USSR, which for many years has supplied oil at a subsidised price of $7 a barrel to the eastern bloc, will move to market prices in hard currency and will be charging $25 or $30 per barrel. According to Sheikh Yamani, the price will be more than $100 per barrel if there is a war. At a price of $25 per barrel Poland would have to spend 30 per cent. of its hard currency, Czechoslovakia 75 per cent. and Bulgaria 100 per cent. to buy the oil for this winter. At $30 per barrel, Czechoslovakia would spend 90 per cent. and Bulgaria would spend 120 per cent. of its hard currency reserves. That would be a body blow this winter for those newly emergent countries, coming out from under the yoke of Stalinism after 40 years into a "brighter" future. If there were a war they would be condemned to a winter in which thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, of people would die of cold.
Three or four weeks ago a sub-committee of NATO spoke of the severe and catastrophic recession in eastern Europe, with the possibility of Chilean-style military regimes emerging because of its economic consequences. The impact throughout the rest of the world would be no less severe.
In Britain, in December the CBI news bulletin spoke of military experts that it had consulted suggesting that a war in the middle east would not be protected, and that the United States should be able to overwhelm Iraq. It said that in those circumstances, even if the production installations had been damaged, there was a good chance that a victory in the middle east could effectively break OPEC and leave secure supplies of relatively cheap oil for the latter part of the 1990s.
That may be a rosy scenario, but it shows the CBI's view of one of the main aims of a war—the breaking of the OPEC cartel and the securing of cheaper oil supplies in the 1990s. Lack of time prevents me from reading most of the report, which goes on to talk about the severe depression which would last for five or six years if there were a war and the oil price rose.
I do not have time to catalogue all of them, but in the ex-colonial, or so-called third world, many countries such as Bangladesh are entirely dependent for oil upon the middle east, and the remittances of about 450,000 workers from the Gulf have been stopped. One third of its foreign exchange earnings have been stopped because of the lack of earnings from migrant workers, who were formerly in the middle east, principally in Kuwait.
Uganda's oil bills will rise from $7 million to $10 million a month. Pakistan needs an extra $600 million to meet the oil price rises, and is losing an estimated $400 503 million in Gulf remittances. India has lost 40 per cent. of its normal oil sources and the remittances of 180,000 expatriates in Iraq and Kuwait.
A recession has already begun in this country and it could be speeded up and triggered in exactly the same way as the war between Israel and the Arab countries triggered the first of the 1970s recessions, and a similar major rise in the oil price towards the end of the 1970s triggered the recession which, between 1981 and 1983, cost my city almost 40,000 jobs in factories.
So the economic cost would be huge. I do not have enough time to develop the theme of the political costs in the middle east—not merely the ecological flames of war, but the political flames of revolution. I predict that especially in Egypt and Jordan, but possibly in other countries, some of the leaders who have tied themselves to the exhaust pipe of America's F111s because of the support that they have been getting in subventions from America will find that a war polarises the countries between the occidental and the oriental—as King Hussein put it—between the white north and the colonial arab peoples, between the imperialism of the oil companies and the Arab peninsula. When the position is seen in that context, some of those rulers may be toppled.
I am not one of those—they include people whom I respect as friends as well as political comrades—who have called for an extension, or even an implementation, of sanctions against Iraq. It is not a question of appeasement. Replying to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow, the Minister said that the destabilisation of Iraq was not happening fast enough because of sanctions. What that means, in cold terms, is that there is not enough pressure from the young, the old and the poor in Iraq to get rid of the leadership.
That is what sanctions are about. Saddam Hussein has been able to hide the preparations not only for chemical weapons but, according to the most recent edition of The Sunday Times, for nuclear weapons. Apparently they can be constructed within a year or 18 months: Saddam Hussein has been able to import from Coventry, the midlands, Germany and elsewhere the machine tools, lathes and milling machines that he needs to make the centrifuges and to turn the shell cases to be ready to develop nuclear weapons and to convert uranium to weapons grade uranium-235. If he can hide all that, he can certainly hide food supplies for himself, his family and the elite in Baghdad. They would not suffer from sanctions; the ordinary population would suffer.
I do not think that any worker in this country would want such action to be taken against working people in Iraq. He would, however, want action to be taken against the dictatorship, the army and the brutal oppressors of the state machine in Iraq.
I may be in the minority in the Labour party in that I have a jaundiced view—cynical, some might say—of the worth of the United Nations. I think of the United Nations as the Tory Governments of Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and America; its members get together with the butchers of Tiananmen square, and suddenly they are all supposed to be liberal socialists. I do not think that that happens: I do not think that they change their spots when they leave this country, or any other European country, and become socialists overnight when they get to New York. Similarly, if I had a factory in Coventry where the workers were in dispute with the management I would not call in the CBI as an independent arbitrator, because I do 504 not think that it represents interests other than those that it has always represented. I do not think that calling on the United Nations is the answer.
I want dictators like Saddam Hussein to be brought down, but in precisely the same way as the Stalinist dictators were brought down in eastern Europe—by the mass action of millions of people on the streets of Leipzig, Bucharest, Budapest and Prague. That task can be completed only by the Arab peoples in the middle east, who must rise up—with our support, where we can give it—and overthrow the dictators. Just as I think that we need a Labour Government in this country to solve the problems of working people, socialist, Labour and democratic Governments need to emerge in the middle east.
This is not a war about democracy. I know that many people in this country have realised for the first time just how bad is the dictatorship in Iraq. That is natural, when a paper such as the Daily Mirror is publishing headlines like that of 21 August, which quoted an unnamed Iraqi Government official as saying, "We'll eat your pilots". It is no wonder that working-class people think, "If that is what the regime is like, let us do all that we can to get rid of it."
With the possible exception of the elements of parliamentary democracy represented by the freedom of newspapers and civil rights that exist in "lesser" Israel, within the pre-1967 boundaries—not the occupied territories, and they do not exist for Arabs within the pre-1967 boundaries—no country in the middle east deserves that title, yet we have put all those British troops into Saudi Arabia. If the British people knew a tenth about what happens in the other countries of the middle east, they would probably want to go to war with all of them.
Saudi Arabia is run by a king. It does not have a Parliament. The king rules by absolute decree. Most of the Ministers are members of his family. Political parties are banned, as are elections. Executions take place regularly. Stoning to death is the sentence for adultery and the sentence for theft is amputation of a limb. How many mothers in this country would want their sons to die on the desert sands of Saudi Arabia if they knew that women there are not even allowed to drive cars?
Last July, over 1,500 pilgrims were killed in a tunnel in Mecca. King Fahd observed that the disaster was God"s will. He said:
Had they not died there, they would have died elsewhere at the same predestined moment.That is the regime that British troops have been sent to defend. On 8 November the king promised that a consultative council would be set up. That promise was first made three kings ago, in 1962. However, the king will appoint the 50 male members of the consultative council. It will hardly be the most democratic of institutions.The Minister will no doubt quote extracts from Amnesty International's report on Kuwait. I urge him to read the whole of Amnesty International's report—it is available in the Library—on Saudi Arabia. It refers to the 111 people who were executed, 16 of whom committed political offences, during the past 12 months. If that does not suit, I urge him to read the digest on human rights that The Economist published in 1986. I am not quoting from partial left-wing sources. The digest gave Saudi Arabia a human rights rating of 28 per cent.—one of the lowest in the world.
505 Syria is our new ally in this battle. Only two weeks ago the Foreign Secretary restored diplomatic relations with Syria and gave his seal of approval to that vicious, reactionary dictatorship. In 1982 Syria ordered the murder of 20,000 Muslims in the village of Homs. Syria's security police are no less effective than those of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Executions are carried out regularly, just as happens in Saudi Arabia.
If invasion is the criterion for going to war under United Nations resolutions, Syria invaded Lebanon on more than one occasion. It has also successfully invaded and colonised a substantial chunk of the Lebanon. It has created what President Assad calls "greater Syria." The Minister could have read about all that in Amnesty International's report or in The Economist digest.
There is a hereditary monarch in Jordan. For 22 years, until last year, there were no elections, but there were regular executions. I urge the Minister to read The Economist and Amnesty International reports. As for the emirates in the Gulf, all of them are feudal autocracies.
In the United Arab Emirates, seven absolute monarchs regularly carry out executions. The Emir of Qatar is an absolute monarch. He is also the Prime Minister. There is no Parliament and there are no political parties. The Sultan of Oman is head of state and has absolute powers. Executions are held regularly. Again, there are no political parties. Executions also take place regularly in the Yemen. North Yemen has an executive president who is elected by a 159-member constituent people's assembly. The president selects its members by presidential decree. Bahrain has an absolute monarch. Its last national assembly was abolished in 1975.
In Egypt there is an obscene contrast between business men who import Mercedes-Benz cars and pay £75,000 tax on them and the poor of Cairo who live and sleep in graveyards because they have no homes. The Minister can check such statements by referring to The Economist and Amnesty International reports. Plenty of things need to be changed in the middle east. If the press here had devoted the same amount of time, energy and attention to those problems as has been devoted to Iraq during the past four or five months, the working people of this country would want action to be taken against those countries, too, so that their brothers and sisters could be released from the dictatorships under which they live. It is the job not of tanks, planes, boats or armies up to 1 million strong to solve these problems but of the people of the region.
I hope that there is no war. If war breaks out, I shall demand in the House that this country does not send a bomb or a bullet to it and withdraws its troops. Not a young man or woman from this country, America or Iraq should die on the sands of the middle east for this war over oil and the strategic interests of the western powers. The Labour movement should have an independent position. I know that I am in the minority in believing that, but I am confident that in the weeks ahead that argument will gain more ground.
I hope that when we have a change of Government and a new United Kingdom policy on the middle east we shall play a little part in establishing fairer, better, more democratic and, I hope, socialist societies in the region which will co-operate and build a federal future that will recognise the rights of minorities, be they Jews, Kurds, 506 Palestinians, Kuwaitis or Arabs. I hope that they will guarantee national and democratic rights in the region. War will not do those things. I know that there will be no vote at the end of the debate, but I am grateful for the opportunity to place my point of view before the House in opposition to the war that I fear is coming.
§ Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East)With the leave of the House, I shall intervene again. I recall, rather hazily, speaking earlier. I have not changed my views since that time and nor, I suspect, has the Minister after nocturnal reflection.
It may sound a little hollow to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) at this hour of the morning after a long night, but I do so. He made many points well. He referred, for example, to the nature of the Iraqi regime. He mentioned the Kurds, his membership of the campaign against repression and for democracy in Iraq, which I have been linked with, and gave a long exposé of the deficiencies of that regime.
It is an interesting case study that the hostility of western and world opinion can suddenly be against Iran, as the source of all evil in the region, but then switch to Iraq. One sees a similar transformation in relation to Syria. My hon. Friend made that point well.
My hon. Friend spoke of the civil rights deficiencies of the countries involved. He spoke of the importance of oil, but the importance of oil is not so much the interests of the western countries as the fact that, on 2 August, Saddam Hussein marched into an oil-rich neighbour—one of the greatest acts of perfidy in recent times, given the lack of warning and the way in which he had said that he wanted to negotiate. However, the so-called volunteers marched into Kuwait and now he seeks to obliterate a sovereign country recognised by the United Nations and previously was recognised by Iraq. That is the uniqueness of the case.
My hon. Friend made good points about selectivity, the nature of the regimes, and so on, but he sees the trees and misses the wood, which includes the uniqueness of the invasion and, perhaps more important, the significance of the response of world opinion to Iraq's invasion on 2 August. Whether the international community succeeds in this test case will have fundamental effects on international relations in years to come.
It is clear that, in the past 40 years, the middle east has been the flashpoint of the world. Whatever generalisations can be made about improved international relations and the prospects for peace in southern Africa, Cambodia, central America, Afghanistan, or wherever, they are followed by the qualification, "with the exception of the middle east". If the international community can assist in establishing a more stable and peaceful order in that region, it could address the problems of other regions where the problems are not so fundamental as those of the middle east.
The immediate problem facing the world community is the Gulf war. If the United Nations succeeds, it will have an enhanced authority and that added credibility will enable it to address other seemingly intractable problems in the hot spots of the world. It is vital for the international community to succeed. My colleagues and I do not accept the strictures that my hon. Friend addressed to the United Nations. We believe that it is the best hope for the world. 507 If the United Nations and the international community fail in the Gulf, their authority will be reduced and international anarchy will be given a substantial boost.
My hon. Friend has identified the problems associated with Palestine and Lebanon. It is possible for people to argue that the international response to those problems has been selective. I must remind my hon. Friend, however, that United Nations resolution 242 does not refer to the self-determination of the Palestinians.
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is never a right time to attempt to solve all the problems of the middle east. I share my hon. Friend's concern at the policy of the Israeli Government. We are extremely critical of the current and threatened deportation of Palestinians from the occupied territories, which is in clear breach of international agreements and conventions.
If the United Nations is to make an impact in the middle east, it can do so only when the Security Council resolutions in respect of Iraq have been fully complied with. If the United Nations fails in that, it will be in no fit state to consider the other problems of the region. Failure to resolve those problems is one of the great tragedies of the middle east, but there are now prospects for improvement.
My hon. Friend will be aware that the Labour party has pressed for an international conference covering all the problems of the middle east, including justice and self-determination for the Palestinian people. We want the long ordeal of the Palestinian refugees to end and security for all states in the region, including Israel. We also want the torment in Lebanon to cease. We share my hon. Friend's strong argument in favour of the removal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons from the entire middle east.
That international conference can take place only under the auspices of a United Nations which emerges with credit from the Gulf crisis. For that reason, we look forward to the full implementation of the Security Council resolutions. If the United Nations does not succeed, despite our earnest hopes, we fear the consequences for the world.
§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg)This is the second time that we have discussed this subject during the debates. I should like to begin my remarks as I began my response to the earlier debate by stating that the views expressed by the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) and those which I wish to express are wholly identical. I am glad that Opposition and Government Front-Bench Members share a common position on the matter.
Although it is the second debate on the subject, this is a different debate. Therefore, it is right that I should summarise where we stand. We should begin by reminding ourselves of what Saddam Hussein has done. As the hon. Member for Swansea, East said, an act of aggression of the most perfidious and gross nature has been committed. On 2 August Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, a sovereign state and his neighbour, with which he had been in negotiations and to which he had given assurances of non-aggression. Many people were killed in the invasion. After the invasion was complete, he embarked on a 508 systematic policy of oppression, murder, pillage and—it now seems—torture. That is the Government with which we are dealing.
To that challenge the United Nations responded in an impressive and powerful manner. A series of resolutions were passed, culminating in resolution 678, which contain three essential conditions: the immediate release of the hostages who were being held when resolution 678 was passed; complete and unconditional withdrawal from the state of Kuwait by 15 January; and the restoration of the lawful Government of Kuwait. Of those three conditions, one has been largely fulfilled—the release of the hostages. The other two conditions have not been but must be fulfilled. I wish to make it plain that the resolution is not a timetable for war. It provides ample time for withdrawal. But it requires and provides for complete and unconditional withdrawal by 15 January. Nothing short of complete and unconditional withdrawal will do. If Saddam Hussein does not withdraw completely and unconditionally by 15 January, he will be driven out by force. We hope for peace. We shall do all that in conscience we can do, but we shall not hesitate to use force if it is required in order to implement the Security Council resolutions.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) made many points, and I shall seek to respond to them. First, he focused on trading relations with Iraq. If he will forgive me for saying so, he has either misunderstood or somewhat misrepresented the position. Since 1985 or thereabouts there has been a total prohibition on the sale of arms to Iraq. Before that time a restricted regime governed the sale of arms to Iraq. It is perfectly true that there has not been a prohibition on the sale of non-military products, but then again we trade with many, indeed all, nations. We positively disagree with many of them. Merely to have ordinary non-military trading relations with a country in no way implies support for the regime or approval of its policies. It is simply to have ordinary trading relations with a country.
The second point on which the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East focused was this. He criticised the nature of the regimes in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia—indeed, in most, if not all, the Gulf states. It is perfectly true that the regimes that he described are not the kind of regimes to which we are accustomed in western Europe. It is perfectly true that they are not democracies or truly accountable Governments in western terms. Some may well agree between themselves that it would be desirable if they were different, but the plain truth is that the nature of the regimes in those parts of the world is intrinsically and essentially a matter for the people living there and not for us. The fact that one may not like the regime in Kuwait is not a reason for saying that we must not oppose military aggression against that state or not seek to reverse the aggression that has been committed against it. In the end, the people of each country in the area must determine the nature of their own political system.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East said that the argument was exclusively about oil. He is entirely wrong about that. If the issue was primarily about oil, we would have settled it in some way or other. It is manifestly undesirable for Saddam Hussein to have the oil resources of Kuwait and Iraq because that will enable him in the long term to distort the oil markets in various ways; but we would not contemplate the use of force for that reason. Perhaps more to the point, the many Arab states that have 509 deployed forces in Saudi Arabia would not contemplate the use of force for that reason. Notwithstanding the fact that the world is currently deprived of oil from both both Kuwait and Iraq, oil supplies are adequate to meet our present requirements.
The hon. Gentleman focused on the fact that the United Nations has not been wholly successful in the past in dealing with acts of aggression and concluded that it would therefore by hypocritical and wrong to try to meet the act of aggression that has taken place. I agree with him that there have been imperfections and that in the past the United Nations has failed to do what we would have liked it to do. The present situation presents a particular challenge because it involves the first exercise of collective will in the post cold war world.
I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Swansea, East that, if we do not stand behind the United Nations at this critical moment in its development, it is difficult to believe that it will ever have any authority in future. If the United Nations has no authority, we shall have the prospect of international anarchy.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East referred to the position in Palestine. I accept—I think that we all now accept—that there is unfinished business in Palestine and that it is unquestionably a flashpoint on which we must focus. But there is no linkage between what has happened in Kuwait and the problems of Palestine. It is true that, once we have secured the withdrawal of Saddam Hussein—completely and unconditionally—we must turn our attention to the business of Palestine. We must do all that we can to achieve two strategic objectives—first, the right to self-determination for the people of Palestine, and, secondly, the integrity and security of the state of Israel.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East spoke passionately about the beastliness and horror of war. War is, indeed, a beastly and horrible business and it is wholly unpredictable. Nevertheless, from time to time in history, one must be prepared to use force to maintain the world order and, in this case, to enforce the collective will of the United Nations.
If the hon. Gentleman is wholly honest with himself, he will recognise that nothing that he said in 50 minutes or so offered any solution to the problem. He made it plain that he rejected sanctions as being inappropriate. He said that he thought that the United Nations was an irrelevance of which he disapproved. His only solution was to call on the peoples of Iraq to pull down Saddam Hussein. He could have said that at any time during the eight years of the war with Iran, or to the people of Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia, but he would have done so to no avail. Were we to follow the hon. Gentleman's policy, nothing would happen, Kuwait would continue to be oppressed and Saddam Hussein would continue to threaten the peoples of the middle east and to arm himself. That is not something that we can accept.
§ It being Eight o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, pursuant to Order [13 December], without Question put.