§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hill.]
10.26 pm§ Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Kelvin)I declare an interest, in that I am chairman of the Mariam appeal for cancer victims in Iraq, which has received support from the Governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
I begin by welcoming my hon. Friend the Minister of State to his new and important position in the Government—although I regret, as does the whole House, the circumstances that led to his appointment. The late Derek Fatchett and I had many spectacular clashes on this and related subjects, but I always respected him greatly, and he is sorely missed.
I shall start by telling the Minister what I am not going to talk about. The character of the Iraqi regime has been effectively carpet bombed on many occasions by hon. Members throughout the House. In the 15 minutes available to me, I do not intend to add to the many statements, speeches and interventions on the subject that I have made over the years. I hope that my hon. Friend will take them as read. However, I note that paragraph 14 of United Nations Security Council resolution 687 demands the establishment of a middle east free of weapons of mass destruction. I support that goal and call for the Iraqi regime to forswear such weapons, as I call on Israel—which sits atop an easily verifiable mountain of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons—to forswear them also.
The House has of late been much occupied with the concepts of genocide and of mass graves. I want to take the Minister on a brief tour of that wasteland, which will require him to exercise only a little imagination. Imagine a mass grave into which 6,000 small children are laid every single month. Imagine that those months stretched into years—nine years—and imagine a mass grave in which more than 2 million people, mainly children, or the elderly, or the poorest, or the most ill, are laid one upon the other.
Imagine how mass such a grave would be. Imagine what a mountain 2 million dead people would constitute. Imagine what an ocean of blood is represented by those 2 million lost souls. Such a mountain, such an ocean, such a mass grave is not a figment of anyone's imagination: it is the reality of life and death under sanctions in Iraq.
That reality is testified to by a plethora of United Nations agencies—by the World Health Organisation, by the World Food Programme, by UNICEF and UNESCO, by the President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, who performed such service for the Government recently, by Dennis Halliday, the former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, by other high officials of the UN, and by other credible sources, such as The Lancet, the Harvard medical team and the delegation of Church of England bishops, recently returned from Iraq, who called the sanctions "ethically untenable".
No one is saying, of course, that those 2 million people were specially targeted, or that they were singled out for extermination. No one is saying that those dead people ever committed any offence against anyone. They could 251 hardly have done so, as most of them were small children. It is much, much worse than that. The killing has been wholly indiscriminate, except in one respect. Those people are dead for one reason only. They are—rather, they were—Iraqis. They had the misfortune to be born in Iraq at this time. I do not need to tell a man of my hon. Friend's legal background the name for the mass killing of people for no other reason than their race or ethnic origin.
It is no longer asserted—it was once—that we are exaggerating. The Security Council, in its recent report, said that it was reporting
in the context of increasing concern among security council members over the humanitarian situation in Iraq.The Security Council added thatthe gravity of the humanitarian situation of the Iraqi people is indisputable and cannot be overstated.In his recent and turbulent debut before the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, the Minister said that the Government werelooking for a way out of the stalemateon Iraq, and talked of the "grave humanitarian situation". I genuinely consider it progress that we can agree about the gravity of the situation.Can we also agree—for it is germane to the future as well as important to the history books—that what I have said in the House to more than one Minister, that the United Nations Special Commission inspectorate was riddled with spies, turned out to be true? After all, we have had the testimony of Scott Ritter, the deputy to Richard Butler, who headed UNSCOM. We have had the ground-breaking journalism of The New York Times and the Boston Globe. Most important of all, this week, we had an admission by Kofi Annan, no less, that UNSCOM inspectors were spying for the American intelligence agencies during their time in Iraq.
As the Minister knows, there is mounting international concern about the cancer epidemic in Iraq, and about the rapidly multiplying number of babies being born with deformities. My hon. Friend may have seen the recent cover story in Tribune, or he may have read Maggie O'Kane, whose reportage from Kosovo has been favourably commented on by the Government. In The Guardian, she quoted a doctor from one hospital, Dr. Zenad Mohammed, thus:
In August 1998, we had three babies born with no head, in September, we had six with no heads, in October, one with no head and four with big heads and four with deformed limbs or other types of deformities.There has been a tenfold increase in the number of cancer cases in Iraq over the past nine years, at the same time as there has been a catastrophic decline in the capacity of the Iraqi health service to cope with it. The number of children born with the conditions hare lip or cleft palate has tripled. As a father, the Minister will be able to imagine the horror of that.
§ Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)Former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and I saw exactly those conditions in December 1998. My hon. Friend does not exaggerate.
§ Mr. GallowayI do not have to imagine the horror. Like my hon. Friend, I have seen it with my own eyes, and I have heard the cries of parents.
252 Please do not tell me that food and medicines are not covered by the sanctions. The Minister and I both know that that is only partly true and that, in so far as it is true, it is misleading. If we subject a country to the tightest of mediaeval-style sieges, bankrupt its economy and freeze its international assets, how much food and medicine can it buy? If we define food and medicines so that vitamins and additives are not foods, so that insulin or intravenous fluid are not medicine and so that everything from syringes to diagnostic equipment is subject to endless delay and subversion by the sanctions committee in New York, what will the effect be on the health of the people?
What is the point of allowing diarrhoea, typhoid and cholera medicines while forbidding the equipment to repair the water and sanitation systems? The collapse of those systems led to the epidemic of water-borne disease in the first place. If the Minister says that members of the Iraqi regime are not hungry and that their children are not suffering, he will merely make my point. The sanctions are not harming the Iraqi regime, which is stronger than it was when sanctions began. The sanctions are laying waste the innocent Iraqi population.
What is the point of doubling, doubling and doubling again the upper limits of the oil-for-food quotas, when the Government know that Iraq can only dream of pumping that amount of oil, given the degradation of the oil extraction and distribution system, when we ban under sanctions the wherewithal to upgrade it and when oil prices, although firming, are still historically low?
Please do not tell me that there are stockpiles of undistributed medicines in Iraqi warehouses. Read the United Nations Security Council's own report on page 9 about the deterioration of warehousing; the lack of handling equipment; communication and transport difficulties; and the lack of tools. Read the World Health Organisation's study, which proves that Iraq's warehouses are operating at less than 20 per cent. of previous capacity.
Please do not tell me that the Iraqi health service is importing frivolous or unnecessary equipment as, sadly, some of our colleagues have been misled into doing—like the canard about the liposuction equipment, when it was falsely implied in this place that it was being imported for the prettification of the wives of members of the regime. That was a deliberate piece of disinformation. I have followed that equipment, which is used as such equipment is used here—in surgery on women suffering from breast cancer and undergoing mastectomies; in surgery on patients suffering from severe burns; and on patients who are having tumours removed and whose own lipid must be moved from one part of the body to another.
If the Minister wants to end the stalemate with Iraq, it really is time to turn down the rhetoric of demonisation which, as he found at the CAABU meeting, is doing our reputation among the Arab peoples no good at all.
I have some questions for the Minister. If he cannot answer them now, I hope that he will do so in writing in due course. My hon. Friend said at the CAABU meeting that "it is nonsense" to suggest that Britain would like to see the break-up of Iraq and that
Preserving the territorial integrity of Iraq is a fundamental part of our policy".As President Clinton might say, "It all depends what you mean by 'is'".After all, as will be seen increasingly in Yugoslavia, if one pursues policies that objectively contribute to the break-up of a sovereign territory, whatever one's 253 protestations, the country will still be broken up. What else is the solely United States-United Kingdom policy of daily bombardment of the so-called no-fly zones, which have no United Nations Security Council authority, if it is not a contribution to the break-up of Iraq and an attack on its territorial integrity?
Lest hon. Members are misled by the relative media blackout on those bombardments, it is worth pointing out that Britain and America have dropped more bombs on Iraq since Desert Fox than we did during that massive operation and that the targets have included shepherds and their sheep, schools, hospitals, oil installations and oil storage tanks, civilian houses and the civilian families living in them.
What else but a contribution to disintegration is the constant use of our territory by American officials and exiled Iraqi opposition groups to plan terrorist operations in the towns and cities of Iraq? I can give the Minister chapter and verse about those meetings—who attended them and what they were discussing.
Does my hon. Friend know that those meetings contravene our law, which was rushed through the House last summer, whereby section 5 of the Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act 1998, makes it an offence to conspire on British soil to cause explosions, murder and other terrorist acts outside the United Kingdom? I should know, for I single-handedly blocked that law when it was first introduced in the House during the tenure of the previous Administration.
The Minister has a tiger by the tail with those organisations. What else but the break-up of Iraq is sought by the armed Kurdish factions, when they are not murdering each other? What else but the break-up of Iraq is sought by the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution, the army of fanatical Shias who wish to set up a pro-Iranian fundamentalist theocracy, if necessary in the south of Iraq? Or does the Minister believe that Iraq can be governed at the centre by Kurdish parties or by radical Shi'ism? What do Iraq's Sunni neighbours—some of our oldest and closest friends—think about that idea? Have we learned nothing from our sponsorship of those other holy warriors, Mr. bin Laden and his Afghan mujaheddin?
Finally, I turn to the recently announced British initiative in the Security Council and express the hope that the Minister can persuade me otherwise than that that is just another twist in perfidious Albion's policy towards Iraq, which intends to find another means of prolonging the agony. I hope that the Minister is not offended when I say that I cannot understand why we cannot support the French initiative, launched by our sister party—a fraternal Government and European ally. That initiative already has the support of a majority of the five permanent members of the Security Council. Our initiative only has the support of the USA—perhaps predictably. Will the Minister tell us what is wrong with the French draft? He well knows that it has the capacity to break the stalemate, while our draft—as he knows equally well—does not have that capacity, and has been rejected out of hand.
My hon. Friend the Minister has answered a parliamentary question from my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr. Cohen). Let me contradict that answer. During the past 48 hours, Tariq Aziz said that 254 the French draft has real possibilities for the negotiation of a way out of that stalemate. That is contrary to the parliamentary answer that was released today. On the face of it, the British draft is worse than the existing governing resolution 687. Under resolution 687, the sanctions will be lifted in circumstances in which, in the British draft, they would only be suspended. Anyone who saw the US Government's treacherous betrayal of the recent Libyan deal, when they said that, notwithstanding the recent breakthrough, they would not lift their sanctions, will realise how that was regarded in the Arab world.
The draft imposes obligations on Iraq that were not even present in resolution 687, although it was, in effect, a draconian surrender treaty. Why? The burden of proof placed on Iraq in relation to weapons is more onerous than 687; in essence, it formalises what had, hitherto, been only the practice of requiring Iraq to prove a negative. Why? The British draft includes that hoary old myth—beloved of the "Missing in Action" Indo-China conspiracy theorists—the "Kuwaiti hostages". I have the internal discussion document in which the Government decided to change that formulation from prisoners of war because of the greater "emotional power" of the word hostages. However, whatever they are called, the Minister knows that Iraq says that it does not have them and that unknown soldiers die in every war. Again, the Minister is asking Iraq to prove a negative.
The British draft requires the "disclosure of information" rather than only the destruction of weapons, again knowing that that process can be strung out indefinitely, and that it will still leave us embroiled in the very stalemate that the Minister says he wants to break. Time does not allow me to probe this matter more deeply, but I hope that the Minister will consider this debate to be the start of a dialogue on those questions rather than the finish.
In conclusion, it is often sneered—sotto voce—that France is taking a more constructive role in the stalemate in order to further its national interest. Apart from the fact that that is a strange accusation—what are Governments for but to further their national interests?—and that it cannot be doubted that we have sacrificed mightily our own once pre-eminent position in Iraq, the Minister must know that Madeleine Albright was wrong, wrong, wrong when she said to Lesley Stahl on US television that all those dead Iraqi children constituted "a price worth paying". Any ethical dimension to our foreign policy requires us radically to think again.
§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Geoffrey Hoon)My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvin (Mr. Galloway) has spoken at length, and with his usual passion, on the UN sanctions regime against Iraq. May I make it clear to him and to the House that the Government would be pleased to see sanctions lifted? However, as we all know, Iraq has so far made it impossible for that to happen.
To understand why sanctions are still in place today, we need to consider why they were originally imposed. Sanctions were imposed in response to Iraq's illegal and outrageous invasion of Kuwait. At the end of the Gulf war in 1991, Iraq accepted the terms of UN Security Council resolution 687—the ceasefire resolution. That resolution, and others implementing it, laid down obligations on Iraq 255 relating to a number of matters. They included the obligation to accept the destruction of its weapons of mass destruction under international supervision; to submit full details of locations, amounts and types of weaponry; to undertake not to use, develop, construct or acquire weapons of mass destruction in the future; and to co-operate with UNSCOM in carrying out those obligations.
That same resolution also set out the circumstances in which the Security Council would lift the sanctions regime. It provides that sanctions will be lifted following compliance by Iraq with its obligations relating to weapons of mass destruction and following review by the Security Council of Iraq's policies and practices, including its implementation of all relevant resolutions. Progress is entirely in Iraq's hands, but Iraq has persistently shirked its responsibilities and refused to comply with the very obligations it formally accepted under resolution 687. Perhaps, after eight years, it is easy to overlook the seriousness of those obligations and Iraq's failure to even come close to meeting them. Let me however remind the House of Iraq's appalling record.
On disarmament, the weapons inspectors were faced with persistent evasion, obstruction and mendacity on the part of Iraq. Iraq failed to provide an even remotely credible account of its biological weapons programme, and it failed to tell the truth about the production and weaponisation of the nerve agent VX. That is not a trivial debating point: VX causes death within minutes through nervous system disruption leading to respiratory failure—one drop of VX can kill.
I pay tribute to the weapons inspectors for their huge achievements in the face of Iraqi obduracy, but as the UN expert disarmament panel confirmed earlier this year, serious gaps still remain, especially in Iraq's declarations on chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles. Those are potentially horrific capabilities that threaten the security of the entire region. Iraq has already used chemical weapons extensively against Iran and against its own Kurdish civilians, at Halabja, in March 1998, attacking them with mustard gas and the nerve agent Tabun and killing thousands in the process.
Nor should we forget that more than 600 Kuwaitis and others detained by Iraq during the Gulf war are still unaccounted for. That represents about 0.1 per cent. of the Kuwaiti population: to us, the equivalent would be about 50,000 British citizens unaccounted for. Those are not "unknown soldiers", to use my hon. Friend's phrase. Almost all the Kuwaiti missing are civilians, some women and some elderly. To date, Iraq has provided sufficient information to close only three cases. Meanwhile, the families are left to suffer and grieve, not knowing the fate of their loved ones at the hands of the Iraqi regime.
My hon. Friend is right to be concerned about the humanitarian situation in Iraq—the Government are also concerned, but we reject the propaganda that seeks to hold the UN sanctions regime to blame. Let me remind my hon. Friend once again that food, medicines and goods for essential civilian needs are not prohibited under sanctions. That means that Iraq can and does import, for example, food, medicines, bandages, pencils, ambulances, chemotherapy drugs, educational materials, medical journals and school desks. Claims that the United Nations, or the United Kingdom itself, blocks those goods are nonsense.
256 Meanwhile, the Iraqi regime continues to refuse donations of humanitarian aid from third countries. While the Iraqi Government seek to exploit their people's suffering for their own propaganda purposes, the international community does what it can to protect the Iraqi people. The UN first put forward proposals for a humanitarian programme—the prototype for today's oil-for-food programme—in 1991. Iraq rejected them, despite complaints of severe humanitarian need. Faced with huge international pressure, Iraq eventually agreed to the oil-for-food programme in May 1996, but the start of the programme was delayed by seven months, until December 1996, while Iraq haggled over the terms of implementation.
Under the programme, Iraq is currently permitted to sell $5.3 billion worth of oil every six months to fund the purchase of humanitarian goods. In addition to the food and medicine I mentioned earlier, Iraq is also allowed to import spare parts, equipment and materials for use in the water and sanitation, education, agricultural and demining sectors. Subsequent resolutions also expanded the humanitarian programme to allow a certain amount of repair to the Iraqi civilian infrastructure and some upgrading of Iraq's oil infrastructure.
According to the most recent UN report on the implementation of oil for food, the UN humanitarian programme is making a real difference to the humanitarian situation in Iraq. However, for the Iraqi people to get the most out of the programme, the Iraqi Government must also play their part. Once again, Baghdad has refused to engage properly with the UN. Despite constant encouragement from the UN, the Government of Iraq refuse to make any efforts to prioritise properly what is purchased for the humanitarian programme, or to target the programme on the most vulnerable.
The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iraq, Max van der Stoel, expressed concern in his February report that Iraq had not yet concluded contracts to the full value of available resources for the purchase of high protein biscuits or therapeutic milk. That was reinforced in April by a UN spokesman who said that Iraq was not ordering enough food for its malnourished children and pregnant women. Since late November, Iraq has submitted only two contracts for food, worth only $3 million, although it had been allocated $16 million for that purpose.
The UN special rapporteur further observed continuing problems with Iraqi distribution of goods. The available resources were not being channelled to the people in the southern governorates who were the worst off and in the greatest need. According to the latest UN reports, approximately £300 million worth of medical goods—more than half of all the medicines delivered to Iraq since the oil-for-food programme began in 1996—is still in warehouses awaiting distribution.
It is noticeable that oil for food has had a substantially greater impact on the humanitarian situation in northern Iraq where the Iraqi regime has no involvement in the implementation of the programme. In the north, for example, 92 per cent. of medical equipment procured by the United Nations agencies since the start of the programme has been distributed. According to the latest UN reports, general malnutrition there is decreasing.
257 The suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of the tactics of the Iraqi Government contrasts sharply with the wealth and luxury that is enjoyed by Saddam Hussein and his regime. Forbes magazine recently estimated Saddam's net worth at some $6 billion, ranking him the sixth richest head of state in the world. Such wealth derives from years of exploitation, and lately from smuggling large quantities of oil products out of the country for illegal sale. Needless to say, the proceeds of those sales go straight to members of the regime, rather than to the people who need them most—hence our efforts to crack down on the trade. Instead of spending its money on humanitarian goods, the regime imports vast quantities of whisky and cigarettes—since 1 January, more than 5,000 cases of whisky and more than 53,000 cartons of cigarettes have been delivered to Iraq.
As well as our efforts at the UN to improve the humanitarian situation in Iraq, since 1991 we have donated around £100 million in aid—bilaterally and via the EU—making us one of the largest donors. Our current programme focuses on projects in water and sanitation, hospital rehabilitation, village rehabilitation, assistance to vulnerable groups and demining.
However, we also believe that it is in the interests of the UN, the Iraqi people and the rest of the middle east that Iraq make real progress towards compliance so that sanctions can be lifted. We have therefore been working in the Security Council to make that goal a real possibility.
In April, we and the Netherlands circulated a draft Security Council resolution, based on the findings of the three expert panels established by the council in January to consider disarmament and humanitarian and Kuwaiti issues. Our aim is that that draft will provide a basis for the Security Council to re-engage with Iraq and, if Iraq chooses, provide a way out of the present stalemate.
§ Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead)Will my hon. Friend explain what is in it for Iraq if it accepts the United Kingdom resolution at the United Nations? From Iraq's perspective, the lifting of sanctions has been 258 blocked repeatedly by the United States and the UK—and presumably it will continue to be blocked. Iraq has fought a war against what it views as an intrusive UNSCOM inspections regime, so why should the Iraqis allow it back? Is the UK's measure not just a spoiling motion designed to continue the present hostilities?
§ Mr. HoonThat is not correct. Sanctions have not been lifted, because the Iraqi regime has not accepted the terms of the resolution. I explained that at the start of my speech. That is why the resolution was made and why the obligations placed upon Iraq. That would remain the case if the resolution that has been co-sponsored by the UK and the Netherlands were eventually accepted in the Security Council. The reality is that those obligations are on Iraq and they arise out of the invasion of Kuwait and the use and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction.
The lifting of sanctions has been blocked because Iraq has refused consistently to comply with UN resolutions. We clearly hope that the resolution will be agreed in the UN, and we hope ultimately that Iraq will accept its terms. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Kelvin that his description of the response to that resolution in the Security Council simply is not borne out by the facts. Several member states have already said that they share our view. They include Argentina, Brazil, Slovenia and, most importantly for the purposes of my hon. Friend's argument, Bahrain, which is the Arab representative on the Security Council. All have announced their co-sponsorship of the UK-Netherlands draft resolution.
I point out to my hon. Friends that the draft reminds Iraq of what it needs to do. It imposes no new demands on Iraq, and it addresses the call for the United Nations to do more about the humanitarian situation. It is a reminder that Iraq can enable progress to be made on lifting sanctions whenever it chooses to change its approach. If it rejects that opportunity again, Baghdad's priorities will be clearer than ever. It is open to Iraq to have sanctions lifted whenever it chooses to do so; it simply has to accept its obligations in the United Nations.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.