§ Mr. DalyellTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what evaluation he has made of the FAO report of 1995 on Iraq in relation to cereals, meat, fish and baby milk. [27763]
§ Mr. HanleyWe remain very concerned about the suffering of the Iraqi people. Our aid programme has a high priority, and we are working for implementation of UN Security Council resolution 986. We believe, though, that the 1995 report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme gave a seriously misleading picture of the situation in Iraq. The report did not take account of the misallocation of resources by the Iraqi regime. Further, the research methods were flawed—the statistics in the report were based in part on Iraqi data, which could not be independently confirmed. We have taken this up with the FAO and the WFP.