§ 29. Mr. RobathanTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence what estimate he has made of the number of civilian casualties in Iraq following NATO air strikes since 1 January. [152726]
§ Mr. HoonThere have been no NATO strikes on Iraq. British and American aircraft enforce the Iraqi no-fly
85Wzones under national auspices with the support of regional partners. The patrols are justified in international law as a legitimate response to prevent a grave humanitarian crisis.
If Saddam Hussein's air defence units attack our aircraft, coalition aircrew are authorised to respond in self-defence. They do so entirely in accordance with international law, attacking those Iragi military facilities that pose an immediate and serious threat to their safety. All responses are proportionate to the threat. The risk of civilian casualties is always a major consideration during the very careful target selection process and only precision guided weapons are used where there is any risk of civilian casualties.
As the Ministry of Defence has no objective means of verifying Iraqi claims of civilian casualties I am not in a position to provide the information requested.
Saddam Hussein routinely claims that civilian casualties have been caused as a result of coalition activity over the no-fly zones. It is in his interests to do so and we have learned not to give too much credence to these allegations. We conduct careful battle damage assessment after every incident; this analysis demonstrates in the majority of cases that coalition weapons have hit their intended military target. The Iraqis regularly claim that there have been civilian casualties on days when the coalition has not even patrolled, let alone dropped any ordnance, and they routinely claim that civilians have been killed when the casualties were actually military personnel. Furthermore, Saddam Hussein has claimed the coalition was responsible for casualties that were in fact caused by Iraqi air defence weapons