OPENING SPEECH BY THE FOREIGN SECRETARY, MR ROBIN COOK, IN AN EMERGENCY DEBATE, HOUSE OF COMMONS, LONDON, THURSDAY 17 DECEMBER 1998
NOTE: CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
Madam Speaker, my Right Honourable Friend the Prime Minister has already set out in his statement the events leading up to the military action begun yesterday evening. This debate, which we have volunteered, gives Members of the House the opportunity to debate our action and the background to it.
All Members of the House would wish to remember that as we debate the matter in the security of our chamber British servicemen are currently in action in circumstances of some danger. At the outset I would follow my Right Honourable Friend in recording the appreciation of the House for their courage and their professionalism.
Let me therefore open this debate by setting out why we had to call upon them to take military action.
My starting-point is the report submitted by Richard Butler to the Security Council. That report could not make more clear that Saddam has not kept the commitments which averted military action only last month. The report details the familiar pattern of obstruction, delay and deception.
Since its work resumed UNSCOM has requested 12 sets of documents that could answer crucial questions about Iraq's chemical weapons programmes and missile programmes. Iraq responded to only one of the twelve requests.
The Iraqi authorities have blocked attempts by UNSCOM to carry out site inspections. Only last Wednesday a team of inspectors were refused entry to a storage facility on the grounds that it was a political headquarters of the Ba'ath Party. Some have expressed concern that UNSCOM should have targetted political offices. So let me describe to the House the precise nature of the building in question. It is a large rectangular warehouse. A thick steel trap-door, three metres square, gives access to a cellar beneath the warehouse which is of the same size. The shed is guarded by members of the Interior Security Service, commanded by an officer with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
Let us be frank. This Lieutenant Colonel is not on duty to safe-guard political election posters - even if there were any elections in Iraq. The pretence by Baghdad that the warehouse and its underground cellar are political offices is only another of the repeated pretexts and deceit with which they have persistently sought to hinder the work of the UN inspectors.
In two further cases inspections were delayed after Iraq declared the sites to be sensitive. When the inspectors were finally granted permission to enter, they found the buildings had been swept clean.
Such attempts to hinder and obstruct the work of UNSCOM have been the standard practice of Baghdad ever since the inspection regime was imposed by the United Nations. Given Saddam's undertaking last month that UNSCOM would have unconditional and unrestricted access it is to be deplored that Baghdad still practices the same sustained web of deceit and deception to inspectors to whom they have pledged full cooperation.
Yet I must tell the House that in the period since Saddam gave his undertaking to cooperate, he has actually introduced new restrictions on UNSCOM.
The Baghdad authorities have demanded a formal letter of request for the inspection of a sensitive site, including details of what was being sought at the site - presumably in order that they could more easily remove any such documents and material from the site.
Until August UNSCOM had provided data on Iraqi missile tests and engines. Since UNSCOM went back in November Iraq has refused to release such data.
Until August UNSCOM was allowed to carry out its own study on the engine components on missiles in order to establish their range and capability. Since November UNSCOM has been denied the removal of missile components for analysis.
In short, since Saddam pledged full cooperation in November, UNSCOM has experienced no greater cooperation than before. On the contrary, it has been subjected to even greater forms of deception and obstruction than before. The conclusion of the report from Mr Butler is stark and unequivocal. The inspectors are 'not able to conduct the substantive disarmament work mandated to it by the Security Council and, thus, to give the Council the assurances it requires with respect to Iraq's prohibited weapons programmes.'
Mr Butler has received the full wrath of the Baghdad propaganda machine. I must tell the House that I have known Mr Butler for a number of years, and first met him long before he became the head of UNSCOM. I know him to be a man of great independence of mind and independence of spirit. He is also wholeheartedly dedicated to the United Nations and to the international rule of law. Nor is this the report of one isolated individual. It is a report which would be overwhelmingly endorsed by all the inspectors from experience the repeated obstacles that have made their job so frustrating.
BROKEN PROMISES
It is their experience and Mr Butler's report which compelled us to decide, with great reluctance, that there was no alternative but to take military action against Iraq.
Let me remind the House that we have made every effort to avoid this outcome. If we have erred, it has always been on the side of caution. Throughout the whole of this year we have given Saddam Hussain repeated opportunities to comply with his obligations to the United Nations.
Last February the Permanent Members of the Security Council mandated Kofi Annan to travel to Baghdad to seek a diplomatic outcome. Saddam Hussain then entered into an undertaking with the Secretary- General that he would allow UNSCOM to get on with its job. That undertaking was endorsed by a resolution of the Security Council backed by all of its members, which warned Saddam that if he broke that agreement there would be 'the severest consequences'.
Six months later he unilaterally went back on his agreement and stopped all new site inspections.
Only last month we again gave Saddam yet another chance to prove that there was an alternative to military action. We could not have been clearer about what would happen if he did not keep his promise of full and unconditional cooperation. The Secretary-General of the UN himself said: 'I am not sure, if there is a next time, if we will have time for further diplomatic initiatives and appeals.'
Yet, once again, Saddam has broken his promises. Some have said that we took military action too soon after the Butler Report. I have to say to the House that the lead-in time to this military action has not been the day or two since the Report, but the ten months throughout which we have tried to find an alternative way of getting Saddam to comply with his own commitments.
No Foreign Minister can be satisfied when events compel the need for military force. The aim of diplomacy is to avert the need for such action. But diplomacy can only work if the other side is prepared to negotiate in good faith. With Saddam Hussain, diplomacy has not worked because he as entered into agreements with cynicism and broken them with contempt.
What is at stake, of course, is not an abstract diplomatic principle. What is at stake is the real threat posed by Saddam's capacity to produce weapons of mass terror.
Saddam has not accounted to UNSCOM for 600 tonnes of the chemical precursors for the VX nerve agent. That would be sufficient to produce 200 tonnes of the agent itself. One planeload of VX would be enough to devastate the population of any of the smaller states in the region, or any of its larger cities.
UNSCOM also estimates that Iraq has the equipment and the growth agents to produce 350 litres of anthrax per week - enough to fill two more missile warheads each week.
MILITARY ACTION
The Right Honourable Gentleman the Shadow Foreign Secretary said that the support of the Opposition was conditional on our military action having clear objectives.
Our first and clear objective is to defeat Saddam's ambitions to continue to develop such weapons with which he can terrorise his neighbours.
We want a peaceful outcome. But we know also that an outcome which left Saddam able to develop those weapons without hindrance would not be a peaceful outcome. It would be a guarantee that those weapons would be used. Saddam has used chemical and biological weapons against his own citizens when he wiped out an entire town at Halabja. Saddam has used these weapons before. He will use them again if he is allowed to keep them.
That is why in the course of today there have been an increasing number of statements from governments around the world which express their understanding of the need to take this action to halt Saddam's weapons programme.
The Australian Prime Minister has said: 'I do not believe, and the Australian Government do not believe, that the US and the UK have been left with any alternative ... We believe their action is justified.'
Chancellor Schroeder's spokesman has said : 'The Iraqi leadership was warned and had to assume that the international community could not stand by and watch.'
A spokesman for the Government of Japan has recorded their support for the military action.
The Foreign Minister of Austria, currently the Presidency of the European Union, said this morning 'we must make Saddam Hussain fully responsible for this' and recognised that the Iraqi leadership had been given ample opportunity.
The Foreign Minister of the Netherlands has described our actions as 'unavoidable'. The Defence Minister has described military action as 'inevitable'.
The Foreign Minister of Italy, in his statement to the Italian Senate today has said: 'The use of force, which the international community and the United Nations tried to prevent up to the last moment, arose above all from the behaviour of the Baghdad Government ... The possession of weapons of mass destruction constitutes not only a violation to the UN but also a permanent threat to neighbours.'
Our second clear objective is to reduce that threat to Saddam's neighbours by diminishing his military war machine. Our targets are precise and are confined either to facilities which are part of his weapons programmes or his military power-base.
It is of course that military power which keeps Saddam in power. We are not in conflict with the vast majority of the Iraqi people. We both have a common enemy in Saddam. Only last October Max van der Stoel, the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iraq, published his latest assessment. It is an appalling catalogue of human rights abuse. It includes:
- The mass execution of 62 detainees without trial. - The assassination of senior and respected Shi'ite scholars. - The use of amputation as a punishment.
And the same UN Rapporteur also holds Saddam primarily responsible for shortages of food and medicine for the Iraqi people. It cannot be said often enough that there are no sanctions on the import of food and medicine. Saddam can even export up to $10 billion of oil in order to pay for all the food and medicine the people of Iraq could need.
It is because of Saddam - not because of sanctions - that people in Iraq are short of food and their hospitals are short of medicine. Indeed, at the very time when children in Baghdad go hungry, Saddam has been caught out exporting convoys of wheat and barley to Syria and Jordan to earn the revenues that keep him and his elite in comfort. Iraq has even sold for export food donated for the needy people of Iraq.
As my Right Honourable Friend the Prime Minister has said, it is not an objective of our military action to bring about the downfall of Saddam Hussain. It is, though, our objective to weaken the military machine with which Saddam terrorises his own people and protects himself from their need to be rid of him.
And for as long as Saddam remains in power, we will remain resolute in our determination that he will not be allowed to fulfil his ambitions to develop weapons of mass terror. The present military operation must bring home even to him that we will not let him get away with his strategy of deceit and obstruction. It would be far better for his regime, for Iraq and for the international community if he now accepted full inspection by the UN to carry out the disarmament on the ground that we have been obliged to do from the air.
None of us who have taken part in the decision to take military action have found it easy. It is a decision which we have taken with great reluctance and with real regret.
But I am clear it was the right decision. The regime in Baghdad has demonstrated appalling brutality towards its own people. It has demonstrated consistent dishonesty in its promises to the outside world. And it has persisted in an extensive programme to acquire chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to fire them, for no other reason than to terrorise the rest of its region and beyond.
Military action must be used sparingly and with reluctance. But there are times when we are confronted with such brutality that military force is the only response. This is one of those times. We have shown the resolve to respond. We ask all parties in the House to show the same resolve by giving us their support.
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