The UN and Saddam Hussein

House of Commons

The aim of the resolution is perfectly clear and unequivocal, and it gives Saddam Hussein every opportunity for peace and to avoid military intervention. It is not about President Bush or the Prime Minister, and the comments of the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) do the debate a great disservice. By and large, it has been excellently conducted.

The only obstacle to a peaceful resolution is Saddam Hussein, through obfuscation and deliberately misleading the weapons inspectors. It has taken most of the past 14 months to get to this position — one that many thought we could not reach. It took 11 September to stir the international community into facing the dangers of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

I beg to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby, (Mr. Wareing), as I do not believe that we face a choice between a hierarchy of dangers — either winning the war against terrorism or dealing with Saddam Hussein. Those are part of the same strategy for security, which, to be successful, requires not unilateral action, but a global coalition against the prospect of catastrophic terror. That is why Iraq is central to the strategy for security and dealing with global terrorism.

The problem that Saddam Hussein represents is not any form of conventional military threat — by all estimates, he is a great deal weaker than in 1991 — but the danger he poses both to his own people and through the laboratories that are working to produce chemical and biological weapons. They are probably working to produce nuclear weapons, if they have any weapons grade plutonium. We know that not only from our own intelligence, but from people who have defected and from what he has done to his own people. We shall soon know from the weapons inspectors more of what they believe.

We should be confident and optimistic that resolution 1441 represents a huge step forward in the international community's work. It recognises the genuine threat posed by weapons of mass destruction and the need to fight that with multilateral, not unilateral, work. Multilateralism has emerged over unilateral action. My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) referred to the UN's moral authority and he was right to refer to the importance of Saddam being cowed by military threat, but who the military threat is is even more significant. Who provides that military threat against him is most important — more important than even the threat itself.

The UN today looks much stronger than it did six months ago, when it very nearly resembled a beleaguered League of Nations. As we sit here, most of us feel content with the progress we have made; but there is a terrible irony in this position. It is the irony that if Saddam complies, the UN, through its resolution, may well have become his protector. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) raised some interesting questions in that regard. Saddam's regime will be disarmed of weapons of mass destruction one way or another; the question is, will he continue?

The Iraqi people, not only witnesses but victims, silenced and butchered by this tyrant, will continue to live in terror indefinitely as helpless prisoners and victims of the tyranny. There is no military power in the Gulf region that can overthrow Saddam, as Vietnam did in ousting Pol Pot. If Saddam remains, complying with the resolution, our victory may be more Pyrrhic than we think.

We may criticise Bush for turning his attention on Saddam only because of 11 September. We may say that the President always intended to intervene, but has used those events as an excuse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) made clear, of course the President is no supporter of Saddam. The problem is that no action, of sorts, constitutes support for him. We should also be careful in criticising misguided actions by past western Administrations, including our deliberate dealings with Iraq along with the United States. We should not let those become justification for taking no action. We must distinguish between the faults of liberal democracies, of which we are one, and the incurable evil of tyrants like Saddam.

The Opposition have asked a number of questions about the resolution. They have asked what would constitute material breaches. I think that that is pretty clear in the resolution. We have critical dates before us. Only if Saddam tells the truth will the regime remain a tyranny unchanged. If he is lying, the material regime will be changed. It will be disarmed, and Saddam may well go too. In truth, who will mourn his departure? The consequences, however, will reveal whether our global coalition acts only out of united self-interest, or works genuinely towards a greater humanitarian goal.

Military intervention would certainly lead to the disarming of Saddam, but it would also lead to a series of consequences for the people of Iraq, both during and after the intervention. Our last engagement in the Gulf was hardly covered in moral glory, given our hasty withdrawal from the battlefield, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq to endure a continuing axis of despair. There is a huge difference between our motivation now and our motivation then, but the contrast between the despair and poverty that people endure and what they see here contributes to a deep distrust of our actions now. In the huge contrast between those lives reside the roots of a clash of civilisations.

As President Clinton recently observed, we cannot seriously build the world that we want with a security-only strategy. "Prevent and punish" is not enough. We need a world with more partners and fewer terrorists. As General Marshall said at the end of the second world war,

"We ought to take a little of this money and make a world with fewer enemies and more friends".

Let us bear in mind the humanitarian crisis that may follow our actions. Turkey is already saying things that should worry us about what may happen on its borders. The regional governor of south-eastern Turkey said today

"In case of a massive influx, it would be necessary to take measures to keep them away from our border. We have our own experience of 1991 in mind. We naturally do not want it to be repeated."

I ask the Foreign Secretary what steps will be taken to prevent refugees from flowing on to the Turkish borders and being deprived of humanitarian aid in the event of military intervention.

This is a crucial debate. I support the Government.