Prime Minister's question asked in the House of Commons, by Tony Wright (Labour). It was answered on Wednesday, 24 May 2006 on behalf of the Prime Minister.

Engagements

Question: I am sure that the whole House will want to associate itself with what the Prime Minister has just said. When the Prime Minister was in Baghdad this week, the former American ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, was in this country, saying that it was now ridiculous for anyone to suggest that Iraq was not in a state of civil war. Does the Prime Minister agree, and where does that leave our promise not to leave Iraq until a stable democracy has been established?

Answer: I think that the people best able to give a sense of where Iraq is today, and where it needs to be, are the people who are now in government, elected by 12 million Iraqi votes. What they describe to me is a situation in which, for the first time, they have a genuine unity Government. In other words, we have Sunni, Shi’a and Kurds sitting down and working together, all of them representing parties that have stood in elections and been elected by the people of Iraq. I may say that none of them wanted the multinational force to withdraw immediately, but all of them believe that the terrorism that is attempting to push their country into civil war is a terrorism that has to be defeated—that can be defeated—by the united will of the Iraqi people who want democracy, and the international community that should support them in that endeavour. I believe that, as the new Prime Minister of Iraq said to me, if we defeat terrorism there we will defeat it everywhere

Secondary information