Oral question asked in the House of Commons, by David Drew (Labour). It was answered on Monday, 18 June 2007 on behalf of the Ministry of Defence.

Iraq

Question: Will my right hon. Friend accept that the only way to bear down on this is through direct talks with the Iranians, and indeed the Syrians, to make it clear that if they are in any way supporting the insurrectionists’ activities in Iraq, we will take a dim—or even stronger—view of that? I wonder what attempts he is making to talk to the Iranians and the Syrians.

Answer: I cannot make it any clearer to my hon. Friend or to anyone else that we take every opportunity we can to get that message across to the Iranian Government. In our view, the most effective interlocutors and the best carriers of the message are those who represent Governments in the region, particularly the Iraqi Government. On a recent trip to the Gulf states, I made it perfectly clear to those who regularly engage with the Iranian Government that they should give that Government the clear message that they are potentially destabilising southern Iraq and that, in the long term, they are undermining their own interests by their behaviour—not to mention the view that we take of their supported attacks by proxies on our own soldiers.

Secondary information