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Foreign Affairs and Defence

With great respect to the right hon. and learned Gentleman—and I do have great respect for him—none of that holds water. Resolution 1441 was the last resolution demanding immediate, unconditional and full disclosure and acceptance of all the UN resolutions thus far, and its purpose was not regime change, but to respond to the breach of the UN resolutions, so the substance of the legal basis for the 1998 intervention and the latest intervention is exactly the same. What had changed in between was the Liberal party’s view of the political landscape in this country, I am afraid to say. Although I credit him and his party with being consistent from the time when they last changed their position onwards, I am afraid that I cannot credit them with being consistent over the past period. Nevertheless, let us turn to the other points that were raised. The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) referred to a multiplicity of questions arising from his and others’ interest in India. On that question, I hope that he will forgive me if I refer him to the Foreign Office, and I have already briefly mentioned it to my colleague, the Minister for Europe. I hope that they will respond on those issues. I will mention Iraq later in the context of my visit, but let me take some of the points that have been raised by the hon. Member for Woodspring, who speaks on foreign affairs for the Conservative party, by my hon. Friends the Members for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Halifax and by the right hon. and learned Members for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) and for Rushcliffe (Kenneth Clarke), among others. As the House knows, the present position is that coalition forces are in Iraq under the terms of UN Security Council resolution 1546 and at the request of the Iraqi Government. The Minister for Defence in Iraq, al-Dulaimi, whom I met in the past 24 hours, is clear about the value of our presence—he reinforced and confirmed that to me—and the continued need for that presence for the time being. The Government have a consistent position about our future plans: they should be based on conditions, not on a chronological sequence of events irrespective of the reality on the ground. We will stay no longer than necessary, and we will withdraw once Iraq has made sufficient progress, with our assistance, in building the capability of its own security forces to the point where they are able to deal with the security situation unaided. I will return to several of those points later, when I briefly mention my visit to Iraq yesterday, but that is essentially the present position. There is no significant change, except that, of course, in Iraq itself, there has been a build-up of the Iraqi capability—Iraqisation, as it is sometimes called—to combat the insurgency and terrorism and to facilitate political developments and the appointment of Ministers to the Transitional Government, several of whom come from the Sunni community. There has been great interest in the resources needed to sustain Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to the hon. Members whom I have mentioned already, that issue was raised by the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer). We remain in close discussion with our coalition allies in Iraq about force levels. We are confident that the commitment to the coalition remains strong across a very wide number of participants. The withdrawal of the Dutch and their replacement by the Australians in our sector illustrates the flexibility of those arrangements. We will co-ordinate closely with our NATO allies to provide a UK contribution to help to expand the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The claims of overstretch, which were repeated by the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes, are wide of the mark. Our future plans, to which he referred, are to rebalance the Army and to create expeditionary forces with a greater degree of flexibility, reach, speed and deployability, thus improving our ability not only to respond quickly, but to mount simultaneous campaigns.