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Iraq

A great deal of thought has been given to that. Just as the terrorists have increased their activities in an attempt to disrupt and destroy those two steps in the democratic process—the referendum and then the elections—so, too, have we and, in particular, our allies and the Iraqi security forces made plans to try to ensure that Iraqis vote in peace. It is a symbol of the choice that is before us. However any hon. Member regarded the initial intervention in Iraq, the choice today is different. It is simply between the terrorists on the one side, who want to destroy democracy, and the United Nations, the multinational community and the Iraqi democrats on the other—[Interruption.] I am being shouted at. I do not know what is being said, but I commend the remarks made this morning by President Talibani, who said:"““Similarly, those who attack mosques and churches, who murder schoolchildren and labourers, who behead foreigners and who kidnap humanitarian workers are not engaged in ‘resistance’. Those sabotaging Iraq’s first democracy bear no resemblance to the resistors of foreign occupation in wartime Europe. Rather, they are, in their ideology and record, contemporary representatives of the fascism that wreaked such havoc 60 years ago in Europe. They are supremacists and racists, as worthy of our contempt as those who practised apartheid in South Africa.””" I will stand by the words of the elected President of Iraq rather than by the terrorists who attempt to undermine democracy.