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Iraq

No, my Lords, I will not clarify what constitutes civil war. During the past 10 days I have been supplied with endless academic tracts, more or less none of which agreed with each other. Although I feel that I am being drawn back into being a more successful academic than perhaps I was when I was doing the job, I do not know that it is a great advantage to the House to rehearse the argument here. On Iran and Syria, the discussions are really only just beginning—certainly so with Syria and increasingly, I believe, with Iran—about what the role might be. It is too early to answer that question, although there is a very important question about how to get them engaged. I believe that everywhere we accept free and fair elections. If the reference was to Hamas, as I suspect it was, let me say that there is no question about the propriety of that election in our minds. However, an issue is involved: anyone who is elected as a Government does not get a free hand as a result of that; they are bound by international conventions, the agreements that have been made, a willingness to embrace peace and a willingness to acknowledge and recognise the existence of neighbours without fighting them.