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Iraq and the wider Middle East

That is the very point that I am coming to. We should be clear that there are many things to welcome in the President’s plan, including fresh attempts to speed up economic reconstruction, an unspecified increase in the training of the Iraqi army and great pressure on the Iraqi leaders to achieve the national reconciliation on which everything else depends. To try to achieve those things is right and is far superior to a policy of simply abandoning the Iraqi people to their fate, but it is also true that certain important things are missing from that strategy that were recommended in the Baker-Hamilton report, including the creation of an international support group, direct talks without pre-conditions with Syria, the provision of more resources to Afghanistan and direct talks with Moqtada al-Sadr. Very little attention has been given to the immense problem of 50,000 people a month fleeing Iraq, which can create a looming refugee and political crisis in neighbouring states such as Jordan. Those things are missing from that plan. Are we not justified, given that previous attempts to flood Baghdad with larger numbers of troops have not achieved their objectives, to be somewhat sceptical about the deployment of 20,000 additional US troops, however much we may hope, as I am sure we all do, that they will succeed? That is our attitude to the President's announcement. Is it not the case that British and US strategy in Iraq is not easily separated? The Secretary of State for Defence said on 11 January to the Select Committee on Defence:"““if you disturb the Shia in the Shia Sadr City in Baghdad will the Shia in the Shia flats in Basra rise up in arms? We are well aware of that possibility””—" yet the current plan, it seems, is for us to withdraw from Basra while the Iraqi and American forces go into Sadr city. The House is therefore entitled to know whether UK and US military plans are still being closely co-ordinated. Would not it be better to have a robust exchange of views with the US Administration and then implement an agreed strategy, rather than fail to have such an exchange and then implement different ones? An example is the all important training of larger Iraqi forces. As that is now an important part of the American plan, albeit on a scale perhaps not big enough, is there to be any British involvement or contribution to that, supporting that vital objective? The Government appear to have had very little influence over some of the recent decisions in Washington. We would like to know from the Minister, when he winds up, what they are going to do to recover that influence and what they are going to do to keep alive some of the proposals in the Baker-Hamilton report that have not yet been adopted, but may become even more advisable in the months ahead. That brings us naturally to the question of how to deal with Iran and Syria, often spoken of in the same breath but, of course, quite different countries in different strategic situations. I think that we are all in favour of engagement with Iran on the right terms, and the former Foreign Secretary, now Leader of the House, made strenuous efforts to engage with the Iranian Government. So far, those efforts have been rewarded with Iran's flagrant defiance of the UN Security Council and breach of the non-proliferation treaty, with every appearance that its Government are bent on a nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons programme. It has surely been right for Britain, the other permanent members of the Security Council and Germany to make a generous offer to Iran about assisting with the development of civil nuclear power. That offer, so far, has been spurned. On 23 December, the UN Security Council once again gave Iran a deadline to suspend all of its enrichment-related and reprocessing activities. Is it not now vital, while maintaining the ““incremental and proportionate approach”” called for by EU Foreign Ministers this week, to present an increasing number of usable sticks as well as to hold out the appealing carrot to Iran? Like the Government, we do not advocate military action against Iran, although like them we think that it would be unwise at this stage to rule anything out, but there are signs of division in Iranian politics about the best way for them to react, and now is surely the time to maximise the peaceful pressure on Iran to begin constructive dialogue.