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Iraq and the wider Middle East

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Personally, I am extremely pessimistic about the situation in Iraq. Whatever is said in the Chamber, the Government and the coalition forces have to start planning for all eventualities. There will come a point at which we have to say that we are going to withdraw our forces. President Bush has said so. He has said that the commitment is not open-ended. I think that his additional forces will be a waste. I hope that I am wrong about that. I hope that they will make a difference. It is a shame and a bitter irony that when his commanders on the ground asked for additional forces immediately after May 2003 they were not given them, because the situation today might have been different if they had been given those forces. We might have been able to make things work. However, as I said, we have to deal with the reality of where we are. We have to look at the eventualities and to have contingency plans. In particular, we have to talk to and engage with the neighbouring countries. That is not an option; it is a ““must””. To do so, we have to temper our language. It is vital that we engage with Syria and Iran as far as we can. Both countries are a problem. They are not necessarily the good guys on the block. I accept that, but talking is far better than threatening military attacks on them. We have discussed the Iranian nuclear option a lot today. But other threats have already been made. On 10 January, President Bush said in his response to the Baker-Hamilton review, on the point about insurgents:"““We will disrupt the attacks on our forces, we will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria…we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemy in Iraq””." In the Foreign Affairs Committee, I asked the Secretary of State whether she thought that that was an aggressive gesture and whether she thought that that implied that those attacks could be taken on to Syrian or Iranian territory. Of course, she said that she did not believe that was the case, and most people would have said so in her position. However, President Bush’s words stand in their own right, and it is reasonable to interpret them as a threat against Syrian and Iranian bases and support. I do not believe that such language is helpful either to our attempts to make progress towards peace or to the American effort, so I am grateful for the fact that far saner and sober voices are beginning to be heard in the United States. They are our friends—America is our friend—and it is only the neo-con leadership and its supporters in Parliament and in other parts of the world that have delivered us into the almighty mess that we are in. Finally, may I turn briefly to Afghanistan? It has been said that Afghanistan is like Iraq, but that is not the case. I visited the country with the Foreign Affairs Committee two or three weeks ago, and we found reasons to be hopeful. There were pleas for our troops to stay, not just from the Government but from across the board. Afghanistan has problems, and President Karzai has to face up to great difficulties, including corruption and poor governance. We have a role to play both in Afghanistan itself and in efforts to reduce the number of insurgents entering the country from neighbouring Pakistan. Afghanistan is not helping itself, because Pakistan proposes to establish a barrier, and it refuses to co-operate for the worst of all reasons, as it does not recognise the border between the two countries. We must make every effort to use our resources and embassies to knock heads together, as Pakistan and Afghanistan have a common cause in wishing to tackle the insurgency. As I said, the situation is not without hope, but it requires a long-term commitment. It took five to 10 years to eradicate drugs from some countries in the far east. Heroin and opiates constituted a small percentage of those countries’ gross domestic product, but in Afghanistan they constitute 50 per cent. Eradicating drugs from Afghanistan is of crucial interest to the west, and we must come up with innovative solutions that provide support for the Afghan people. We must remember, too, that Pakistan and Iran have a direct interest in dealing with the drugs problem in Afghanistan, because they have the highest percentage of opiate addicts in the world.