---

Foreign Affairs and Defence

My hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to the forces involved, and again I do that on behalf of the Front-Bench team. He is right to say that there must be no complacency. He has made the point about the specific situation in Basra, and I make the same point about the situation in Iraq overall: we have our responsibility to the overall strategic situation. Last year, responding to the Baker-Hamilton report, we called for the creation of an international contact group—a formal group with a permanent secretariat to ensure continuous international co-ordination on the crucial issues facing Iraq. The idea has not been taken up and much time has been lost. Beyond the periodic meetings of representatives of neighbouring countries and the major powers to discuss Iraq, there is no long-term strategy of political support for the Iraqi Government or their security forces. The difficulty of the issues in Iraq is now rivalled by the dangerously destabilising policies of the Government of Iran. I had hoped that the Foreign Secretary would say more about Iran. A new Security Council resolution on Iran is now six months overdue, as the last one expired in May. That resolution stated clearly that Iran must"““suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities””," but since then Iran has continued to install, test and feed nuclear material into its centrifuge facility and has reached, or is thought to be close to reaching, the threshold of 3000 centrifuges. The US Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns referred a few weeks ago to"““an agreement that we have with the P5 of countries…made on September 28 in New York…if there is not substantial progress by the middle of the month of November… there will be a third Security Council resolution.””"