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military forces or logistics to ensure that a conflict can be resolved, although we might not be allowed to determine how it is to be resolved.The hon. Member for Bexleyheath drew attention to areas in which the United Nations has played a role and clearly one of those is in human rights. The United Nations seems to me to be the only body which can be the world protector of human rights. Far too often, nation states are based on the rights of those in a particular group or area, and usually on a state's economic problems or aims, rather than on concern for the rigths of individuals.
I also congratulate the United Nations on the speed with which it has moved in certain parts of the world, for example, when trying to resolve the Cambodian crisis. A full member of the Security Council has allowed its client state or group to prevent the implementation of United Nations resolutions in Cambodia. It is clear that if China, which is a full member of the council, were to tell the Khmer Rouge that it has to abide by the resolutions and participate in the peace process, it would be required to do so. No one is in any doubt about that fact of life. The fact that the Khmer Rouge was able to retain members of a United Nations logistics force for two or three days--I join the hon. Member for Bexleyheath in welcoming their release--does not reflect the true problem.
The problem is that the Khmer Rouge has decided, unilaterally, not to abide by the agreements hammered out through the United Nations peace process. It is determined to hold out for more power, which will prevent real peace coming to Cambodia. It is clear that China could resolve that matter quickly. We need to ensure that the Security Council regularly reminds China of its responsibilities as a full member of that council. I hope that the Minister who is to reply will say something about Cambodia and the efforts that we are making to ensure that the peace process can move forward as quickly as possible.
The debate has provided the House with a useful opportunity to talk about the United Nations. I hope that it will spark off a series of debates in the Chamber and in Parliaments across the world so that we can achieve a greater understanding of the original concepts behind the United Nations and how they might be developed in the 1990s and beyond.
The end of the cold war was a spur for the new world order. However, I believe that the explosion at Chernobyl was far more significant, because it demonstrated to the world that even the so-called peaceful use of nuclear facilities in the Soviet Union could not protect the population of that country or those in many other parts of the world. I am not sure whether all the sheep and lambs in Wales and Scotland are now edible. The fact that the explosion at Chernobyl affected the food cycle in such far- away countries put paid to the concept that power was the basis on which one can run the world.
The accident at Chernobyl hastened the break-up of the monolithic state of the Soviet Union, but it also helped to refocus the minds of all politicians and ordinary people on the need to establish a world organisation that could arbitrate on and determine peace and human rights. That accident made everyone realise that no one country could deal with such a problem and that a responsible world organisation should be established. It is no good saying that because someone is our enemy, we will not help him, especially when--through no one's fault--a civil nuclear power accident in that person's country puts his people,
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our own and so many others at risk. Chernobyl demonstrated the need for concerted world action to deal with major problems.I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexleyheath on his foresight in tabling the motion. It has allowed us to deal, if only briefly, with the problems facing the United Nations as it progresses and develops. It has also given us the opportunity to say that we are absolutely committed to "An Agenda for Peace" launched by Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali. We will play our full part in ensuring that, in time, that agenda becomes this Parliament's agenda and that of the world. 10.53 am
Mr. Michael Colvin (Romsey and Waterside) : The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali, has just complained that the United Nations is facing a crisis of too much credibility. There is some truth in that, because enormous extra burdens have been placed upon that organisation now that it is, at last, beginning to fulfil the role for which it was established 47 years ago. It is timely to debate the United Nations and the problems that confront it. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) on choosing that subject for today's debate and on proposing his motion so lucidly. I also congratulate him on his election as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for the United Nations. The knowledge and passion that he displayed in his speech today shows that he is well qualified not only to initiate this debate but to chair that important parliamentary group. I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and to the House for my forthcoming early departure from the Chamber. I will be unable to wait for the winding-up speeches because I need to go to my constituency to face my business men and to explain to them that the green shoots of the economic recovery are there, but, rather like my winter wheat, still below the surface, just awaiting the right economic climate to break through and produce results.
I apologise to the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross)--he is not here ; obviously he has departed for Hansard to read his very long speech. I apologise again, because I see that the hon. Gentleman is still in the Chamber. I will not follow the hon. Gentleman on his world tour, because I appreciate that other hon. Members want to speak and it is important therefore to be reasonably brief. I agreed with almost everything the hon. Gentleman said, but I part company with him on the question of additional forces in Bosnia Herzegovina. We must be extremely careful about the way in which force is deployed there. I agree that we must give protection to the delivery of humanitarian aid, but it would be extremely dangerous to embark upon a straightforward military operation on the ground. None the less, I have advocated on many occasions that certain key targets should be taken out through air strikes to make it clear to Serbia that we do not wish the hostilities to be prolonged, or to encounter the danger of them spreading next door to Kosovo or Macedonia. If that were to happen, the UN would be involved in far greater and more dangerous activities, and ones which we all wish to avoid.
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In facing up to Serbia, we must acknowledge that that country has, at wartime-use rates, some two years of ammunition, weapons and equipment with which to fight a war. One must be extremely careful, therefore, about the escalation of military activity in that country.Only a few years ago it seemed credible that the UN would play the central role in the new world order that optimists assumed would flow from the collapse of communism. The cold war paralysis was gone and it was believed that the UN would be able to act as a police force, social work department and development agency on a world scale. I am afraid that it just has not worked out like that. Alas, with the passing of the cohesion of totalitarianism, we now have the chaos of tribalism and the breakdown of established order through the settling of old scores.
Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali, in "An Agenda for Peace", has said that the foundation stone of the UN's work must be the member state. He said :
"Respect for its fundamental sovereignty and integrity are crucial to any common international progress if every ethnic, religious or linguistic group claimed statehood, there would be no limit to fragmentation that followed."
Cohesion would go and peace, security and economic well-being--the objectives of the UN--would be ever more difficult to achieve. We have seen that happen in eastern Europe and most notably in Yugoslavia. However, we have not seen it happen in China. That country is home to one quarter of the world's population, and we must say to those in Hong Kong who press for ever faster progress towards democracy that the stability of China is extremely important to the world today.
Imagine what chaos the world would be in if China were to fall apart. In the present situation, a quarter of the world's population lives in a country which still has cohesion. I do not accept that type of cohesion, but for the time being I hope that China remains as it is.
It is as well to remind ourselves, as we consider the challenges facing the United Nations, what the UN is and what it is not. It is a voluntary association of states dedicated, through signing the UN charter, to the maintenance of international peace and security and the solution of economic, social and political problems through international co-operation.
The UN is not a world government, and although there has been a suggestion in the debate about the possibility of the UN fulfilling a role in Somalia- -perhaps by trusteeship or the provision of a protectorate--that should be done on only a temporary basis to establish some degree of stability and enable that country to accept its own responsibilities in due course. So the UN is not, and can never be, a world government. It has no right to intervene in the essential domestic affairs of a nation state.
If the UN did not exist, we should almost certainly have to invent it. It succeeded the League of Nations and inherited many of its institutions and procedures. The name "United Nations" was first used in the Washington declaration of January 1942 to describe the 26 countries that were then allied together to fight the axis powers. The UN charter was drawn up by 50 nations in San Francisco in 1945, and following its ratification, came into being on 24 October of that year ; and 24 October is still celebrated as United Nations Day. The UN has as its emblem the pale blue flag that we all know. I suggest that its vehicles deployed in activities
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around the world, such as in Yugoslavia and soon in Somalia and elsewhere, should be painted pale blue to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that they are UN vehicles. Painting them white with "UN" printed on the side is inadequate, particularly in areas such as Yugoslavia where there will soon be a great deal of snow on the ground. UN vehicles must stand out clearly so that people who may fire on them are well aware of what they are doing.The original membership of the United Nations was 51 countries. It is now 178. It is significant that only just over half of those member states are democracies in the accepted sense. Only half of them are capable of fulfilling the sort of objectives for which the United Nations stands. Since the creation of the organisation in 1945, there have been more than 100 major conflicts around the world, leaving 20 million people dead. The United Nations was rendered powerless to deal with many of those crises because of the vetoes, 279 of them, cast in the Security Council. Those vetoes were based on the east-west divide of that period. Since the end of the cold war since 31 May 1990, there have been no more vetoes, and demands on the United Nations have soared.
The original promise of the United Nations can now be fulfilled, but how is it to be achieved? I suggest that it can be done in four ways : first, through protective diplomacy ; secondly, through peacemaking ; thirdly, through peacekeeping ; and, fourthly, through the new concept put forward by Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali of post-conflict peacebuilding. He defines all four in "An Agenda for Peace." Preventive diplomacy seeks to resolve disputes before violence breaks out. Peacekeeping and peacemaking are required to halt conflicts and preserve peace once it has been attained ; if successful, they can strengthen the opportunity for post-conflict peacebuilding, which can prevent the recurrence of violence among nations and peoples. It is all set out clearly. We must now find ways to apply those definitions.
Taken together, there is no doubt that, with the backing of all United Nations members, those four areas of action could fulfil the aims of the charter. By "backing", I mean the means and resources, for we have plenty of politicians and diplomats. The United Nations needs money and materials. The Secretary-General is the first to acknowledge that the organisation is not financially or structurally able to cope with the problems that it now faces.
It has been pointed out in the debate that far too many countries are in arrears with their subscriptions, and the United States is no exception. We must pay our bills to the United Nations on time. A number of proposals about finance appear in Dr. Boutros Boutros Ghali's "An Agenda for Peace." For example, he refers to the possibility of charging interest on assessed contributions not paid on time. Indeed, I should like that applied to people in this country who do not pay their bills on time. I hope that a measure to that effect, similar to a private Member's Bill put forward some time ago, will be proposed again.
There is the possibility of suspending the financial regulations of the United Nations to permit the retention of budgetary surpluses, should there be any. There is also the possibility of increasing the working capital fund to
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$250 million and endorsing the principle that the level of the fund should be about 25 per cent. of the annual assessment under the regular budget.We might establish a temporary peacekeeping reserve fund of £50 million. The Secretary-General would like the United Nations to be able to borrow commercially, and he has suggested a humanitarian revolving fund of £50 million and the establishment of a United Nations peace endowment fund with an initial target of $1 billion--a lot of money, to be provided, presumably, by direct contributions from member states.
Two other interesting suggestions for raising the money have been made. One is a levy on arms sales and the other a levy on airline tickets, remembering that no business has a greater interest in preserving world peace than civil aviation. A levy on tickets might be a significant way to raise United Nations funds.
There is also talk of a standing force of troops. I regard that as not only impractical but far too costly. But there is no reason why the logistics-- equipment, trucks, wireless sets and so on--should not be stored around the world in places where they could be quickly available for use.
The essential point is that member states must be willing and able rapidly to deploy peacekeeping troops in international emergencies. I question whether the United Kingdom, under the "Options for Change", will be able to do that. As I said, providing logistics for Somalia quickly is one thing. I do not believe that we could mobilise even a battalion-strength force to send to Somalia if we had to do so. The number of personnel deployed around the world in blue helmets has increased from 11,000 a couple of years ago to 50,000 today. That deployment is often delayed because authorisation is dependent on approval for financing.
I will comment on only three current United Nations operations, the first being in Somalia, where preventive diplomacy has failed miserably. About 350,000 people there have died of starvation and a further 250,000 could be dead by the new year if humanitarian aid does not get through. About 1 million people have fled that country and 2 million--a third of those who are left--are at risk of being shot or starving to death. The United Nations admits that four fifths of the food and medicine aid that it is sending does not reach the starving and needy.
The token United Nations military contingent is useless and the UN relief organisations are not much better. They were criticised by Mr. Sahnoun, the Algerian who was sent there by the United Nations to oversee matters. For criticising, he has been given the sack. I think that he was absolutely right and that, now that further action is being taken, he should be reinstated as soon as possible. If only force will save Somalian lives, it should be used. Therefore, the House welcomes the United Nations Security Council resolution. It is right to shoot in order to feed. I hope that the force will be truly multinational.
The second trouble spot that I wish to mention is Angola and the elections which took place at the end of September under UN supervision. I did not witness those elections, although I was invited to do so, but I have spoken to several hon. Members who were there. There is no doubt that the 6,000 polling stations set up around the country worked well. The organisation and turnout to vote were good.
However, in communicating the tabulated results from those polling stations, through the municipal headquarters, then via the provisional headquarters and the
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Ministry of Security to the national electoral council, much went wrong. In short, some 500,000 votes went missing, largely from rural areas where UNITA is strongest. The UN should investigate that matter. I believe that the African subcommittee of the United States Congress Foreign Relations Committee has already requested that the UN investigate the matter. When UNITA representatives went to Luanda to negotiate over the removal of some of the electoral irregularities which they say and many others acknowledge took place, several were murdered.UNITA has already said that it accepts the election results. It is often misreported that it was against the results. However, in the presidential contest that took place at the same time, no candidate achieved the 50 per cent. plus one vote required to be elected. Under the constitutional rules, there must be a re-run of the presidential contest within 30 days. That simply has not happened and the UN should carry out an investigation as soon as possible and ensure that a re-run takes place without irregularities.
Mr. Corbyn : If the hon. Gentleman cares to examine the election results, which have been authenticated and verified, he will see that it is clear who won and who lost. Obviously, the second round of the presidential election should take place without delay, but it is impossible to have an election if the UNITA forces have once again restarted a civil war.
Mr. Colvin : I acknowledge what the hon. Gentleman says. There is no doubt that, if a re-run of the presidential election is to take place, there must be a ceasefire. That is agreed by the parties concerned, but it needs proper United Nations supervision. Moreover, it must be ensured that, when the voting is finished, the ballot papers and election results reach where they are supposed to be finally announced. That did not happen before.
The third trouble spot that I wish to mention is the western Sahara, which has already been mentioned by other hon. Members. The United Nations peace plan, which started with the official ceasefire between Moroccan troops and the Polisario on 6 September 1991 under Security Council resolution 690, established the United Nations mission to oversee a referendum in western Sahara about its future and whether it had independence. That was agreed by both Morocco and the Polisario.
There is now evidence that Morocco is sabotaging the peace process. There have been more than 100 violations of the ceasefire, and there is evidence of the gerrymandering of the referendum result by the transplantation of large numbers of Moroccan people into the western Sahara--some 100,000 in all. When one acknowledges that, in 1974 when the last population census took place under the Spanish regime, there were only 74,000 people in the western Sahara, one sees what difference it will make to the referendum's outcome if so many Moroccans are moved in. Why are there only 400 United Nations observers in the western Sahara at present, when everyone acknowledges that at least 2,900 observers are required to do the job properly?
Those are just three examples of serious trouble spots and of the current United Nations peacekeeping actions, which illustrate the difficulties that that organisation faces. The United Nations has been the focal point of world concern in the past year as those and other problems
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escalate. There are great hopes that, under the newSecretary-General, reforms will be introduced at the United Nations to enable us to capitalise on the new world order and not be beaten by it.
However, the whole is only as strong as the sum of its parts, and the House will agree that Britain will continue to play more than its part to ensure that the United Nations can and will fulfil the aims and objectives that we need to achieve for a better world for this and future generations.
11.16 am
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : I thank the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) for the characteristically elegant and thoughtful way in which he introduced the debate.
The hon. Gentleman complained that there had been a speech lasting 53 minutes last Friday, but he cannot possibly have been referring to me, because I took only 52 minutes to introduce that debate. He must have been referring to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone).
I share the hon. Gentleman's vehemence about UNESCO. As he said, UNESCO was started not far from here, in the Institution of Civil Engineers. As he well put it, we could have renewed our subscription for the cost of two tanks and should frankly never have left in the first place.
I also share the hon. Gentleman's sense of caution about what is happening in Bosnia. We would do well to remember that Tito's deterrent was not nuclear weapons or even tank regiments. It was training his people in the techniques of guerrilla warfare. That was what deterred Stalin. It is the idea of holding those people down--people who had occupied 37 German divisions from 1943-44 that makes one shudder. To think that one would come out unscathed from that is tempting providence.
I also share a sense of caution about Somalia. We all heard this morning that the Americans plan to be in and out before 20 January. Does it really work like that? From Northern Ireland to Afghanistan, people have found that it is much easier to put in armies than to take them out. The experience is in, in and in--deeper into the mire. Because of the appalling pictures that one sees of terrible cruelty and starvation, I do not jump to the conclusion that it should not be done, but I should be much happier if their entry were under full United Nations control rather than seen as an American-led operation. Indeed, it should not be a non-United Nations coalition.
Has the Foreign Office given any thought to peacekeeping training? Those of us who did national service must realise that people who have normal training in the forces are not well trained as peacekeepers. As a national service man, I would not have been much good as a peacekeeper. It is an art in itself.
Is the Foreign Office in contact with the Bradford university school of peace studies at which much serious work is being done on the theory and practice of peacekeeping? I understand that a major study by Betts Featherstone, Dr. Nick Lewer and Dr. Tom Woodhouse is to come out in January.
Any of us who have had the good fortune to go on parliamentary delegations to the United Nations and, in my case, to be welcomed most hospitably by Sir Anthony and Lady Parsons and Brian Urquhart, know that
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financing the United Nations constitutes a perpetual problem. The United Nations must be properly resourced because we cannot expect to conduct unpaid peacekeeping operations. The hon. Member for Bexleyheath gave a figure of $844 million. Those of us who expect the United Nations to help in various parts of the world must understand that our countries have to cough up.What is the policy of the United Nations and Britain on what is happening in the Sudan? It seems to be an especially pathetic position. I should be interested in any information that the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. and learned Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg), could give on that matter. There is a new drive in the world to export arms, simply because of the dearth of domestic orders. As the home market for arms slumps in many countries, the drive to keep jobs becomes more frantic. That is why last Friday in the House some of us argued for a United Nations conference to cope with what can be described only as an arms bazaar. We believe that there should be at least a United Nations register of arms sales. I should be grateful if we could be told of any Foreign Office thinking on that issue.
That brings me to the issue of nuclear arms and the
non-proliferation treaty. I have the good fortune of being able to ask the Prime Minister an oral question on 15 December. It is a closed question on the nuclear proliferation treaty. As is my wont, I wrote to Downing street as soon as I knew of my luck in the ballot and offered the Prime Minister an explanation on the exact background to the issue. The issue was summed up in the Observer last Sunday. What is the reaction of the Foreign Office to the statement that the "revelations, together with documents showing Ministerial knowledge of the supply of nuclear equipment to Baghdad, raise for the first time Britain's flouting of international law, not just the Government's own guidelines" ?
The report in the Observer continues :
"John Gordon, until 1988 head of the Foreign Office's Nuclear Energy Department, says he is prepared to give evidence to the inquiry under Lord Justice Scott Matrix Churchill's deep involvement was known to MI6, which alerted other Government departments. Despite these warnings, export licences were still being granted for machine tools with potential nuclear use up to the eve of the Kuwait invasion in August 1990 Mr. Gordon, who has been shown copies of some of the secret Foreign Office documents on the Matrix Churchill case, believes Britain may have breached Article I of the 1968 treaty, which forbids signatories from doing anything to assist, encourage or induce any non-nuclear weapon state to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons'."
Is this so?
"In the minute, Stephen Lillie, a Middle East Department official, noted that the Baghdad company that wanted the Matrix Churchil lathes was involved in Iraqi attempts to obtain equipment for the development of gas centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment'." Is that so?
On 18 December 1979 at 5.12 in the morning in the Consolidated Fund Bill debate I raised in detail the case of Dr. Ali Qadar Khan and the thefts of knowledge about centrifuge technology from the Urenco establishment at Almelo in Holland. Since then, I have had a deep interest in the subject.
I ask the Minister whether the article in The Observer, under the byline of Martin Bailey, John McGhie and Peter Beaumont is accurate. I do not know whether it is
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accurate, and I ask that as a genuine question which must be answered. The question is critical, as it relates to whether the United Nations sanctions are being flouted and busted to such an extent. If the Minister does not answer today, I fear that I will go on and on at it, and I will hope to ask a direct question of the Prime Minister during Question Time on 15 December.I move on to the problem of Iran. To many of us it seems that the United States is in danger of frightening Gulf neighbours by expressing concern about Iran armaments. Western powers and their news media state that Iran is seeking military dominance in the region through the purchase of advanced weapons. That is the view, rightly or wrongly, of President Rafsanjani. He argues that there is an attempt to raise alarm in regional countries so that the west can sell new weapons.
Part of the argument for calling some sort of United Nations conference on arms control is that one hopes that Iran will be high in the in-tray of President-elect Clinton. The issue is whether President Rafsanjani will try to turn militant Islam into a substitute for the cold war threat from the Soviet Union. It would be tragic if that happened. We should restore civilised relations between the most powerful nations and one of the world's oldest nations.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, knows that both in Committee and in the House I have gone on--he would say, "banged on"--about Libya. Last Friday I was fortunate enough to come top of the ballot and I chose for debate the reassessment of our relations with the Arab world. No attempt was made to answer a number of the serious questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant)--who has been to Libya several times--and me. Therefore, I do not apologise for returning to the subject, because the United Nations is involved in the issue of sanctions on Libya--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman's points are relevant to this debate.
Mr. Dalyell : Yes, they are directly relevant to the United Nations, as they relate to United Nations sanctions. At the United Nations on, I think, 15 December the issue of sanctions against Libya will come up again.
In a question on 22 October 1992, I asked
"the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will seek amendment to the rules on international extradition regulations, with a view to clarifying the legal position of Libyans suspected of the Lockerbie bombing."
He replied :
"The legal position is not in doubt. By its resolution 748, the Security Council of the United Nations decided that the Libyan Government must surrender the accused for trial, either in Scotland or in the United States. Under the United Nations charter this obligation prevails over any other obligation which Libya might have under any other international agreement."--[ Official Report, 22 October 1992 ; Vol. 212, c. 371. ]
What is the position of the law of individual states? This is the sovereignty issue which was raised by the hon. Member for Bexleyheath. Are we sure that United Nations law takes precedence over Arab law? In the Government's view, does United Nations law automatically take precedence over international law? This was the Ditchley problem. Those of us who have had the good fortune to benefit from the Ditchley case from time to time during our public lives know that it is a serious matter. I can understand the hon. Member for Bexleyheath saying that
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he was brow-beaten by Foreign Office lawyers. What is current thinking on the question of the precedence of international law and United Nations law over national law?I shall slide away from Libya by repeating a question that I asked last week concerning Father Patrick Keegan. I shall give the reference to shorten the argument. Father Keegan is the Lockerbie priest, and he was returning from the United States. He said : "The cat does not want to catch the mouse because the mouse would not just squeal but scream and implicate Syria, Iran and Bush and Thatcher."-- [Official Report, 27 November 1992 ; Vol. 214, c. 1099.]
I should like some comment on Father Keegan's view.
On several occasions the United Nations has allowed itself to be manipulated by the the United States and the west. That is far from healthy for the international organisation. In November 1990, Mr. Speaker Weatherill chose me to lead a parliamentary delegation to Zaire because of my interest in rain forests. The delegation went to see the Foreign Minister of Zaire in Kinshasa. At that moment the Security Council was making decisions on the Gulf. We asked the Foreign Minister, naturally enough, why a rotating member of the council, Zaire, should have chosen to support the western position rather than supporting a position that did not recommend military force. It transpired that Zaire's position did not rest on any judgment on the merits or otherwise of the decisions being taken on the Gulf. It was felt that by obliging the Americans during a day-long meeting with Secretary Baker, aid--it had been understandably denied by the Americans to Zaire because of that country's appalling human rights record- -would be restored if, as a quid pro quo, Zaire supported the position of the United States in the Security Council. In one form or another, that could have been said of the Ivory Coast and possibly of several other states. There is a real problem of manipulation by the west of the United Nations, which will bring the UN into disrepute.
I return to the Iraqi sanctions. This is not a matter of hindsight. To protect myself, I shall quote The Scotsman of 11 November 1992. The article reads :
"Back in early 1990, Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow was accusing officials and Ministers of turning a Nelson's eye' to the sale to Iraq of materials capable of being used for weapons, including the so-called super gun'."
Last Friday, I dealt with the views of the British Afro-Asian Solidarity Group on Iraq sanctions. I promise you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that both its submission and that of Christian Aid is in order. That is because we are talking about sanctions.
One of my constituents, Hazim Mahboba of 45 Echline drive, South Queensferry, came to see me at my surgery, he comes from Najaf and he is a Shia. He urged that urgent action should be taken--not quite along the lines advocated by the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson)--
"Using the Iraqi frozen assets, which are the property of the Iraqi people, to provide food and medical supplies for the suffering Iraqi people, especially the Shias of the south of Iraq and Kurds in the north. To ensure that the sanctions imposed on Iraq are aimed at the Saddam regime and do not cause further suffering to the Iraqi people. To ensure that UN Resolution 688 which deals with safeguarding the safety of the civilian population from the human rights atrocities of the regime is fully implemented."
I shall quote also Riad El-Taher, who is an Iraqi who was born in Basra. He writes about the effect of sanctions.
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Again, he takes a rather different view from the one held by the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West. He writes :"Similarly, the port of Um Qasr is being brought back to use. this is another example where the people of Iraq cannot understand the attitude of the United Nations' Security Council. When they allowed the importation of food (not that Iraq has any foreign currency to buy any !) they stipulated that Iraqi ports such as Um Qasr must not be used. Iraq can only import through another country, such as Jordan. They ask, why? They can find no logical answer. It seems to them yet another example of the American and British Governments' desire to humiliate the people of Iraq and make them incur unnecessary costs.
One aspect of war damage that was not reported on was the deliberate destruction by British and American bombing of civilian food stores such as grain silos and cold storage units. I saw two of those. At Bab Al-Zubair in Basra and Al-Taji near Baghdad. Most of the people I talked to find it difficult to understand the reason for the targeting of these obvious civilian installations. The destruction of almost 75 per cent. of grain silos rules out operational errors. It appears to be deliberate. At least, that is what the local people believe.
Even today, American and British war planes based in Turkey regularly break the sound barrier over the northern city of Mosul, terrifying the population. They also drop flares and other incendiary devices on crops. Farmers watch as their meagre crops are burned, again unable to comprehend the reason for it."
We must be extremely careful about how United Nations sanctions and United Nations policy is working out with the new generation in Iraq. If we are not careful, we shall breed a generation that is extremely bitter against the West. Is that really what we want? I ask the Foreign Office yet again the questions that are set out in column 1133 in Hansard last Friday, especially those that relate to arms dealings that are alleged by Box Productions to have been conducted by Mark Thatcher.
Last Friday, the Minister said that he would not reply to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East. That is a matter between my hon. Friend and the Foreign Office. I asked seven extremely careful questions. Hundreds of thousands of people have seen the allegations. I do not know the rights and wrongs of them, but there must be some answer. My first question was as follows : "First, are the Government aware that an executive of the defence company, United Scientific, introduced Mark Thatcher to the arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian in the autumn of 1983 as part of its efforts to win a contract to sell night vision devices, ultimately to be used by Iraq?"--[ Official Report, 27 November 1992 ; Vol. 214, c. 1103.]
There followed six other questions.
That coincides with the issue of whether the British Government secretly connived with defence contractors to run a coach and horses through their own arms embargo and United Nations policy. The delicacy of United Nations policy obviously bothered The Sunday Times leader writer of 15 November :
"The export licences were secretly granted in February 1988, the DTI warning that there seems to be considerable merit in keeping as quiet as possible about this politically sensitive issue' and the Foreign Office observing that if it becomes public knowledge that the tools are to be used to make munitions, deliveries would have to stop at once.' Clearly, ministers had embarked on a policy they were ashamed to defend in public."
This is apparently flouting United Nations policy.
I ask another direct question. Under the byline of Tim Kelsey, The Independent asserted :
"The British Embassy in Baghdad knew that British-made machine tools were being used by the Iraqis for the manufacture of weapons."
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Did they?"A British technician who worked on the Iraqi weapons programme for one of its international subcontractors said yesterday that he kept diplomats in the Iraqi capital informed. Another source said that diplomats were under no illusions' that civilian machine tools' were being used in the weapons programme."
Is that so?
I take the view--a number of my colleagues think differently--that the present Prime Minister did not know about those matters, for a combination of two reasons. It was put acidly by someone who knows the Foreign Office well that perhaps they were very busy trying to teach the right hon. Gentleman where Africa was. I believe that he is far quicker on the uptake than that, but I think that there is the basis of fact in suggestions that relations between him and the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) when he was in the Foreign Office were not the happiest.
That was outlined in The Independent of 24 November, by Jonathan Foster :
"Jealousy and resentment of John Major led to important papers about arms exports to Iraq being kept from him as Foreign Secretary in 1989, political and civil service sources have claimed. William Waldegrave, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, felt passed over' when Mr. Major was appointed.
The relationship between them was extremely chilly,' a Foreign Office insider said. Nothing hostile was exchanged in a form of words, but William Waldegrave looked down his nose at John Major. Instead of consultation between junior minister and Secretary of State, matters were referred up only on a need-to-know basis. Mr. Major's term of office ran from July to October 1989. During that period, Mr. Waldegrave became alarmed by an increasing volume of evidence about Iraqi arms procurement in Britain.' "
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