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Mr. Malcolm Bruce accordingly presented a Bill to introduce safety regulations for school buses; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 20 March, and to be printed [Bill 122].
Madam Speaker: I must tell the House that I have selected the amendment standing in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, and I must limit speeches between 7 pm and 9 pm to 10 minutes.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Robin Cook): I beg to move,
It is Saddam--not us--who has refused to engage in the diplomatic efforts to find a solution. He persists in refusing to accept that all sites must be open to inspection. In particular, he is still insisting that inspections of the so-called "presidential" sites must be one-off visits, rather than continuing inspections. At no point during this crisis has he ever put in writing the offers of a compromise which others claim he has made.
We are keeping the door to peace as wide open as possible for as long as is reasonable. Britain believes that Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, should visit Baghdad to explore whether there is a basis for securing Saddam's agreement to the resumption of effective inspections by the United Nations Special Commission.
Until late last night, the permanent five members of the Security Council met to agree on a common position which would provide the brief for the Secretary-General's discussions with Saddam. Discussions centred on a text drafted by Britain, and I believe that all quarters of the House can be proud that, throughout the present crisis, Britain has taken the lead in drafting work at the UN.
I am pleased to tell the House that the remaining areas where agreement has not been reached are narrowing and we are hopeful that an agreed conclusion can be reached later today, after the representatives at New York have had an opportunity to consult their capitals. I am therefore optimistic that we can secure an agreed authority for the Secretary-General to travel to Baghdad. I cannot express the same confidence to the House about the prospects for his success in Baghdad. That will depend entirely on whether Saddam is willing to take seriously the visit of the most senior UN official, and whether Saddam is ready to recognise that any agreement must be fully consistent with the UN resolutions.
We want a diplomatic agreement. We also want an agreement that will be lasting. We are willing to entertain a solution to the dispute over the presidential palaces
through which UNSCOM inspectors might be accompanied by diplomatic representatives. We have never resisted a solution that would result in what has become known as "UNSCOM-plus". What we cannot accept is an "UNSCOM-minus" solution. There can be no agreement that compromises the ability of UNSCOM to carry out effective inspections without restrictions, without time limits, and without no-go areas. That is our bottom line.
We do not draw the line there because of diplomatic nicety. Even less do we draw it there because, as was put to me in an interview this morning, we are concerned with saving face. We draw the line there because UNSCOM's job is to prevent Saddam acquiring weapons that could wipe out whole cities. A gutted UNSCOM could not do that job.
UNSCOM and the associated inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have scored major successes in reducing the capacity of Saddam to threaten the stability of the region and the peace of the world. They have halted his long-range missile programme, which could have brought Europe within range of Saddam's arsenals, and they have dismantled the nuclear programme, which could have given him an atomic bomb. Through a process of inspection and verified destruction, the UNSCOM inspectors have demolished more weapons capability than was destroyed by the allied forces during the Gulf war.
However, there were four areas in the original mandate given to UNSCOM. It has yet to secure the same success in dismantling Saddam's capability in the other two areas--chemical and biological weapons.
The germ and nerve gas weapons that Saddam is known to covet would be lethal to whole cities. The volume on which Saddam hopes to produce such weapons is on such an irrational scale that it leaves frightening questions over his intentions.
Saddam has not accounted to UNSCOM for 600 tonnes of chemical precursors for the VX nerve agent. That would be sufficient to produce 200 tonnes of the agent itself. One drop of VX is enough to kill.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
Are we clear about what would happen if a bomb or a missile hit such a stockpile?
Mr. Cook:
We are entirely clear about the dangers of hitting such a stockpile. That is why we have taken great care in our targeting plan to ensure that we do not hit such completed weapons. There are many points on the supply chain that can be interdicted. Saddam has the capability in the form of chemical precursors. He needs large equipment to turn it into the final form. Those points in the supply chain could be interdicted without any risk to human life, and would set Saddam back many years in acquiring the capacity to threaten human life in the Gulf.
Saddam's biological weapons programme goes in parallel with his chemical weapons programme. It is dominated by anthrax. UNSCOM estimates that Iraq has the equipment and the growth agents to produce 350 litres per week--enough to fill two more missile warheads each week. Saddam is also known to have sought to acquire at least two other forms of biological weapon--the
botulinum toxin, which kills over a week by progressive paralysis, and the bacterium clostridium, which causes gas gangrene and produces the most painful death of all three.
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan):
Will the Foreign Secretary address a point which I know concerns even those of us who do not believe that doing nothing is an option? That is that the present course of action might result in the bombing of Iraq and the inevitable risk of civilian casualties; and that the position of Saddam Hussein might be entrenched in Iraq, his capacity to oppress his own people unimpaired and his capacity to threaten others only set back if not removed. Will the Foreign Secretary address that real concern?
Mr. Cook:
Yes, I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall address that at some length in my speech. Since he has raised the questions at this point, I shall make two points in response to him. If military force had to be used--the objective of our policy is to try to find a solution without it--Saddam most certainly would not be strengthened. He stays in power by military power and force. He should be under no illusion that that military power would be hard hit in the event of a military strike. I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman said about doing nothing not being an option, but walking away from the crisis and leaving Saddam in possession of such weapons would not be a peaceful outcome, either. It would only guarantee that the peace of the region was broken at a future date when Saddam felt strong enough.
Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South):
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Cook:
Yes, but then I must return to my speech.
Mr. Mullin:
Has my right hon. Friend seen reports that Saddam has taken some of his weapons to third countries such as Libya, Yemen and Sudan? Is there any truth in that?
Mr. Cook:
I am not aware of those reports. It would be a very difficult transfer to effect. I shall certainly make inquiries about my hon. Friend's allegations, although we are not aware of any evidence at the moment to support the claim. He is of course correct to draw attention to the fact that the weapons could potentially be easily transported--if Saddam were able to acquire them--and the threat could spread well beyond the immediate neighbours of Iraq.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North):
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Cook:
No, I said that I would return to my speech--if my hon. Friend will allow me.
It is important that we remember that, with Saddam, the use of such weapons is not merely theoretical. He used mustard gas extensively in the Iran-Iraq war against fellow Muslims. Next month will see the 10th anniversary of his most notorious use of chemical weapons, when he wiped out the entire town of Halabja and its population of 5,000 Iraqi Kurds with a mixture of nerve and cyanide gases. The great majority of those who were killed that
day were women, children and elderly men who were not under arms. That fact demonstrates that the weapons are not legitimate weapons of military defence. They are weapons of terror for use against civilian populations.
It is for that reason that Britain, like most other nations, signed up to the chemical and biological weapons conventions, which outlaw the production or use of such weapons. Those international agreements will be pointless if we allow the weapons that we have tried to ban to be retained in the hands of Saddam Hussein. Saddam himself, as a condition of the ceasefire, pledged to abandon his attempts to build an arsenal of mass destruction. He accepted the UNSCOM inspectors as the means of verifying that he had fulfilled his own undertakings. Far from honouring his commitments, Saddam has persistently sought to defeat the inspectors by an organised conspiracy of deception and concealment. As one paper noted at the weekend, he has woven not so much a tissue, as a wall-to-wall tapestry, of concealment.
Three years ago, Iraqi defectors brought with them evidence of a co-ordinated and sustained programme of concealment by Saddam of his chemical and biological weapons. Since then, UNSCOM has attempted to uncover the key points in the supply chain of those weapons programmes. It has been met by determined obstruction of its work. In the 18 months to November 1997, UNSCOM sought access to 63 sites where it believed that concealment was taking place. It was obstructed and delayed from carrying out inspections at 38 sites. It was flatly refused access to a further 14 sites. In other words, Iraq complied with its obligation to permit prompt access at only one in five of the sites under suspicion. As Richard Butler, the executive chairman of UNSCOM, noted:
"Saddam avoids answering questions and prevents UNSCOM from finding the answers."
Against that background, it is wholly false for Iraqi diplomats to appear on television pretending to be the reasonable party, which wants only to discuss some matters of detail. The only reason why, seven years after the Gulf war, the UNSCOM regime and the sanctions to enforce it are still in place is that Saddam has never reconciled himself to dismantling his weapons of mass destruction, and has persistently done everything he can to frustrate the inspections.
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