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Mr. Alan Simpson (Nottingham, South): Regarding international legitimacy and the United Nations, will my right hon. Friend confirm that UNSCOM is not the child of the United States, or even of ourselves? It is the creation of the United Nations and, as such, should have reported back to the Security Council for a Security Council decision on that report. The failure to do that will almost certainly guarantee that UNSCOM will never be allowed to return to Iraq, whatever the consequences of the bombings.
Mr. Benn: That is true, but then the Britishand American Governments now call themselves "the international community". They sometimes call themselves "the west" or "the allies". Whatever they call themselves, Britain and America are the only two nations in the world participating in this action. Other countries may try to be friendly--the Arab countries do not want to upset Washington--but the reality is that, even if people understand it, Britain and the US have no support whatever for the bombing that they have undertaken.
The hypocrisy upsets me. The Americans killed 1 million people in Vietnam. The Americans tried to kill Castro and invaded Cuba. We did the same--I say "we", but it was not me--when Sir Anthony Eden ordered the assassination of Nasser. The operation failed because it was handled incompetently--like many security operations. The American Government reported Mandela to the apartheid regime. American Governments have supported some of the most corrupt and dictatorial regimes in the world. When I hear President Clinton speak, I am not prepared to see him with wings and a halo. The United States is a super-power, just like Britain was in the 19th century. In this action, we are witnessing a return of Victorian imperialism. The only difference is that Britain is so weak we have to piggyback on top of an American military superpower.
Mr. Christopher Leslie (Shipley):
What credible alternative strategy does my right hon. Friend offer for disarming Saddam Hussein?
Mr. Benn:
I ask my hon. Friend to consider this: if one does something illegal, it is no good saying, "Well, what
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington):
How will that stop Saddam?
Mr. Benn:
Sanctions have not had any effect except on the Iraqi people. [Interruption.] Please do not shout at me, I am entitled to make my case. I have listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and I shall be sorry when he leaves the House. The world community agrees unanimously that the sanctions are a grave injustice that affect innocent people.
Let us look at the other side of the coin--I do not know whether I am allowed to mention it. Today, the five Law Lords apparently moved to allow another filthy dictator to return home. I wonder what image the world will have of Britain when we bomb the people of Iraq and plan to let Pinochet go home. If this is cool Britannia, modern Britain and the millennium dome, let us have another look at it.
Mr. Benn:
I will not give way again as I promised to be brief.
Mr. Campbell-Savours:
I have a very important intervention.
Mr. Benn:
I promised that I would speak briefly.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) is not going to give way, and he is entitled to refuse to do so.
Mr. Benn:
It is a difficult thing to vote against one's own Government in the House of Commons when the overwhelming majority of hon. Members want the bombing, favour the bombing and praise the bombing. I think it is wrong and I will not apologise to the House for that. People woke up today and discovered that they are widows, orphans and parentless as a result of last night's bombing--and it will happen again. The last time we bombed Iraq, Saddam got stronger; the time before that, Saddam got stronger. This is not the way to deal with the situation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George)--who has now left the House--talked about Munich and all that. There was no appeasement before the war: Neville Chamberlain supported Hitler. If hon. Members look at the captured German Foreign Office documents, they will see that Lord Halifax went to Berchtesgarten and said to Hitler, "Herr Hitler, on behalf of the British Government, I want to congratulate you on obliterating communism in Germany and acting as a bulwark against it in the Soviet Union." The history must be read again.
We armed Saddam and we cut Kuwait away from Iraq. The Americans provided Iraq with chemical weapons--it is all recorded--and they supported Saddam to the hilt. We must be careful that we are not swept away on a
media wave, where every bombing is a spectacle. The news media switch from the test match in Australia to Baghdad burning. The hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) and I were on a television programme last night. We heard the questions: "Come on, is that a bomb or a missile? What do you think?" A pilot was asked, "How did you feel when you went in and bombed?"
Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater):
There is a certain repetition in these debates, and one feature of them is that I often follow the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). I listened to his anti-American outburst over Vietnam. The right hon. Gentleman then swept aside the Law Lords over Pinochet and moved on to Munich and whether Neville Chamberlain supported Hitler. I was reminded of the three-card trick in which our attention is drawn to other things. The hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) raised the real issue and punctured the wonderful performance by the right hon. Gentleman. With the greatest respect, the right hon. Gentleman fell apart completely when asked what he would do.
Mr. King:
If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will develop my argument.
There are three real distinctions. The right hon. Gentleman participated in the Gulf war debate and voted against military action. If the right hon. Gentleman had had his way, Saddam would still be in Kuwait, and other countries would have undoubtedly collapsed under his forces. I will not discuss the torture or the number of casualties in Kuwait or the many Kuwaitis who are still missing as a result of Iraq's action.
My experience predates the Gulf war. I met Saddam Hussein in 1982 when, as a Minister in the Department of the Environment, I led an export mission to Iraq. I saw the police state at first hand. I was not surprised to learn recently that every prisoner incarcerated for a certain length of time had been executed when Iraqi prisons became overcrowded. The nature and obscenity of this regime totally differ from anything that the world has seen.
Mr. King:
If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me, I should like to continue.
That might not matter and we might have to tolerate it if it were a purely domestic matter for the people of Iraq--awful as that would be. However, the reality is that it is not an internal matter. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman's other theory is that the weapons of mass destruction and the programmes to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are a product of the imaginations of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and of the previous Prime Minister and the previous Foreign Secretary. Perhaps he discounts all the evidence of the United Nations agencies and UNSCOM, which--as the Foreign Secretary pointed out in his speech--have identified the awful nature of weapons that could, in the wrong hands, destroy the world.
This is a serious issue. Governments can embark on pretty stupid programmes of expenditure so long as they confine them within their own territory. Those countries that have developed weapons are usually under democratic control and the international community is reasonably confident that they will not be mad enough to use them. The trouble is that Saddam Hussein not only is developing the capability of weapons of a quite awful nature but has used them on occasion. The international consequences could be extremely grave.
This is unfinished business. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if he wished to engage me on this point, but I do not have time to discuss it as other hon. Members wish to speak in the debate. I am satisfied with the legal basis for the action. Solemn undertakings were given and they were endorsed, accepted and authorised by United Nations resolutions, which the hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) spelled out clearly. Those undertakings were given at the meeting at the tented camp--I forget its name--where General Schwarzkopf, Crown Prince Khaled and General de la Billiere met the Iraqi generals sent by Saddam Hussein to seek a ceasefire. They did not say that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist; they accepted that the weapons existed and gave the most solemn undertaking that not only would they destroy the weapons but they would no longer develop fresh weapons to replace them. This is therefore unfinished business.
In 1991, we were right to proceed through UNSCOM and agree on the peaceful identification of weapons, with the solemn promise that Iraq would co-operate in their destruction. The seven-year history of that process is one of continual obstruction and deception, which has been testified to by Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who was responsible for the programme and was subsequently executed by his brother-in-law, with or without Saddam's specific instruction. The son-in-law made it clear that there was an organised, deliberate campaign of deception. UNSCOM has made considerable progress against that campaign. The problem now is that UNSCOM is getting too close to the heart of the matter, which is why the obstruction has become more and more serious.
Against that background, we cannot simply walk away, say that the situation is too difficult to tackle--it is certainly extremely difficult--and let the monster develop his programme, which would grow and grow, along with his influence and the threat that he poses. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said, if we did nothing, the authority of the United Nations and order in the world would be totally undermined and there would be a total subversion of order in that region. If that is the case, we have no choice, but it is an extremely difficult choice.
Our decision carries with it heavy responsibilities, including a responsibility to the people of Iraq, who have suffered all too much. We have a responsibility to try to ensure in every way possible that civilian casualties are kept to a minimum. I suspect that we shall get no help in that from Saddam Hussein, who may be actively engaged in trying to ensure that there are suitable civilian casualties. As we know from his other activities, he has little concern about the lives of many of his people. There will be civilian casualties, but I hope and believe that it will be possible to minimise them.
We have a responsibility to our armed forces, whom we have asked to undertake this most difficult of tasks. I strongly support my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), the Leader of the Opposition, who said that there must be the clearest rules of engagement and exact terms for this difficult undertaking. There must also be the closest understanding with the United States about those rules of engagement and the objectives of our actions.
It is important to spell out objectives because it will be vital, in the House and outside, to maintain--as we succeeded in doing during the Gulf war--overwhelming public support and understanding for our actions. That will be an enormous challenge. The Foreign Secretary and the Government pride themselves on their media skills. Anyone who has been in a studio today will know the sort of media frenzy that develops on such issues. Many channels and wavelengths are at work and press conferences are being held in capitals around the world.
The problem is to ensure that messages are clear, that there is no confusion and that rumour is not allowed to spread, but we face a dictator and an organisation that are masters of propaganda and misinformation and will be seeking to organise dissent in the Arab world and more widely. There is also the problem of countries that are not always sure of their support for actions such as ours. France has been mentioned. I recall that three weeks passed after the invasion of Kuwait, before France, with the more positive leadership of President Mitterrand, decided to act, and we welcomed its support. Historically, France and Iraq have a relationship that is different from that between Britain and Iraq, and we must recognise that.
We face the difficulty of ensuring good communications and avoiding misunderstanding. There have already been suggestions that what the Chief of the Defence Staff said today was not entirely consistent with what President Clinton said last night. That can be explained and the differences are not as great as some members of the media might believe. However, if there is not the clearest statement and harmonisation of view, approach and objective between ourselves and the United States, the whole venture on which we have embarked will be threatened.
We are only just starting on this venture. The challenge lies ahead and is peculiar, because of the incidence of Ramadan. The whole world understands that the initial venture is likely to be short-lived. It will be followed by a period of reflection and assessment conducted by ourselves and Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leadership. The issue will be to try to determine what will happen.
Obviously, what should happen is that we revert to the UNSCOM approach of the peaceful and orderly destruction of the weapons of mass destruction. Saddam
Hussein and his regime committed themselves to that approach and are bound to it by their understandings with the UN and those reached during their recent meeting with Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. However, we must all recognise the concerns about whether that is a realistic option. Will the inspectors be able to return? Will they be able to resume and continue their work, or will their task be made even more difficult by the interruption? Will they be welcome?
There is an alternative, and the Defence Secretary may want to comment on this when he winds up the debate. I was interested in the Prime Minister's comments, which pointed to a continuing programme of degradation of Saddam's military capability and the clearest warning to him that he will not be allowed to recover from the damage that he suffers in this campaign and that any attempt to rebuild his defences will be similarly dealt with.
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