Tag: 2003

Below is the text of the speech by the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to the Foreign Policy Centre in London on 27th August 2003.

Of all the changes the Labour Party undertook in the 1980s and 90s, one of the most significant was its attitude towards the European Union.

Twenty years ago, the party fought a General Election on an explicit and straightforward policy of withdrawal from what was then the EEC. To quote from that now infamous manifesto, we promised to “open immediate negotiations with our EEC partners, and introduce the necessary legislation, to prepare for Britain’s withdrawal from the EEC, to be completed well within the lifetime of the Labour government.”

Such a course was by then no longer a viable one and the British electorate took the view that a policy of withdrawal would have been wrong.

Ten years earlier – and, more particularly, in the 1975 referendum – Britain did have a genuine choice about the strategic direction of its future relationship with the rest of Europe. Those of us who campaigned for a No vote did so because we felt a viable alternative course existed at the time.

Withdrawal today would however be nothing less than a betrayal of Britain’s fundamental national interests.

Britain’s deepened membership of the European Union is a vital part of our country’s economic prosperity and wellbeing, and an increasingly important element of our political and diplomatic influence in the world.

Almost 60% of our exports go to the rest of the EU, and 3 million jobs rely on our place in the largest single market in the world – a market that is set to rise to 450 million people from next year.

And the benefits to Britain extend well beyond the economic. Our air is cleaner and beaches less polluted because of binding environmental standards agreed across the Union. Workers’ rights have been enhanced and British people can travel with ease across our continent.

As a party, we have always believed that nations co-operating achieve more together than they can alone. After all, that’s why we have felt so strongly about the United Nations and other multilateral international organisations working for the common good.

So as an active and engaged member of the European Union, our Labour government has helped achieve further benefits to British citizens on a range of issues from working hours to tackling cross-border crime, from more effective measures to deal with asylum to the whole Lisbon agenda for economic reform.

And as Gordon Brown made clear in June, if and when we believe that the economic conditions are right and the tests spelt out by Gordon have been met, we will propose to the British people in a referendum that the UK join the Single European currency.

But perhaps the EU’s greatest achievement is a more profound one.

It is easy to forget that but for the last 50 years or so Europe resolved its conflicts through violence and war. The visceral hatreds and animosities which existed between countries of our continent appeared to be insoluble to most of my parents’ generation.

Yet the EU has helped to provide a means of reconciliation and friendship between once hostile enemies. By encouraging a genuine sense of shared destiny, it has helped achieve the most basic goal of its creators: the absence of war.

Moreover, it has done so by advancing fundamental values of freedom, tolerance and democracy across our European continent.

The prospect and reality of EU membership was an important element in the transition of Spain, Portugal and Greece from right-wing dictatorships 30 years ago to vibrant democracies.

And today, we are witnessing its most historic advance with the final end to the Cold War division of Europe and the welcoming of counties which for decades laboured under the tyranny of the Soviet bloc.

Eight of Europe’s new democracies are to join the EU next year, along with Cyprus and Malta. For countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, EU membership will a key part of their full emergence as strong, confident and prosperous nation states.

The expansion of the EU to Central and Eastern Europe will boost the influence and prestige of the Union. But it will result in a significant enhancement to Britain’s own economic and political interests too.

It is already changing the culture and dynamics of the EU to our advantage. After all, countries which have successfully thrown off the shackles of Soviet tyranny are not about to agree to subsume their national identities into any superstate of anti-European myth.

And so I believe that enlargement of the EU should be the cause for celebration across the political spectrum here in Britain.

Yet over recent months we have witnessed the bizarre spectacle of senior Conservatives travelling to countries of this new Europe urging people in national referendums to reject EU membership.

They include David Heathcoat-Amory, the man whom the Conservative Party chose to be one of the British Parliament’s two representatives on the Convention on the Future of Europe, and two Conservative MEPS, Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer.

None of these can be dismissed as eccentrics on the fringe of the Tory Party. And while they have been spectacularly unsuccessful so far in winning over the people of Central and Eastern Europe the fact that they have received no censure from the Party leadership speaks volumes for how the Conservative Party’s centre of gravity has shifted rightwards under Iain Duncan Smith.

Today’s Tory party is a far cry from the one which took Britain into the EEC in 1973 and negotiated both the Single European Act in 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 – the two European treaties which saw the greatest pooling of sovereignty in the last 30 years.

The dogmatic hatred of the European Union within the Tory Party is both deep and visceral. Pro-Europeans like Chris Patten, Douglas Hurd and Kenneth Clarke are marginalised, even ridiculed, by a new majority which views hostility to the EU as an act of ideological faith.

The election of the Maastricht rebel Iain Duncan Smith as Conservative Party leader two years ago was the anti-Europeans’ greatest success – and he has not disappointed them.

Ten years ago, Iain Duncan Smith was part of a small but obsessive clique of right- wingers in the Conservative Party intent on wrecking the Maastricht Treaty and bringing down John Major’s government.

A Government whip described the group to a Tory backbencher of the time as “nutters” (Ian Taylor, Hansard, 21.5.03, col. 1073.

Now, alongside Iain Duncan Smith in the Shadow Cabinet, and now seemingly responsible for policy on the forthcoming EU constitutional treaty, is the hardest nut of all, Bill Cash.

This would be funny if it were not so serious. Serious because Britain’s main Opposition party is now run by people whose life’s work has been directed at undermining Britain’s place within the European Union.

Of course, in his bid for respectability, Mr Duncan Smith has been very careful. For 12 months, he barely uttered a word on Europe for fear of scaring the horses, and remarks made before his leadership election about renegotiation and withdrawal have not been repeated.

A stronger, more able leader might have used this opportunity to take on the destructive ideology of Tory anti-Europeanism as part of a strategy of returning the party to the mainstream of British politics. There was perhaps no one better placed to do it, just as Neil Kinnock was the only politician in 1983 able to begin the reform of the Labour Party.

But Iain Duncan Smith is no Neil Kinnock – and is as much a prisoner of the anti-Europeans as its spokesman.

The experience of one Tory Party pressure group committed to the prospect of UK withdrawal from the EU is telling. Conservatives Against a Federal Europe (Café) boasts Iain Duncan Smith as one of its Vice Presidents and, after years of acting as a thorn in the side of Central Office, decided to suspend active campaigning following his election as leader of the party.

Yet, for all this, Duncan Smith pleads that the Tory Party is not in favour of withdrawal. He accuses those of suggesting otherwise of “telling a lie” (Speech in Prague, 10.7.03). Indeed, in an attempt to convince people of his undying support for the European Union, he travelled to Prague last month to make that speech in which he described EU enlargement – the very same enlargement opposed by senior Tories in Estonia, Malta and elsewhere – as “historic” and the Union’s “greatest achievement”.

And in a phrase which would have made Bill Cash startle, he even commended the EU’s founders for their clarity of vision.

But Bill Cash and the others who share Duncan Smith’s history and instincts have no need to worry, for behind these warm words was an extraordinary speech which painted a picture of an EU of his dreams which, even if desirable, would never be attainable.

It inhabited a fantasy world of distorted logic and contrived demons to suggest that the EU had been hijacked by power-crazed and unelected bureaucrats determined to destroy the sovereignty of national parliaments and create a United States of Europe against the wishes of democratically-elected governments.

Quite apart from the fact that change within the EU can only take place with the agreement of member states, his answer to this demon appears to be to reject some of the fundamental aspects of the EU which Britain has long accepted and, instead, suggest the creation of some sort of European free-trade area where any one of 25 or more national parliaments could exercise a veto over any particular EU measure.

In doing so, Mr Duncan Smith appears far keener to re-fight the battle of 1993 – and even 1973 – than make constructive proposals for 2003 and beyond.

Little wonder then that Ken Clarke said that “Iain should not pretend this speech is not a call for withdrawal from the European Union in any recognisable form.” [Gallery News, 10 July 2003]

Mr Duncan Smith’s argument that the EU should not have “supremacy over our national laws” is extraordinary from someone who claims to be in favour of British membership of the European Union. From its outset with the Treaty of Rome, EU law has had primacy over national law in those areas where member states agree. The British Parliament accepted this in 1973.

How, for example, could the Single Market work if each member state decided to ignore agreed measures, and there was no supranational power to enforce it? That was, after all, why Margaret Thatcher agreed to give up the national veto on a wide range of issues in the 1986 Single European Act.

I know of no other EU country which has advocated such a proposal, and there was no effort made in this speech to suggest where Britain would receive support in the event that a Conservative government put it forward.

Even in the accession countries with which Duncan Smith crassly attempts to align himself there is no appetite for the changes he suggests.

Yet without support for such a wholesale renegotiation of existing treaties, this imaginary Conservative government would be faced either with capitulation or withdrawal. It is the choice which today’s Tory Party would prefer not to acknowledge publicly. But it is the only choice there is. And either course would do lasting damage to Britain at home and abroad.

That is the reason for various attempts from senior Conservatives such as David Heathcoat-Amory to contrive some mythical alternative of “associate membership”. Quite apart from the unfortunate position Britain would find itself – being subject to measures over which it had no say – such a prospect is the stuff of right-wing pamphlets and think-tanks and has no connection with today’s EU.

For all the faults of Labour’s 1983 manifesto, at least the commitment to withdraw from the EEC was honest and straightforward. It was based on the acceptance that one member state cannot dictate fundamental reform of what is now the EU without the agreement of our European partners. After all, collective organisations only work on the basis of consensus and accommodation.

The suggestion that a Conservative government led by Iain Duncan Smith will be able to subvert this logic in the future is at best hopelessly naïve, at worst profoundly dishonest.

Conclusion

The EU is not perfect. Far from it. That is why Britain has played a leading role within the Convention on the Future of Europe to propose ways of enhancing its accountability and effectiveness.

We have, for example, championed the case of giving for the first time national Parliaments a role in the decision-making structure of the EU. We have proposed giving greater strategic authority to the body which represents national governments, the European Council. And we are working closely with our friends across Europe to fashion a more stable, coherent structure for the EU which better delivers in those areas where it can make a positive difference to people’s lives.

The draft constitutional text from the Convention on the Future of Europe does not have everything we want, but it is a good starting point for discussion between member states, and we will be working hard in the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference to improve it. Yet our ability to lead change comes not from seeking isolation and marginalisation but by active engagement and support.

That is what has marked out our policy and with a dynamic, successful economy the envy of many and diplomatic authority across the world, we have been able to exert real influence within the European Union.

Yet far from seeking to promote ways of extending Britain’s power and prestige, today’s Tory Party, racked by ideological hostility to the EU, is committed to a course of diluting and diminishing that influence and authority.

At its heart, this flawed ideology represents a profound lack of confidence in Britain and what our country stands for. It is inward-looking and reactive and inhabits a time warp out of touch with the reality of Britons living, working and travelling in today’s Europe. Fundamentally, it represents a raw deal for Britain and would set this country on a profoundly damaging course which would be catastrophic for British jobs and British prestige.

Today, there are clear dividing lines between the two main political parties on the vital issues. On one hand, there is a party committed to excellent public services for all, and engaged within the EU and on the international stage to promote national interests and values of democracy, freedom and the rule of law. On the other is a party committed to cutting investment in health and education and prepared to lead Britain to international isolation and withdrawal.

This is a divide we shall be confident to take to the British people at the next election.

Below is the text of the speech made by the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, in Jakarta on 9th January 2003. The speech was on the UK and the Muslim World.

Three months ago our countries were united in grief. The terrorist atrocity in Bali claimed the lives of innocents from many nations and faiths, including 26 Britons and an even greater number of Indonesians. As the terrorists no doubt intended, it tragically dealt a shattering blow to one of the most important sectors of your economy.

No political or religious cause can justify the terrorists’ actions. Their crimes have rightly been condemned by politicians and leaders of all faiths around the world. Al Qa’ida and its sympathisers claim to be waging a ‘just war’, in the name of Islam, against the western world. But the Bali atrocity simply confirmed what peace loving peoples of all faiths have long known. The divide in the modern world is not the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’ between Islam and the West. The divide is between order and chaos.

The first objective of any democratic government is to deliver an equilibrium of order and freedom for its citizens. Since the end of the Second World War, we have seen the establishment of a host of multilateral institutions to make these principles a unifying force in international affairs. In Europe, the EU and NATO have helped to make the past 50 years one of the most stable eras in the continent’s history. More recently in South East Asia, ASEAN has helped to establish a secure foundation for Indonesia’s relations with its neighbours.

There are two great modern threats to global security –international terrorism and unstable or rogue regimes seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Both threats profoundly disturb that equilibrium between order and freedom and introduce a potential new dimension of chaos to international affairs.

Indonesia and the United Kingdom should unite with the international community to confront these threats. Our immediate objective must be to bring the perpetrators of the Bali bombing to account. Thanks to the unflagging efforts of the Indonesian authorities I believe that we are closer to this goal.

But if we are to establish a fitting memorial to the victims of the Bali tragedy and strengthen global security, we will have to do more than simply mete out justice to the terrorists. We will have to tackle the mistrust and misapprehensions which bedevil relations between the west and the Islamic world and which in turn allow the terrorists to secure new recruits for their twisted cause. The promotion of peace and reconciliation between all faiths must therefore become an objective of politicians and religious leaders alike.

Last year, following the atrocity of 11 September the leaders of the three great monotheistic faiths, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, meeting in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, proclaimed that they shared values as much as they shared prophets. They declared that, ‘According to our faith traditions, killing innocents in the name of God is a desecration of his Holy Name, and defames religion in the world’.

These fine sentiments find an echo in this country’s national motto ‘unity in diversity’ (Bhinneka Tungal Ika) which I first learned when I attended an interfaith memorial for Bali at the Indonesian Embassy in London. This principle has guided Indonesia for almost 60 years. It should also lie at the heart of a new relationship between the west and the Muslim world.

But if this aspiration is to become a reality, Indonesia will have to play a leading role. We will achieve nothing without the engagement of the largest Muslim country in the world. Thanks not least to Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, extremism has remained largely on the fringes of Indonesian Islam. I pay tribute to the work of both organisations for the stand they have made against terrorism and for acting as a force for moderation and partnership with the west for almost a century. In a region long noted for its commitment to religious toleration, you have helped to build Indonesia’s reputation as one of the Islamic world’s most open and diverse countries. One American scholar, Robert Heffner, recently noted that, ‘Nowhere in the Muslim world have Muslim intellectuals engaged with the ideas of democracy, civil society, pluralism, and the rule of law with a vigour and confidence equal to that of Indonesian Muslims’. Long may that continue.

THE UK AND THE MUSLIM WORLD

Today I want to share with you my thoughts on how the United Kingdom can reciprocate your efforts, and help to build trust between the west and Muslim peoples across the world. I would not wish to overstate the extent of our influence. The UK alone will not determine the future course of this relationship. But I think our history and the extent to which Islam is now an everyday fact of life in the UK, gives us some unique insights and leaves us well placed to act as a force for progress.

My country has one of the largest Muslim communities in Europe. Around 2 million Muslims have helped to make the UK what I believe is one of the most ethnically diverse and tolerant countries in the world.

The vast majority of British Muslims have integrated themselves into our society, spreading prosperity to urban and rural communities across the country. And they are making a vital contribution to British democracy. Let me illustrate this point with a personal example.

As a Member of Parliament, I represent the interests of 100,000 constituents. In my constituency, Blackburn, there are no fewer than 23 mosques and more than 25,000 Muslims. I represent their interests as much as those of the other 75,000. I have a permanent reminder of the Muslim influence within my constituency. My house is opposite a Madrassah and I awake, at the back of the house, to hear the call to prayer.

We have Muslim Members of Parliament who have to attract the votes of British non-Muslims to win their seats. For example, it was a majority of non-Muslims in a district of the city of Birmingham who elected my colleague, Khalid Mahmood, as a Member of Parliament in 2001. Some of you may remember him when he and other British Parliamentarians visited Indonesia in July last year.

The size and importance of our Muslim communities is such that no British Government – present or future – can afford to turn a blind eye to their domestic or international concerns. Britain’s Muslims are preoccupied with the same domestic issues as all of our voters: decent schools, high standards in healthcare provision and a prosperous economy. But when it comes to international issues, they are particularly concerned about developments in the Middle East and North Africa, and South and South East Asia.

Almost all of the Muslims in my constituency come from South Asia, evenly split between Pakistan and India. As tensions between India and Pakistan last year threatened to spiral into a full-scale conflict, I was reminded on a daily basis of the close family ties binding communities in the United Kingdom to two of the countries in that region, and that for both communities, national loyalties – to Pakistan and India – were as important as religious ones.

THE MIDDLE EAST

Last year, as the India/Pakistan crisis abated, developments in the Middle East moved to the centre stage. Tragically, Israel and the Occupied Territories, which have seen so much grief over decades, have suffered appallingly in the last two and a half years. Over two and a half thousand Israelis and Palestinians have been killed. Many more have been injured. Life on both sides of the green line has been disrupted. We must not let it go on. And we have to work unremittingly for a better future for the region as a whole.

To achieve that we have three central objectives for the region:

– to secure a just and lasting peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians;

– to remove the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction both to his neighbours and to the wider world;

– and third, to work in partnership with the governments of the region to promote social and economic development and democracy.

Turning to the first of these objectives, almost all British citizens – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – share the hope that we can secure a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, underlined Britain’s support for this goal last year, and warned of the consequences of failure to deal with a problem which ‘hangs like a dark shadow over our world……providing the cover under which the fanatics build strength’.

These are dark times for advocates of a lasting peace. Last Sunday suicide bombers slaughtered 23 innocent civilians in Tel Aviv. There must seem no end to the cycle of violence.

But we must not allow the carnage to breed fatalism. Nor to have the agenda set by the terrorists. The emerging international consensus on the broad outlines of a final settlement does offer hope. Last year, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a Resolution supporting, for the first time, a two-state solution which guarantees an end to the Israeli occupation, a viable state for the Palestinians and security for Israel within its borders. We voted for this Resolution. It is our vision, and I look forward to pursuing it with both the new Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority.

IRAQ

A peace settlement between Israel and Palestine would remove one of the great threats to global stability. But the Middle East and the wider world will never be secure as long as Saddam Hussein retains his weapons of mass destruction.

I know the prospect of international action to disarm the Iraqi regime by force concerns people in Britain and Indonesia alike. In recent months, we have worked tirelessly towards a peaceful outcome to this crisis, based on full Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions. The UN Security Council supports this goal, and in October voted unanimously in favour of UNSCR 1441. This resolution presents Iraq with a pathway to peace and disarmament via UN inspections rather than force.

However, the consequences of a failure of nerve to deal with the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are potentially devastating for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The world would then have emboldened a dictator who had previously shown no mercy in turning chemical weapons against the Iraqi people and the Iranian army. In the Iraqi town of Halabja fifteen years ago, 5,000 civilians were gassed to death as Saddam pursued a campaign of genocide against the Kurds.

On the other hand, full disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction would be a major boost to all of those who support an international community based on reciprocity and the rule of law. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Iraqi regime flouted its commitments under a range of international treaties and conventions to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Since 1991, Saddam Hussein has ignored repeated UN resolutions calling for Iraq’s disarmament. If he continues to get away with it, other would-be proliferators will take heart and the world will become a far more dangerous place.

Contrary to some perceptions, particularly in the Arab region, the international community’s quarrel is with Saddam Hussein, not the Iraqi people. They deserve much better. Iraq is a country with a talented population, a country that is potentially rich and successful. We want to welcome it back into the international fold. We want the people of Iraq – Kurdish, Sunni and Shia Muslim alike – to be free to live fulfilling lives.

Similar concerns lay behind the four major military campaigns Britain has fought during the last decade. On each occasion, in Kuwait in 1991, Bosnia in 1995, Kosovo in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001 the effect has been to help Muslims suffering oppression. In each of these countries, as a result of military intervention led by the US and involving British and other troops, it is millions of Muslims who have been released from the threat of brutality and intolerance. These actions highlight the fact that, contrary to popular myth in some Muslim countries, neither the UK nor the US is bent on subjugating Islam. Its actions with the USA speak louder than words.

MYTHS ABOUT THE MUSLIM WORLD

I regret to say that similar, damaging myths about the Muslim world are prevalent in the west. One of the most pernicious is that Islam and democracy are mutually exclusive.

Indonesia has been making the transition to democracy for the past four years. Years of struggle against Suharto’s dictatorship deepened your commitment to democracy and peaceful reform. It was never going to be easy. The transition in the UK, from autocracy to democracy took centuries. Freedom of political expression has inevitably triggered demands for less central control and greater local autonomy. This is a particularly difficult balancing act in a country as ethnically diverse as Indonesia, where the challenge of administering a vast archipelago of over 17,000 islands would stretch the skills of the most proficient administrator.

I want to applaud the progress you have made so far. In just four years Indonesia has consigned dictatorship to the past. Meanwhile in Turkey – another of the world’s largest Muslim countries – we have just witnessed a peaceful change of government and the arrival in power of an Islamic party committed to respect for the role of Islam and to the values of liberal democracy – and the development of strong relations with the west. Taken together, these developments are proof – if it were needed – that Islam and democracy are compatible, and that societies founded on profound religious beliefs can also subscribe to the principle of freedom of political expression.

But democracy has frankly not made the same strides in the Arab world. The Arab Human Development Report, published by the UN last year, portrays a region that is lagging behind others in individual freedom, women’s empowerment and economic and social development. I do not claim that democracy offers a panacea for all of the region’s ills. But history shows that democracy is usually a pre-requisite for economic prosperity, tolerance and political progress.

We can draw an interesting parallel with central and eastern Europe. Fourteen years ago this region’s prospects were grim. Four decades of communist rule had resulted in economic stagnation as well as creating a dangerous imbalance between order and freedom. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, political and economic reforms acted as a catalyst for a burst of wealth creation and, more importantly, freedom creation. This historic transition is almost complete. In 2004, eight countries from the former eastern bloc will join the EU and we will have witnessed the unification of Europe within a generation.

The experience of the Cold War tells us that countries plagued by a lack of economic opportunities and closed political systems simply fuel the alienation of their citizens. In central and eastern Europe this sense of alienation found expression in the tumultuous events of 1989. The UNDP report shows that a similar sense of alienation exists in parts of the Arab world. I believe that this has partly found expression in acts of terrorism against western interests, and a general mistrust of our motives.

CLOSING REMARKS 

By showing tolerance to other faiths and welcoming debate within Indonesian Islam, you have shown a path which I believe other Muslim countries should follow. That spirit of tolerance helped you recently reach a peace settlement in Aceh which I warmly welcome.

Indonesia is extraordinarily rich in its religious linguistic and ethnic diversity. Within that you are rightly proud of your majority Islamic faith and traditions. Traditions that have embraced a secular state and universal values. Together I believe we share a common purpose in building and promoting the path of reconciliation. Let us make this our shared task as we build a new relationship between the west and the Muslim world.

Below is the text of the speech made by the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, on re-integrating Iraq into the international community. The speech was made at Chatham House on 21st February 2003.

On behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I would like to thank Professor Bulmer-Thomas and his team for their efforts over the past twelve months. It’s hard to overstate the importance of our partnership with Chatham House. As we enter an uncertain new era in international affairs, it’s all the more important that FCO staff are able to step back from the day to day vicissitudes of diplomacy and develop a strategic perspective on the environment in which they operate. Chatham House has performed this invaluable service for British diplomats for the past 80 years.

Earlier this month, FCO officials and academics met here to discuss one of the great challenges of our times, the growing phenomenon of state failure. In my remarks today I want to focus on a state which has utterly failed its citizens: Iraq.

However, Iraq differs from the classic failed state in one key respect. Unlike, say Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo where it is the collapse of the state which has led to such misery for their peoples, in Iraq it is an all too powerful state – an authoritarian regime – which has terrorised its population in order first to establish and then to maintain control.

The United Nations has been trying to remove a central pillar of Saddam’s apparatus of terror – his weapons of mass destruction – for the past 12 years. As this stand-off enters its final phase, my message today is that in securing Iraq’s disarmament we will remove the threat Saddam poses to his neighbours and the wider world; we will effect a decisive shift in the fortunes of the long suffering Iraqi people; and we will have reasserted the authority of the international rule of law.

Amidst talk of European splits and transatlantic rifts, it’s worth remembering that the objective of Iraqi disarmament unites the world. EU Heads of State confirmed this week that they would not tolerate Saddam’s defiance of UN demands indefinitely. SCR 1441, which was passed unanimously last November, told Saddam that he had a final opportunity to disarm voluntarily. If he did not, and if he failed to comply immediately with weapons inspectors and the other obligations on him, he would face ‘serious consequences.’ Diplomatic parlance is notoriously ambiguous, but in this case the terminology had only one meaning: disarmament by force.

INTERNATIONAL UNITY 

SCR 1441 hardly marked a sudden rush to war. Iraq was found guilty in 1991. Twelve years of defiance later, Saddam Hussein is not entitled to any presumption of innocence. It is for him to prove that he has, once and for all, given up what we know he has.

UN inspectors would not be in Iraq today without the threat of force. But inspectors cannot achieve containment without co-operation. If co-operation is denied, the UN Security Council has already warned that force must be used. Otherwise Iraq will again use these terrible weapons. This is a key part of the moral case – preventing Iraq launching more wars of aggression, and dealing definitively with a tyrant who flouts international non-proliferation norms.

In diplomacy, international unity on the ends – if not the means – is a rare and precious commodity. But in respect of Iraq there is agreement on the end. This reflects a common perception that Saddam’s appetite for WMD, when married to his willingness to use all possible means to repress his own people and intimidate his neighbours, makes him a unique threat to international peace and security.

But consensus on the objective is not simply based on the extent of the Iraqi threat. With each passing year of Iraqi defiance of international opinion, there has been growing awareness of the immense consequences of a failure to match our words with actions. In a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies last week, I set out the profoundly damaging implications for international efforts to halt the spread of the world’s most dangerous weapons. And I examined the great damage which inactivity and vacillation would inflict on the authority of the UN Security Council. The stakes could not be higher. If the UN proves unable to act on the spirit and the letter of mandatory Chapter VII resolutions when faced with the most egregious non-compliance it risks joining its predecessor, the League of Nations, as a footnote in history.

SADDAM’S WMD – A THREAT TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE 

We should not forget that the consequences of inaction would not just be disastrous for the international legal system. We would be delivering another blow to the long suffering Iraqi people.

One of the myths about Saddam’s regime, which I heard repeated only this morning, is that the full brutality of his regime has been effectively constrained since the end of the Gulf War. The UN and various NGOs have amassed a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the most shocking example was Saddam’s policy of ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, when he drained the marsh areas of southern Iraq, forcing the population to relocate to urban areas where it could be controlled by the regime’s security forces. In the words of the UN Environment Programme, ‘around 40,000 of the estimated half-million Marsh Arabs are now living in refugee camps in Iran,’ and ‘a 5000 year old culture ..is in serious jeopardy of coming to an abrupt end.’

Neither should we forget that, amongst the welter of horrifying statistics about Saddam’s human rights abuses, it is the Iraqi people themselves who have been and remain the most likely victims of his WMD.

One of the problems is that the statistics sound abstract. To counter this, I met 10 Iraqi exiles this morning. They reeled off a list impossible to invent of relatives who had disappeared or who had been tortured. One told me how a cousin – a woman doctor – had been killed in front of her family. Some of them would not be photographed, in case they were identified by the regime. If you wondered why Iraqi scientists are afraid to be interviewed by the inspectors, it is for the same reason. They fear for their lives.

Saddam believes his poisons and gases are a key element in his military arsenal, not a weapon of last resort. The Iraqi regime used nerve agents to gas 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in the village of Halabja in 1988. Memories of this incident in the west may have been dulled by the passage of time. But the Iraqi Kurds will forever bear the scars. Only this morning, I heard Baram Salhi, a leading political figure in northern Iraq, urging those who counsel indefinite containment of Saddam to reconsider.

I ask you to imagine the lasting psychological impact on the British public of a chemical weapons attack – carried out by the Armed Forces – against one of our minority ethnic groups. Fourteen years afterwards, would anyone suggest that such an attack would not leave the public in constant fear of a repeat?

Recent intelligence shows that Saddam’s military plans envisage using chemical and biological weapons against a range of targets, including his own Shia population. Some of these weapons are deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them. During the Cold War, people in Britain had to become inured to the everyday possibility of annihilation. Imagine the effect on the public psyche if this threat came not from an external adversary, but from one’s own government.

As the UN considers the case for enforcement of its resolutions, the fate of the Iraqi people must loom large in our calculations. If it comes to military conflict, there will be victims. War is terrible. But there are circumstances in which the consequences of not going to war are more terrible still. There will be victims too if our weakness emboldens a regime which has killed hundreds of thousands. Conversely, by disarming Iraq we will either fundamentally change the character of the regime or, if military intervention proves necessary, then change the regime itself. Either way, the enforcement of UN resolutions will mean that Iraq is free from the fetters of UN sanctions, and finally able to take the first steps on the path to a prosperous future.

I think I understand the anxieties of those who joined last weekend’s marches. Just as those in power have a duty to answer the questions posed by those on Saturday’s march. I think it fair for me to ask one in return. Please consider the consequences of lifting the military pressure we are applying to the Iraqi regime. The answer I offer is: if we take the military pressure away, there would be no co-operation, no inspections. The tyranny of the Iraqi people would go on. The intimidation of his neighbours would go on. And dictators everywhere would see that defiance pays.

Dealing with a dictator who cares nothing for human life creates a fearful dilemma for those who have the courage to confront him. We are approaching a time when a hard choice has to be made. None of us has a monopoly on conscience, or on hatred of war, or on being in the right. As a nation, we should conduct a conversation with one another in a spirit of mutual respect for the other side of the argument. I believe that is now happening. Next week on Monday I will be attending an EU Foreign Ministers Meeting to discuss Iraq and other issues; on Tuesday the Prime Minister will make a statement to the House of Commons to report this week’s EU Heads of Government Meeting; and on Wednesday we have arranged a debate in the House of Commons on a substantive motion, with a parallel debate in the House of Lords. Of course, no such national debate would be possible in Iraq. Saddam has no marchers to persuade of his murderous policies.

While we debate the choice ahead of us, millions of Iraqis endure the horrors of Saddam’s rule. There are many deeply disturbing aspects of life in Iraq today. Arbitrary execution, racial persecution and other forms of state sanctioned violence have been an everyday fact of life under Saddam for the past 24 years. The nature of the regime has perhaps best been described by the former Dutch Foreign Minister, Max van der Stoel, who visited Iraq on behalf of the UN in 1992. He concluded that the brutality of the Iraqi regime was ‘of an exceptionally grave character – so grave that it has few parallels in the years that have passed since the Second World War.’

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY 

Since Saddam’s assumption of power in 1979 his regime – even by the dreadful standards of the twentieth century – has become a byword for barbarity. His impact on his country has been all the more depressing when one considers the direction Iraq might have taken in the 1970s. At that time, there was every prospect that Iraq might build on its rich cultural legacy and wealth of natural resources to become one of the leading countries in the Muslim world.

Although the state of Iraq has existed only since 1920, the area now incorporated within its borders has been the home of several of mankind’s earliest civilisations. Two of the greatest advances in humankind’s evolution have originated on Iraqi soil. The first was the practice of agriculture. In the foothills of what is now northern Iraq, agriculture and the domestication of animals were practised over 6000 years ago.

The second was the development of urban life in the city state organisations of Sumeria. By the fourth millennium BC, a complex of 13 city states stretched from Baghdad to the Gulf.

The Sumerians created the first accurate calendars based on the 12 month lunar year and the cycle of 60 minutes and 12 hours that we still use to tell the time.

THE SITUATION SINCE 1979 

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was every reason to expect that the territory which eventually became Iraq in 1920 would have a prosperous future. When Saddam Hussein assumed power, Iraq had a burgeoning salaried middle class and enjoyed a rising standard of living. Iraq’s GDP per capita income in 1979 bore comparison with that of Malaysia and Portugal. At the start of the Iran-Iraq war it was more prosperous than most of the Arab world. As oil prices rose in 1980, its GDP per head reached $3000 and its foreign reserves close to $40 billion. With a decade of peace and merely tolerable economic management, Iraq would have widened the prosperity gap over its neighbours.

The appalling impact of Saddam’s mismanagement is not well enough known. People understand that he is evil, but not that he has presided over an economic catastrophe, brought about by incompetence and indifference in equal measure. It is no accident. It is a product of enormous spending on his weapons of terror, and of his utter disregard for the fate of Iraq’s people. As people come to learn more about the nature of the regime, I am convinced they increasingly see why it must be disarmed of its terrible weaponry, even if – as a last resort – that means military action. And the more people understand the regime, the less inclined they will be to give it the benefit of the doubt, as it claims laughably to have no WMD, and manoeuvres cynically to deceive the UN with minor concessions.

Saddam has engineered one of the swiftest transitions from potential prosperity to third world basket case in history. Misguided economic policies played their part. But the real culprits were Saddam’s regional ambitions, his drive to expand his armed forces, and the wars of aggression he waged against Iran and then Kuwait.

These wars resulted in over one million Muslim casualties. Yet they hardly sated Saddam’s appetite for slaughter. In 1988 he prosecuted a genocidal campaign in northern Iraq which was responsible for the deaths or disappearance of up to 100,000 Muslim Kurds.

Given the regime’s obsession with secrecy and its isolation from the outside world, we may never know the full extent of Saddam Hussein’s oppression of the Iraqi people. But the testimony of defectors and accounts from the UN Special Rapporteur provide a damning indictment of a regime that respects no moral boundaries.

The international community has been casting around for a response to Saddam’s repression for the past ten years. It is clear that a solution does not lie in the international human rights machinery established in the aftermath of the Holocaust and reflected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Whilst this machinery may have helped to improve human rights situations in certain countries from South Africa under apartheid to Suharto’s Indonesia, it has utterly failed the people of Iraq.

The search for solutions led us in the first instance to impose military measures. In enforcing the southern and northern No Fly Zones, British and American aircraft have, at least for the time being, deterred Saddam from carrying out a repeat of the Halabja atrocity.

In northern Iraq, where UN sanctions also apply but Saddam’s writ runs out, the people are better off than they ever were under his control. School enrolments are rising, not falling as in Baghdad controlled Iraq. Health indicators are improving. Infant mortality rates are now lower than before sanctions were imposed. Under the Oil for Food programme, $18 million has been spent on renovating 41 hospitals in northern Iraq. Freed from the tyranny of Saddam’s rule, the Iraqi Kurds have shown what might be possible across the country as a whole if Saddam wasn’t there. A democracy has begun to emerge, underpinned by the principles of free speech and right of association.

But in central Iraq there is only so much the outside world can do while Saddam remains in charge. A telling example is his decade-long abuse of the oil for food system. Saddam has regularly halted his oil exports to make a political point, starving the humanitarian programme of revenue for essential supplies, blackmailing the world through his people’s suffering. In recent years billions of dollars has lain unspent in the UN Oil for Food Account. Oil revenues that should have been spent on essential medicines, foodstuffs, hospitals and schools have languished in a UN account in New York. Up to $2.3 billion worth of goods already approved by the UN remain undelivered because Iraq has not processed the contracts. Saddam has attempted to perpetuate the myth that the UN – rather than his utter disregard for human life – is responsible for the dire humanitarian plight of the Iraqi people.

At the same time, Saddam has circumvented UN sanctions both by smuggling oil and manipulating the Oil for Food Programme. The illegal revenues he has generated, worth up to $3 billion to the regime, have underpinned a covert network to procure materiel for WMD, and have helped to bolster his apparatus of internal repression.

The tragedy for the Iraqi people is that Security Council resolutions have always held out the prospect of a swift end to sanctions in return for Iraqi disarmament. In rejecting this path, Saddam has ensured that the UN policy of containment has effectively imprisoned the Iraqi people under his exceptionally brutal dictatorship. Millions of Iraqis have been condemned to a life of fear and penury.

The impact has been staggering. Almost four million Iraqis – a sixth of the population – have left the country, bringing their skills and talents to many countries, including the UK.

For those who cannot escape, the suffering has been truly unimaginable. About 60% of the population are completely dependent on the central government for food rations. About 50% of the Iraqi workforce are unemployed. UNICEF estimates that close to a quarter of Iraqi children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition. Against this backdrop, it beggars belief that the Iraqi regime has proposed spending $20 million from the Oil for Food Programme to build an ‘Olympic Sports City’. When I heard this I didn’t believe. I checked it. The source is UN Office for Iraq Programme Distribution Plan, Para. 222.

Given the understandable fear of expressing any criticism in public, it’s difficult to assess the impact Saddam’s policies have had on the attitudes of the Iraqi people. But one thing is clear: Saddam’s popularity is a myth. Clandestine polling by the regime in recent months – picked up by our intelligence services – reveals that a majority of Iraqis support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. A survey of Iraqi public opinion carried out by the International Crisis Group – a respected Brussels based NGO – has shown that a majority accepted that political change was both desirable and inevitable. This survey revealed a profound weariness with Saddam’s rule, and a prevailing belief that the country has essentially been at war for the past two decades.

The ICG survey confirms that, like people in any other part of the world, the Iraqi public has a natural desire to choose their own destiny and Government, and to pursue a prosperous life within a safe environment for friends and family. The UK wants to help Iraq to achieve this. If we are obliged to take military action, our objective will be to secure Iraq’s disarmament. But our next priority will be to help the Iraqi people to recover.

After the damage inflicted by Saddam, I am under no illusions about the scale of the reconstruction task. Democracy will not take root overnight in a country which has a long history of tribal, ethnic and religious division and mistrust.

OIL WEALTH SHOULD BENEFIT THE IRAQI PEOPLE 

But the Iraqi people can take heart from nature’s rich endowment. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. This can provide a vital source of national revenue as the country begins the long haul towards recovery. Of all the criticisms of our motives in pursuing Iraqi disarmament, the myth that we are actually motivated by a desire to secure Iraq’s oil supplies is perhaps the most pervasive. Our cause is about weapons not oil, fear not greed.

The threat of military action is, and always has been, about pressuring Saddam Hussein to comply with SCR 1441. If this was about ensuring greater oil supplies, it would be infinitely easier to cut a deal with Saddam under which he would continue to develop his weapons in return for giving us access to his oil reserves.

Iraq is a major oil producer. We all depend on regularity of supplies, not least from the Middle East. But the simple answer to those who say this is about our greed for Iraqi oil is this: unlike Saddam, we would ensure that Iraq’s oil wealth was used to the benefit of the Iraqi people. That is a promise, and not just from Britain. Colin Powell has made the same commitment on behalf of the US. I hope this oil pledge kills the myth once and for all. But I recognise that for the professional conspiracy theorists, no answer is good enough.

If a coalition of forces has to enter Iraq in the coming months to remove the threat posed by Saddam’s weapons, we will move swiftly to secure Iraq’s oil fields. We will ensure that the revenue generated from this resource will be used in accordance with international law and to the benefit of the people of Iraq. Oil is Iraq’s legacy. It is a resource which the Iraqi people can use to build a better future, to buy clean water, to build schools and hospitals, not to enrich a murderous elite or to help the regime amass an arsenal of the world’s most deadly weapons.

Our future vision for Iraq is of a stable, united and law abiding state, within its present borders, co-operating with the UN, no longer posing a threat to its neighbours or to international security, abiding by its international obligations and providing effective representational government for its people. We want the Iraqi people to live in a better Iraq – the prosperous country it was until Saddam imprisoned and plundered it.

CONCLUSION 

Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the more extraordinary criticisms of the government’s policy towards Iraq is that our approach smacks of hypocrisy. I have never fully grasped the logic of the argument, but it runs something like this. Given the military and diplomatic support from a host of western governments – including the UK – for Saddam during the 1980s, how can we now claim to occupy the moral high ground in criticising his human rights abuses and possession of WMD?

It is undoubtedly true that policy towards Iraq in the 1980s from many countries in the west did not factor in Saddam’s real horror. But to suggest today that to atone for the errors of the past we should repeat them, and that we cannot act to address the horrors of the present defies rational analysis.

This flawed argument is a counsel of inaction, at best an exercise in hand washing. In the weeks preceding the military interventions in Kosovo and Afghanistan, some argued then that force could not possibly be justified. We acted, liberating millions of Muslims from fear and oppression. Enforcement of Saddam’s obligations to disarm of his WMD may not have quite the same immediate impact on the long-suffering people of Iraq. But it will mark the first, decisive step towards Iraq’s reintegration into the international community of nations. This cause is not only just in the narrow terms of international law, but it has a compelling moral force which is too great to ignore.