Transcript

Gulf Crisis

10.59 am

Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Kelvin): This is a profoundly important subject which affects many people's lives and touches our country's vital interests. I shall ask my right hon. Friend the Minister a series of questions, not all of which I expect him to answer today, but on which I hope he will write to me in due course.

The fact that there is a crisis in the Arabian gulf cannot be gainsaid. Just over a week ago, American and British sailors and airmen readied themselves, we are told, for political orders from the United States President and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to launch a series of devastating raids involving cruise missiles and a massive bombardment of Iraq.

By the grace of God and the skilful diplomacy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, the slaughter that would have resulted was averted--much, it seems, to the disappointment of some. It was reported that, after the Secretary-General had accepted Tariq Aziz's letter, President Clinton felt that he could not justify the attacks, especially as the Pentagon's assessment was that they would have left 10,000 people dead--every one of them somebody's son or daughter, father or mother, husband or wife.

Do Her Majesty's Government share the Pentagon's estimate that 10,000 Iraqis would have been killed if the attack had gone ahead? If not, what is their estimate of what the death toll would have been? How many of the dead Iraqis does my right hon. Friend estimate would have been high officials of the Ba'ath party, important military or security officers, or innocent men, women and children with no responsibility whatever for the actions of their Government, whom they never elected and cannot remove?

We keep hearing that the Government have no quarrel with the Iraqi people, but how many dead does my right hon. Friend think would constitute a price worth paying? Does he recall the words of the American officer who said, as he incinerated yet another hamlet on the Mekong delta, that the village would have to be destroyed in order to save it?

My right hon. Friend will be familiar with the words of Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State. During an interview on US television, Lesley Stahl asked her:

"perhaps half a million Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, is the price worth it?"

Albright replied:

"It's a very hard choice but the price . . . we think the price is worth it."

Do Her Majesty's Government share the view that the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children--who, I assure my right hon. Friend, bleed just like his children and mine--is a price worth paying for their political objectives?