SPEECH/02/364
The Rt Hon Chris Patten
Commissioner for External Relations
Iraq
Plenary Session of the European Parliament
Strasbourg, 4 September 2002
Over the past few weeks Iraq has figured more and more prominently on the international agenda. The situation is evolving day by day, and the risk of a very grave new crisis is increasing. Many important voices have been raised not least in Washington about how to deal with Iraq and with the problems linked to its development of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Positions have been expressed by many key players, including European governments. I also note what was said yesterday.
Against the background of this tumult of speeches and articles, I would like today simply to concentrate on the things we know with certainty and on which we should all be able to agree:
-First, as pointed out by Baroness Nicholson’s excellent overview of the present situation in Iraq, which we discussed last May, we can have no doubt about the evil nature of the regime led by Saddam Hussein. That was made absolutely clear in that excellent report. Terrible events have occurred throughout the twenty-three years of his rule: wars, aggression, and brutal internal repression including the use of chemical weapons. He used chemical weapons against his own people. There is, in his country, a total absence of basic human and civil rights. I have no doubt that the Iraqi people would be better served by new leadership. And not just the Iraqi people, but the Middle East region: the whole world, indeed. This is not the only region in the world which would be better off without its current leadership, there are others, but this one is high on the list.
-Second, following the departure of UN inspectors in 1998, a UN Security Council Resolution (number 1284) was adopted in December 1999, establishing a new arms inspection entity, UNMOVIC, and setting out what Iraq has to do to have UN sanctions lifted. Notably, it had to co-operate with the inspectors “in all respects”. This means that Iraq should give full unrestricted access to UNMOVIC inspectors to any site, any area, any equipment, and any installation at any moment, without any conditions.
-Yet Iraq never complied with this Security Council Resolution – just as it had failed to co-operate with the UN throughout the 1990s: (in all 9 UNSC resolutions) either refusing entry to UN inspectors, or imposing unacceptable conditions on their operations.
-According to the UNSCOM report of January 1999, there are legitimate suspicions that the Iraqi regime is developing Weapons of Mass Destruction. At this point in time, no clear evidence has emerged. Although it should be noted that the Iraqi government has not facilitated the task of the UNSCOM inspectors to gather evidence about this.
I have one question - if they have nothing to hide, why do they bar access?
Two conclusions stand out clearly:
-First, we must continue to press for full Iraqi compliance with the UN resolutions. Is there anyone in the European Parliament who disagrees with this? The EU Presidency declaration of 20 May reaffirms EU support for UNSC resolution 1284 and unhindered access for UNMOVIC inspectors.
-Second, we must recognise that efforts to force Iraqi compliance are more likely to succeed if they are backed by a coalition of concerned parties as broad and effective as that which was put together in 1991 with great diplomatic finesse.
We must all respect the authority of the United Nations and of international law. The Security Council has charted the way forward in dealing with this intensely difficult problem and every nation should act within the framework of the decisions and resolutions issued by the UN.
Finally, the plight of Iraq’s population has highlighted the difficulty of dealing with a regime which is as ruthless as it is reckless. Since the Gulf War in 1991 the EC has been the major donor of humanitarian aid to Iraq. We have contributed over €270m. Over the last three years we have provided assistance of some €10m annually. In 2002 we shall provide around €13m. Yet the impact of our help is reduced by the limitations placed upon it by Saddam Hussein’s regime.
That is why we strongly welcomed UNSC resolution 1409 last May which introduced so-called “smart sanctions” intended to limit Saddam Hussein’s ability to develop weapons of mass destruction while limiting also his ability to inflict hardship on his own population.
Meeting at Elsinore last weekend Europe’s Foreign Ministers called for full implementation of the UN resolutions and a resumption of inspections without excuses, without prevarication, without “ifs” and buts. That is obviously the best way forward.
I hope that as the debate on how to achieve these shared objections continues in the coming weeks it will shed light as well as generate heat. We need to consider how we can best limit the production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We have to look at how we can continue successfully the international campaign against terrorism on as broad a front as possible. We have to promote the end of violence in the Middle East, the restoration of a peace process and the establishment of a Palestinian State living side by side in peace and security with Israel. We have to prevent a gulf opening up between the democracies of Europe and North America and the Islamic World. We have to encourage the development of participative democracy, civil society and the rule of law in all countries, including those which comprise the Arab World. We have to think constructively about what can and should justify intervention by the international community in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. We have to think equally constructively about whether the global rule book that has by and large governed our affairs for the last 50 years is still valid or whether it requires some changes, and how it can be refined and strengthened. It is important that Europe’s voice should be heard on all these matters.
It is perhaps ironic that debate on these far-reaching issues at the beginning of a new century is triggered by the question of how we deal with a dictator whose rule exemplifies much of what was worst in the last century. I just wish I was as certain about some of the answers as are those whose voices are currently raised so loud.
Commissioner Patten response on Iraq at the end of the Plenary debate at the E.P.
Patten,Commission. - Mr President, I think that it is probably true that I have had the honour, and always the pleasure, of replying to more debates in this Parliament than any other Commissioner in the last three years, such is Parliament's welcome interest in external affairs. For me this has been one of the most interesting and important debates.
It is no business of mine how Parliament conducts its affairs, but if one of the reasons for the interest and informed passion of this debate has been the formula which you have applied on this occasion, that which I think you call "catching-the- eye", then I, for one, very much welcome it. I think that there are more people in the Chamber than normal. If Parliament does not mind me making the point, in my experience we have had the rather more unusual spectacle of people waiting to hear other people's speeches. I am even delighted to discover that one or two people have come back into the Chamber to hear the winding-up speeches which is a particular and rare pleasure. So speaking for my humble self, in the expectation that I will have rather a lot more debates to reply to in the next couple of years - unless Parliament focuses its interest entirely on domestic affairs - I found this an extremely welcome breakthrough.
I was asked one specific question, and another rhetorical question to which I will return. General Morillon asked the specific question of what we know about the attitude of the people of Iraq to their own regime, what we know about their ambitions and aspirations. The sad truth is that we know damn all because they have not had the opportunity to express their views for all too long. Indeed, the expression of free opinions in Iraq has led to people being shot, tortured and stuck in jail. I look forward to the day when we will know rather more about the aspirations of the people of Iraq but I have my doubts as to whether, in a free election, Saddam Hussein would sweep back with a plurality of the votes.
I should confess to a personal predjudice at this point. I have never regarded enthusiasm as a huge attribute in the discussion of foreign policy. I think enthusiasm does not always go well with the discussion of difficult foreign policy issues and I have always preferred foreign ministers who are prepared to sit under the tree for a bit and think what needs to be done first, rather than those who tear around trying to change the world. I find myself signed up enthusiastically to the famous dictum of Talleyrand 'surtout pas trop de zèle'. Reading so many articles over the last summer on Iraq and so many speeches, I have sometimes wished that I believed in the veracity and wisdom of anything I say as fervently as some people seem to believe in the veracity and wisdom of everything they say.
I also think that we have seen a parade of certainties sometimes based on obfuscation. I know very few people, for example, who seriously contend that Saddam Hussein is not in possession of any weapons of mass destruction. As I said earlier, if he is without any weapons of mass destruction, then what is the problem about letting inspectors in? When we are asked to define weapons of mass destruction, I suspect it is a question which could be put with some benefit to the Kurds in Iraq or to the people who live in the marshes in the south of Iraq, who could explain what chemical weapons do to your lungs. Those would be very good replies. Some of the certainties are also based on evasions and, from time to time, on a lack of willingness to enunciate clear, consistent and defensible principles.
I just want to refer to a number of questions that we need to face up to. They go right to the heart of the issue of compliance with the United Nations and the whole issue of the justification for military action - an issue which was widely debated during the campaign in Kosovo and a question which goes to the heart of the matter we have debated on many occasions in this Chamber - the so-called clash of civilisations.
My first question is what happens if Iraq continues to defy existing UN resolutions? Do we simply shrug our shoulders? Secondly, what happens if we go back to the United Nations Security Council, get a new resolution and Saddam Hussein defies that? What do we do then? Do we simply wring our hands? Thirdly, what happens if we give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum and he defies it? What do we do? Write a letter to Le Monde, sign a petition? There have been several references - not all of them as laudatory as Mr Alastair Campbell might have liked - to the press conference which the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland gave in his constituency yesterday. The honourable Member Mr Lagendijk, for example, referred to what he said.
Let me quote one thing which Mr Blair said yesterday: the UN had to be a way of dealing with it - i.e. the problem caused by Iraq - not a way of avoiding dealing with it. While I am not a paid-up member of New Labour, that is a pretty good point and one which we simply cannot duck.
My fourth question concerns a point which Dr Kissinger has often reminded us of. Since the Treaty of Westphalia and the end of the Thirty Years War, international law, itself sometimes a rather nebulous concept, has been based on, among other principles, the principle that one state should not intervene in the affairs of another and certainly should not intervene militarily. Is that an entirely adequate principle of international law today? We saw the debate begun a couple of years ago by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, about whether humanitarian intervention was sometimes justified, for example when a sovereign government could be accused of assaulting the interests and the liberties and the rights of its own people.
Is intervention in the affairs of another sovereign state justified by its possession of weapons of mass destruction? Can you turn that into an acceptable principle? Does it depend entirely on context? Does it depend on the nature of the regime? Does it depend on the stated intentions of the regime? Does it depend on the scale of threat represented by that regime? Whatever else you say, clearly if you are arguing along those lines you will need to present a good deal of evidence.
Finally, on the question of justifying intervention, there is the point which Dr Kissenger argued very explicitly in a recent article in The New York Times. He argues that terrorism raises an entirely new issue for nation states. Today, he argues, one nation state can be faced with a threat from another nation state operating through non-state actors. In other words, the argument is that intervention could be justified where a nation state appears to be using terrorist organisations to threaten another nation state. At the very least I imagine all of us would argue that military intervention in a sovereign state demands a clear and well-argued justification.
Those are all issues which will be very near the heart of foreign and security policy debates in the next decade or longer. They are issues on which we in the European Union, not least because of our tradition of the rule of law, not least because of the other principles in which we believe, should have clear and unequivocal opinions.
The final question is: if the present government in Iraq is replaced as a result of military intervention, will that make the politics of the region more moderate or will it make the politics of the region more extreme?
All those are questions which we cannot duck. They are all questions to which we will have to find our own answers over the coming weeks and months.
I would like to finish with this thought. There has been a lot of reference to our relationship with the United States. I very much hope that we can work together with the United States - Europe and the United States - over the coming months to deal with an undoubted threat to world peace and to international stability. We on our side may from time to time sound to Americans as though we are speaking with a rather self-serving condescension in arguing that United States leadership should be based on as broad a moral consensus as possible, referring to the Truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan, which helped to secure our futures, our prosperity, our freedom in Europe.
But we in Europe, if we are to pull on our end of the rope, have to face up to one or two rather difficult issues ourselves. We must avoid wishful thinking and we must avoid ducking the difficult questions which I have addressed during these remarks today. I am sure this will not be the last time we debate this issue. I hope we can clarify our responses to some of those questions in the weeks and months ahead.
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