"My Position on Iraq"

Lawrie believes strongly that he is accountable to his electorate and has decided to publish this letter as an open letter to his constituents, as part of his commitment to informing them of his work as their MP.

The text of the letter is:

Lawrie Quinn MP 220 Portcullis House London SW1A 0AA Tel: 020 7219 5937 Fax: 020 7219 2477 www.lawrie-quinn.org.uk 05 March 2003 Dear Friends Both Ann and myself wanted to write to all of our friends in Scarborough and Whitby to thank them personally for the incredible support we have received over the last few months whilst Megan was housebound and then in hospital. It means so much to both of us that many of you were able to get to know Ann's mum during the 1997 and 2001 general election campaigns as we took forward our hopes for improvements locally and nationally. Megan regarded you all as part of an extended family and yesterday's funeral was a celebration of her life, her passion for community and a belief in a better future. I hope that when my time comes I get a send off like Megan. Thank-you for the kind thoughts that Diana passed onto Ann and me last week. We really got to find out who our friends were last week.... it means so much that Megan was held in such high regard at the Yorkshire Coast by so many people. It was with an obviously heavy heart and a sense of duty that, with Ann's encouragement, I returned to Westminster last Wednesday to listen to the debate about the international situation in the Middle East. Those of you who read my article published by TSSA at the end of last year will understand why I supported the following resolution placed in front of the House: "That this House takes note of Command Paper Cm 5769 on Iraq; reaffirms its endorsement of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, as expressed in its Resolution of 25th November 2002; supports the Government's continuing efforts in the United Nations to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction; and calls upon Iraq to recognise this as its final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations." During the course of the Debate I heard some fine contributions from both sides of the argument, but by far the contribution which was so significant to me and persuaded me to support the above motion came from my good friend Ann Clwyd....I thought you would like to read what she said: "Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley): In 1991, I stood at the Opposition Dispatch Box and described what I had seen on the mountains of Iran and Iraq when the Kurds fled from the bombardment of Saddam Hussein. I am afraid that people have very short memories. The scenes were appalling and typical of the attacks made by the Iraqi regime on its own people. The victims include Arabs as well as Kurds. They also include Assyrians, Turkomans and the Shi'as in the south of the country who were forced to flee from the marshes into Iran. I have spent the past two days travelling and I have come back for this debate so that I can tell the House what I have seen and heard. As the House knows, I have continually argued the case over the years for indicting the regime for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. I am grateful to 201 of my colleagues on both sides of the House who supported my proposal. I believe that the regime should be removed and that it could have been removed by using international law and indictment. It is a great regret to me that this country, which could have led the way, did not do so. After two years of our making the case and providing evidence from the victims of the regime, the Attorney-General felt that there was not sufficient evidence. I do not know how much evidence one needs, because it abounds. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have the evidence, and the Kurds captured documents from the torture centre that they eventually liberated. Thousands of their citizens died there. On my latest visit, I opened the first genocide museum in Iraq. It was snowing and quite dark on that day and people had come from all over the area. Their relatives had died in that torture chamber. Inside the museum were photographs that the Kurds had taken. The images were of skulls and shreds of clothing, and of the type of thing that one sees in genocide museums elsewhere in the world. I have been to similar museums in Rwanda and Cambodia, and I have seen the holocaust exhibition in London, but I am afraid that, on this occasion, I just cried. I do not think that I have ever cried in public before, but I did so because the regime's victims were all around me. One old woman came up to me with a piece of plastic and pushed it into my hand. I unwrapped it and saw three photographs. They were of her husband and two sons who had died in that torture centre. People had written things on the cell walls. Sometimes the writing was in blood and sometimes it was just marks to cross off the days of the week. Inside one cell is a statue of a Peshmerga, whose face looks upward towards a grill through which the light comes. I was told that that Peshmerga had died in that cell and that he was always looking towards the light, because he hoped that, one day, he would be out in the daylight again. The victims were all around me, and I have been involved for 25 years - including before I became a politician - with the Iraqi opposition. For those 25 years, I have heard the tales of Saddam Hussein's regime and its repression of the Kurds and other minorities. People seem to think that that all came to an end in 1991, but that is a big mistake. Repression, torture and ethnic cleansing have continued throughout the time since then. On my latest visit, I met some of the victims of torture who had, in the past few months, come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad under the so-called amnesty. One man told me stories that I hardly like to repeat, but we at Indict have taken victims' statements over the past seven years. This victim was a youngish man who said that he had been in prison for eight years. He said that almost every day, people were executed at that prison - not one person, but hundreds. When there was an attack on Uday Hussein's life some time ago, 2,000 prisoners in the prison were executed on the same day. That is the reality of Saddam's Iraq. When I hear people calling for more time, I say "Who will speak up for those victims?" I shall recount only two stories told by the same man. He told me that a university professor gave birth at the Abu Ghraib prison while he was there. Apparently, because of the very poor diet of thin soup and bread, she did not have enough milk to feed the baby when it was born. She begged the guards for milk, but they refused to give it and the baby died. She held that baby in her arms for three days and would not give up the body. At the end of the three days, because the temperature in the prison was very hot - some 60° C - the body began to smell. They took the woman and her dead baby away. I asked the former prisoner what happened to her and he said that she was killed. The man then talked about a young boy aged 15 who had done something or other and was in the prison, and fainted during one of the torture sessions - he was beaten so hard that he fainted. The guards pinned him up to the frame of a window and crucified him on the window frame while he was still alive. When he came to, he was crying out for water, but nobody would give him water. One of the other prisoners threw water in his face, but that prisoner was himself taken away and beaten. Ethnic cleansing goes on all the time. I visited a UN camp where there were hundreds of recent victims of ethnic cleansing who had been kicked out of Kirkuk. The men, women and little children in the camp had been told that they had 24 hours to get out of Kirkuk because they would not agree that they were not Kurds, but Arabs, as part of arabisation. In other countries, we have taken action against people responsible for ethnic cleansing, so I say to my colleagues, please, who is to help the victims of Saddam Hussein's regime unless we do? I believe in regime change. I say that without hesitation, and I will support the Government tonight because I think that they are doing a brave thing." Having listened very carefully to the debate, and with the personal experience of visiting the Middle East since becoming your MP in 1997, I had no choice other than to be true to my belief in the United Nations and the need for the whole of humanity to stick to the rule of international law. I hope I can remind you that at the core of this dangerous crisis is the need for the USA, Israel and the rest of the international community to support the needs of the Palestinian people. Since 1948 the camps of the West Bank and Gaza have imprisoned a nation's destiny and provided the oxygen for terrorism and war crimes not only for the region but for the rest of the world. It was a real honour for me personally, to be asked to be the President of the United Nations Association in Scarborough. I have worked for six years to promote and uphold core principles of the San Francisco summit after World War II and I believe that the vast majority of our immediate community at the Yorkshire Coast are proud of these international values with its vision for humanity. When I spoke recently at the UN Association in Scarborough I stated my concerns for the world order relating what I have read about the Cuban missile crisis which confronted my parents generation when I was 6 years old. It seems to me that only the perspective of history will throw a true light on the difficult decisions of leadership currently facing Tony Blair. I recently met with Tony to discuss the problems facing our fishing industry at the Yorkshire Coast and was able to pass on the many messages from Whitby and Scarborough concerning these tense times. I saw first hand in the eyes of our Prime Minister his abhorrence of war and his dedication to duty to deliver a safer world for his own children and the nation's future generation. Like Tony Blair, I believe that the problem of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction should be dealt with through the United Nations. Our government has been working through the United Nations and he has helped to persuade the Americans to go to the United Nations. The result was UN Resolution 1441 which was passed unanimously by the UN Security Council. This gave Iraq a final opportunity to disarm and to demonstrate that it had done so to weapons inspectors that were readmitted to Iraq for the first time since they were kicked out in 1998. I enclose a copy of the resolution for information. The government's motion in Wednesday's debate simply endorsed UN Resolution 1441, called on Iraq to recognise its contents and supported the government's continuing efforts in the UN to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. I therefore voted for this motion. There was nothing in it with which I could disagree and so I saw no point in showing disunity which would just send the wrong message to Saddam Hussein. The question that people are rightly asking is what is the threat from Iraq? It was clear after the Gulf War of 1991 that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and a programme of developing nuclear weapons. When the weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998 they declared that there were still large amounts of weapons of mass destruction unaccounted for. In his recent reports Dr. Blix, the Chief Weapons Inspector also makes it clear that substantial amounts of such weapons remain unaccounted for and that Iraq has weapons that are prohibited by previous UN resolutions. I enclose copies of his reports. Dr. Blix also explains in his reports what the UN has asked his inspectors to do. They are to enable Iraq to demonstrate to their satisfaction that it has disarmed through a verification process. They are not there to search the whole country for weapons as this would be as impossible as looking for a needle in a haystack. He also reports that Iraq is not co-operating fully as it is required to do. The next question is why is there more of a threat now than at other times in the last 12 years. The answer is September 11th. We now know that there are fanatical terrorists like Al Quaida intent on attacking us to destroy our way of life. They would use chemical and biological weapons if they could acquire them. Where are they most likely to get them from? It seems to me that a crackpot tyrant like Saddam Hussein is the most likely source. This is not to say that he was involved in September 11th or that he supports Al Quaida's fundamentalism. It's just that he's one of the few people in the world believed to have weapons of mass destruction and who is evil and irresponsible enough to let them fall into the hands of fanatics. The leader of a country's first duty is to ensure its security. Nobody foresaw the attack of September 11th. But since that atrocity a leader has to guard against future attacks. If we were to suffer from a release of chemical or biological weapons which had been obtained from Iraq, there would be an outcry that nothing had been done to prevent such horror. That is why it is so important for our safety that Iraq is disarmed. The remaining question is how we should do this? We must use the UN route. The UN reaction will depend on what Dr. Blix says in his next report. If he says that Iraq is co-operating then weapons inspection must be given more time. If he says that Iraq is not co-operating, there will be little point in continuing for a long time or putting in more inspectors. War should be a last resort and would need to be authorised by the UN. I hope the UN takes its responsibility seriously so that it retains credibility. I don't want a war but neither do I want Saddam Hussein to retain his weapons of mass destruction. It could all be sorted out so easily. All Saddam has to do is to demonstrate to Dr. Blix that he has already destroyed the missing weapons or point out where they are so that they can be destroyed. The question that has to be asked is why he has so far been unwilling to do this? Last Friday a number of constituents turned up outside of our Scarborough Office, in spite of the difficult family situation I was facing. Everyone will know that I am very happy to meet and listen to any constituent about any issue... sadly I was not able to welcome these constituents for a discussion about my support for the United Nations. I have agreed to meet with them on Saturday 8th March at 10 a.m. at the Unitarian Church in Westborough, I know that many other constituents might want to hear first hand from me my assessment of the international situation and quite properly ask their MP any questions. I hope you might have the time to join us so we can have the widest possible discussion. Yours sincerely Lawrie Quinn MP Scarborough & Whitby