International Situation

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 4:26 pm on 2 June 2004.

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Photo of Campbell Martin Campbell Martin Scottish National Party 4:26, 2 June 2004

Steady on—I will come to Labour members later.

I thank my friends in the Scottish Socialist Party for allowing me to contribute to the debate, which has been interesting. My good friend John Swinney, the leader of the Scottish National Party, made an interesting point when he said that to pull troops out of Iraq now would mean leaving Iraqis to their fate. I would have thought that the leader of the Scottish National Party would have regarded national self-determination as a good thing.

Andy Kerr's speech was absolutely appalling; he was clearly going for the brown-noser of the year award. His slavish loyalty to the right-wing policies of new Labour was appropriately endorsed by the Tory party. It was interesting that Phil Gallie, on behalf of the Tories, admitted that he thought that it was right when it happened that we sold weapons to Saddam Hussein. Maybe at some other time he will explain why it was right.

This debate is about the international situation, but the international situation is, of course, for the Iraqi people a national situation that affects them daily. Over the past year, the people of Iraq have witnessed the illegal invasion of their country and an illegal war in their country. About 4,000 Iraqi children and about 20,000 Iraqi men and women have been killed by foreign military personnel. During the year since President Bush declared victory, the Iraqi people have experienced only death, destruction and degradation at the hands of an invading force. That is the reality for the Iraqi people and that is their perception of the international situation that we are discussing today.

The appointment yesterday of an interim president for Iraq was a step in a better direction, but it leaves questions to be answered about the extent of Iraqi sovereignty when the new Government takes control, about control over foreign military personnel on Iraqi soil and about the use of Iraqi oil revenues. There is still only a target date for withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraqi soil and December 2005 remains the date for permanent handover to an Iraqi Government. The statement that the interim Iraqi president made yesterday was significant. He said that the US-drafted UN resolution that sets out the handover plan gives the Iraqis too little control over foreign troops and Iraqi oil revenues.

I am pleased to support the SSP amendment because I think that it best describes how the people of Scotland feel about the invasion of Iraq and about the war and the current situation in Iraq. Also, crucially for me, it calls for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.

It was bad enough that young Scots were sent to invade Iraq at the behest of an American President and in the interests of American oil corporations who wanted to get their hands on Iraqi oil reserves, but that wrong has been compounded by the fact that those young Scots still occupy Iraq, where they are in real danger every time they set foot on an Iraqi street. The reason why they are in real danger is that the people of Iraq perceive them to be part of an American invasion force.

This international situation has come about because the American President and the British Prime Minister were prepared to lie to the people whom they are supposed to represent.