Iraq: Future Strategic Relationship

I am grateful for that clarification. I imagine that the House and the Select Committee will want to consider that important issue in greater detail, and any further clarification that the Government can give us will be welcome. I have mentioned the importance of the Royal Navy, because we tend to concentrate on what the Army has done in Iraq. All the senior American officers whom I recently met in the Gulf—and at the Pentagon last week—hold the Royal Navy in very high regard. In fact, Vice-Admiral Gortney, the commander of the US fifth fleet and the combined maritime forces, told me just a couple of weeks ago that the United Kingdom's minesweeping capability is the best in the world and that it is vital in ensuring that the mission in the Gulf succeeds. When comparing the British maritime presence in the Gulf with the American presence in the region, the proportion of UK involvement is a lot higher than our contribution to the ground forces in Iraq ever was. Furthermore, the deputy commander of the combined maritime forces in the region is British. Consequently, the Royal Navy has a great deal of influence over maritime operations, and we should be very proud of its achievements and its international status. No one can be in any doubt that fairly grave mistakes were made in the early days of the war, including the failure to plan for an extended occupation, the extent of the de-Ba'athification, the disbanding of the Iraq military, and the ultimate empowering and arming of sectarian groups. We have an obligation to learn from any mistakes made in the run-up to the Iraq war, the war itself and the post-war period, which can be accomplished only by holding an inquiry. In the US, several inquiries have been conducted, including the Baker-Hamilton study, and these have helped to improve US policy. Since the present Prime Minister took over from Tony Blair, the Government have announced at least 50 separate reviews of different areas of policy. Why is it possible to conduct reviews of those areas but not of the conduct of the Iraq war? We know that all but around 400 British troops will be home by July, and that the ones left in Iraq will have a fundamentally different mission. Surely the Government could have announced a timetable for the creation of the full-scale Privy Council inquiry that the Conservatives have called for. That they have not done so does not reflect well on their moral authority in those areas. It is almost six years since the war began, and it is vital that the process is started now before memories begin to fade, if we are to learn the appropriate lessons. I have talked about the strategic relationship between Britain and Iraq. However, as with all things in the middle east, it is important that we see such a relationship in regional terms. Let me offer just one example of how a matter, which, at first glance, appears to be an internal Iraqi matter, can have regional implications. The upcoming provincial elections in a few weeks' time will be of the utmost importance. Not only will they be important in measuring progress inside Iraq's democratic institutions, but they will also have an impact on the broader region, especially where there is a Kurdish population. In particular, it will be worth watching the election results in Ninawa province, where, in January 2005, the Kurds won a huge proportion of the vote—about 65 per cent.—because the majority Sunni Arab population boycotted the elections. If the Sunnis come out and vote in force this time and the Kurds lose power, there could be implications around the Iraqi Kurdish region. The worst-case scenario is that any unrest within the Kurdish population in Iraq will spill over into the Kurdish populations in Turkey, Iran or Syria, which is, of course, the last thing that the region needs. The success of the forthcoming elections will be measured by three factors, namely the level of violence or non-violence during the election process, voter turnout and the willingness of all concerned to accept the results. In any system, it is often not the first set of elections that are problematic but the subsequent ones, in which there might be a change in power. The House must say with one voice that we must take every opportunity to impress on the Iraqi Government the need to make a reality of the religious tolerance that is written into the Iraqi constitution.