LONDON, England (CNN) --Robin Cook, former UK foreign secretary and
leader of the House of Commons, made an impassioned personal statement in
parliament following his resignation on Monday.
see also
cartoon by Steve Bell
Cook last
night won an unprecedented standing ovation after he called on MPs to reject
Blair's call for the use of "any means necessary" to disarm Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein.
The
following is the full text of his speech:
This is the first time for 20 years that I
have addressed the House from the Back Benches. I must confess that I had
forgotten how much better the view is from here. None of those 20 years were
more enjoyable or more rewarding than the past two, in which I have had the
immense privilege of serving this House as Leader of the House, which were made
all the more enjoyable, Mr. Speaker, by the opportunity of working closely with
you.
It was frequently the necessity for me as
Leader of the House to talk my way out of accusations that a statement had been
preceded by a press interview. On this occasion I can say with complete
confidence that no press interview has been given before this statement. I have
chosen to address the House first on why I cannot support a war without
international agreement or domestic support.
The present Prime Minister is the most
successful leader of the Labour party in my lifetime. I hope that he will
continue to be the leader of our party, and I hope that he will continue to be
successful. I have no sympathy with, and I will give no comfort to, those who
want to use this crisis to displace him.
I applaud the heroic efforts that the Prime
Minister has made in trying to secure a second resolution. I do not think that
anybody could have done better than the Foreign Secretary in working to get
support for a second resolution within the Security Council. But the very
intensity of those attempts underlines how important it was to succeed. Now that
those attempts have failed, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution
was of no importance.
France has been at the receiving end of
bucketloads of commentary in recent days. It is not France alone that wants more
time for inspections. Germany wants more time for inspections; Russia wants more
time for inspections; indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum
necessary to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves if we think that the
degree of international hostility is all the result of President Chirac. The
reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in
any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner -- not NATO,
not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council.
To end up in such diplomatic weakness is a
serious reverse. Only a year ago, we and the United States were part of a
coalition against terrorism that was wider and more diverse than I would ever
have imagined possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic
miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful
coalition. The US can afford to go it alone, but Britain is not a superpower.
Our interests are best protected not by unilateral action but by multilateral
agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international
partnerships most important to us are weakened: the European Union is divided;
the Security Council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of a war in
which a shot has yet to be fired.
I have heard some parallels between
military action in these circumstances and the military action that we took in
Kosovo. There was no doubt about the multilateral support that we had for the
action that we took in Kosovo. It was supported by NATO; it was supported by the
European Union; it was supported by every single one of the seven neighbors in
the region. France and Germany were our active allies. It is precisely because
we have none of that support in this case that it was all the more important to
get agreement in the Security Council as the last hope of demonstrating
international agreement.
The legal basis for our action in Kosovo
was the need to respond to an urgent and compelling humanitarian crisis. Our
difficulty in getting support this time is that neither the international
community nor the British public is persuaded that there is an urgent and
compelling reason for this military action in Iraq.
The threshold for war should always be
high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians from the forthcoming
bombardment of Iraq, but the US warning of a bombing campaign that will "shock
and awe" makes it likely that casualties will be numbered at least in the
thousands. I am confident that British servicemen and women will acquit
themselves with professionalism and with courage. I hope that they all come
back. I hope that Saddam, even now, will quit Baghdad and avert war, but it is
false to argue that only those who support war support our troops. It is
entirely legitimate to support our troops while seeking an alternative to the
conflict that will put those troops at risk.
Nor is it fair to accuse those of us who
want longer for inspections of not having an alternative strategy. For four
years as Foreign Secretary I was partly responsible for the western strategy of
containment. Over the past decade that strategy destroyed more weapons than in
the Gulf war, dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons programme and halted Saddam's
medium and long-range missiles programmes. Iraq's military strength is now less
than half its size than at the time of the last Gulf war.
Ironically, it is only because Iraq's
military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate its invasion. Some
advocates of conflict claim that Saddam's forces are so weak, so demoralized and
so badly equipped that the war will be over in a few days. We cannot base our
military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time
justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.
Iraq probably has no weapons of mass
destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term—namely a credible
device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target. It probably
still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had
them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then
British Government approved chemical and munitions factories. Why is it now so
urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that
has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create? Why is it necessary
to resort to war this week, while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons
programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?
Only a couple of weeks ago, Hans Blix told
the Security Council that the key remaining disarmament tasks could be completed
within months. I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in
which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted. Yet it is
more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the
occupied territories. We do not express the same impatience with the persistent
refusal of Israel to comply. I welcome the strong personal commitment that the
Prime Minister has given to middle east peace, but Britain's positive role in
the middle east does not redress the strong sense of injustice throughout the
Muslim world at what it sees as one rule for the allies of the US and another
rule for the rest.
Nor is our credibility helped by the
appearance that our partners in Washington are less interested in disarmament
than they are in regime change in Iraq. That explains why any evidence that
inspections may be showing progress is greeted in Washington not with
satisfaction but with consternation: it reduces the case for war.
What has come to trouble me most over past
weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other
way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British
troops.
The longer that I have served in this place,
the greater the respect I have for the good sense and collective wisdom of the
British people. On Iraq, I believe that the prevailing mood of the British
people is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam is a brutal dictator, but they
are not persuaded that he is a clear and present danger to Britain. They want
inspections to be given a chance, and they suspect that they are being pushed
too quickly into conflict by a US Administration with an agenda of its own.
Above all, they are uneasy at Britain going out on a limb on a military
adventure without a broader international coalition and against the hostility of
many of our traditional allies.
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