Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Friday, 15 Mar 1991

Vol. 406 No. 6

Gulf Situation: Statements.

The Taoiseach

Now that a ceasefire on the ground has been agreed and progress is being made towards a definitive settlement of the crisis in the Gulf, it is timely for us to reflect on the nature of what was the most serious international crisis since the end of the Second World War. It is also appropriate that I should today set out again clearly the approach of the Government to this crisis particularly since there have been attempts to distort the position we have adopted and to confuse the issues involved.

It is fair to say that all Members of this House and indeed the Irish people generally will have welcomed with considerable relief the liberation of Kuwait and the ceasefire in the Gulf War following Iraq's acceptance of the resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council. The Government would have preferred that the Iraqi leadership had taken this course much earlier and spared their country and their people the destruction and suffering which are now all too apparent. The option of a peaceful settlement to the Gulf crisis was always in the hands of the Iraqi authorities. A long pause for reflection was available to the Iraqi Government between the adoption of Resolution 678 by the Security Council on 29 November last and the deadline set by that resolution, 15 January, after which all necessary means were authorised to bring about Iraqi compliance with the resolutions of the Security Council. Even after that date, and before the announcement of ground hostilities in February, Iraq could have reduced the destruction and suffering by signalling its willingness to meet its obligations under international law. We have seen that, even when it had become clear that Iraq could not prevail against the international coalition against it authorised by the Security Council, the Iraqi leadership still persisted in bargaining about its international obligations.

The very genesis of the Gulf Crisis lies in an Iraqi decision, the decision to overrun Kuwait on 2 August last year and then to purport to annex it. As I said on 18 January, it is necessary to keep this central point clearly in mind. For the first time since 1945, when the United Nations Charter was adopted as an international code of law to govern relations between states, a member state of the United Nations had simply swallowed another by force and brought its people into subjection. This point is worth repeating today, because from some of the comments that have been made since we would almost think that the blame lay elsewhere. It has to be clear that Iraq was the violator of international law and that the United Nations had determined this and set out the demands which Iraq had to fulfil.

Once the aggression had taken place it was necessary to confront the aggressor. This was done in an unprecedented and impressive display of unity by the international community acting through the United Nations. Under Article 24 of the UN Charter the member states confer the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security on the Security Council. All member states under Article 25 agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Council in accordance with the Charter. Action by the United Nations afforded the best chance of convincing Iraq of the degree of international opposition to its actions and of persuading it to reconsider.

But let us be clear on the type of action that can be taken by the UN. It is stated in Article 1 of the Charter of the organisation that in order to maintain peace and security the United Nations shall "take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace". There are three fundamental ways in which the UN can seek to reverse an aggression such as that of 2 August last year.

The first is by moral suasion, by seeking to bring home to the aggressor that his action is unacceptable to the international community and that it will not be tolerated. Thus the first step taken by the UN Security Council on the same day as Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was to adopt Resolution 660. Under the terms of this resolution the Security Council: condemned the invasion; demanded that Iraq withdraw immediately and unconditionally all its forces to the position in which they were located on 1 August 1990; called upon Iraq and Kuwait to begin immediately intensive negotiations for the resolution of their differences and supported all efforts in this regard and especially those of the Arab states and decided to meet again as necessary to consider further steps to ensure compliance with the resolutions.

Iraq's reaction to this resolution was to ignore it. It is an unfortunate fact of life that perpetrators of aggression are not often swayed by appeals to relent. Iraq's violation of the Charter in invading Kuwait was compounded by its violation of its obligations under Article 25 to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.

The second step open to the United Nations when faced with aggression and the failure of appeals is to consider what collective measures can be taken. Under Article 41 of the Charter the Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions. The Security Council duly decided on 6 August to adopt a further Resolution, 661, which approved a trade and financial embargo against Iraq with the exclusion of medical supplies and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs. It was felt that Iraq's geographical position, the country's almost total dependence on one commodity, oil, and the extent of the international solidarity would have permitted an effective sanctions regime which would have led Iraq inexorably to the conclusion that its policy regarding Kuwait could not be sustained. In fact rather than pausing to reflect, the Iraqi leadership were even more defiant and announced two days later, on 8 August, that Kuwait had now ceased to exist and would henceforth be regarded as the 19th Province of Iraq. Over the following three months another ten resolutions, covering many of the abuses arising from the Iraqi action, such as the holding of hostages and their use as human shields, were adopted by the Security Council, culminating in Resolution 678 on 29 November.

Resolution 678 marked the move to the third stage of action that is open to the UN when confronted with a breach of the peace and an act of aggression. That stage is the use of military force to compel the aggressor to submit to the will of the international community. As I pointed out on 18 January, Resolution 678 authorised member states co-operating with the Government of Kuwait to use all necessary means to uphold and implement previous resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area unless Iraq fully implemented these resolutions on or before 15 January. I also emphasised to the House that this was not a decision on military action of the kind which can be taken by the Security Council itself under Article 42. What had happened was that the Council authorised the use of all necessary means, including the use of force. Those countries who took military action were therefore doing so with the full authority of the Council. Resolution 678 was adopted validly and in due form: arguments which suggest that the actions undertaken in pursuance of Resolution 678 were in some way not in conformity with the provisions of the Charter or were lacking in legality are very wide of the mark.

These three approaches, moral suasion, collective measures short of force and the use of military force itself are of course in no way mutually exclusive. The sanctions imposed on Iraq operated during the war and are still in place. Appeals to Iraq continued throughout the Gulf crisis even after the outbreak of hostilities. Indeed in adopting Resolution 678 the Security Council permitted, as I have mentioned, a six week "pause of goodwill" which saw a period of the most intensive diplomatic activity to persuade the Iraqi leaders to take the necessary steps to avoid disaster. Deputies will also recall the strenuous efforts made by President Gorbachev immediately before and even during the ground offensive. A very great deal of effort was exerted in the interests of peace with, unfortunately, disappointingly little return.

Iraq's approach up to the time it finally indicated its intention fully to comply with its UN obligations was to bargain on these. Successive announcements from Baghdad indicated a willingness to comply with some elements of Security Council Resolutions but not with others. Proposals were made that some resolutions should be wiped from the board on the basis of Iraqi agreement to cease hostilities. At one stage, Iraq was even refusing to acknowledge and recognise the State of Kuwait as other than a geographical entity. Against this background, arguments about a notional Iraqi willingness to comply with its international obligations without the ever-present and palpable sanction of military means lose their force. In the final analysis, and regrettably for the people of Kuwait and Iraq itself, it was the military catastrophe which befell Iraq's armed forces that proved the catalyst in bringing about the change of mind in Baghdad. It is for this reason that the Government statement of 28 February indicated that it was clearly evident, tragically, that only the resort to force as authorised by Resolution 678 was capable of securing full compliance with the UN Resolutions.

As to the Government's position on the crisis, from the very beginning we placed our faith in the United Nations as the instrument with which the Iraqi aggression should be tackled and reversed. As a UN member state of good standing we strongly supported the measures taken by the Security Council even when they were harmful to our own particular economic interests, as were the economic sanctions imposed by Resolution 661. They had, of course, a much more serious effect on the economies of other member states of the UN.

As I pointed out in the Dáil on 18 January, we were very conscious of our obligations under the Charter and of the specific request made by the Security Council to all states to provide appropriate support for those countries acting in pursuance of Resolution 678. The provision of facilities at Shannon came within the terms of appropriate support.

We co-operated closely with our partners in the Twelve in efforts to secure an outcome to the crisis without the necessity of a recourse to military action. As a member of the EC Troika in the second half of last year our role was a particularly active one. The European Community was intensively active in the run-up to the outbreak of hostilities, its objective being to pursue every possible avenue in order to avert the outbreak. Even on the eve of 15 January, a last-minute effort was made by France, with the support of a number of other member states of the Community, including Ireland, to secure Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait without the use of military force. A peaceful outcome, however, was dependent not only on the Twelve. It required a willingness on the part of the Iraqi leadership to respond positively. Regrettably that willingness was not there.

It became quite clear that Iraq was not prepared to respond to anything short of military force. That force, however, was on hand and had the sanction of the Security Council. While regretting that it had to come to the use of this force, therefore, the Government were quite clear where they stood in regard to it. For this reason, in their statement on 24 February following the commencement of the ground offensive, they stated that at that grave hour Ireland and its partners in the Community were "on the side of the international coalition in upholding and implementing the UN Resolutions". The Government have never been in any doubt where they stood throughout this crisis. When I addressed this House on 18 January I made it absolutely clear that "we are in no doubt on which side right lies in this conflict and in no doubt who has been the aggressor".

When the ceasefire was announced I sent a message of congratulations to President Bush on the success of the action he undertook in conjunction with the other members of the coalition, on behalf of the whole international community, to uphold the rule of international law and to secure full implementation of decisions of the UN Security Council in relation to Kuwait. I repeat, action undertaken on behalf of the whole international community.

Those who indulge in criticism of the specific arrangements made in this instance to ensure implementation of the resolutions of the Security Council are obliged to answer the question how otherwise the result we have seen could be achieved. The fact of the matter is that the machinery available to the UN allowed no alternative. The provisions of the Charter on military forces of the Security Council proper have never been implemented and could not have been put together with the necessary dispatch to meet the crisis at hand. Anyone who has seen the evidence of Iraqi behaviour to the people of Kuwait and who is a witness even today of the State vandalism committed in that country by setting fire to all its oil wells, would take a great deal of responsibility on himself or herself by arguing for more time to be made available to enable Iraq to comply with its obligations.

The challenge posed from the outset was a particularly serious one. Iraq had the fourth largest army in the world. Its array of weaponry was among the most modern in the world. Its leadership had shown on previous occasions that it had no scruples about using its arsenal, including such a horrendous weapon as poison gas, even against its own people. It was, of course, short-sighted of the countries which supplied Iraq with such armaments to imagine that they would only be used for defensive purposes. But when Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August and continued to defy world opinion in the the months which followed, what became the issue was the danger which Iraqi aggression posed and how this aggression could be reversed.

At such a time I and my colleagues in Government were glad to see the effective assembly of a force authorised by the Security Council. It is alarming to think what might have been the outcome and the consequences for world peace of this crisis had this force not been assembled with such efficiency. Let us be clear that the role played was one of leadership and this leadership was provided by the US Administration under President Bush. Kuwait cried out for assistance in the face of aggression and nations throughout the world responded, from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Antipodes and the Arab world itself. If ever there was an action which in terms of participation and in terms of support amounted to action by the United Nations, then surely this was it. Never before have nations been so truly united in the pursuit of justice. As President Bush said in his address to the American people, "This is a victory for the United Nations, for all mankind, for the rule of law and for what is right".

In their statement of 28 February, the Government expressed the hope that the effective collective action on this occasion would help deter future aggression and contribute to the establishment of a new international order, in which every state can live at peace with its neighbours and war becomes a thing of the past. The international community must now work with the countries of the region for a rapid return to normality so that reconstruction can take place, and for the establishment of a satisfactory framework for peace and security in their region. Ireland is ready to work with our partners in the Community in providing humanitarian or other assistance to the countries that have suffered in the war. The Community has already discussed the outlines for its action in the region at ministerial level. The Troika has been mandated to carry out a series of meetings so that we can inform ourselves of the latest thinking of those countries that are most directly involved. It is essential that there should be no attempt to impose some sort of blueprint from outside. A special European Summit is being called by the Presidency for next month to discuss the situation in the Gulf.

As far as supplies of armaments are concerned, I hope that the use that Iraq made of its huge and sophisticated arsenal has convinced many of the countries of the industrialised West who have been involved in this trade of its folly. Statistics show that 90 per cent of the international trade in arms is accounted for by the five permanent number of them realise that an uninhibited trade in arms will not contribute to international peace and security and are, accordingly, ready to take steps to limit this trade, at least in weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery systems. The UN has to get involved in dealing with this issue and Canada has put forward some interesting proposals in this regard. We will be working with our partners in the Twelve in ensuring that the European Community makes an effective contribution to stemming this death-promoting traffic.

The Government have already provided bilateral assistance to some of the countries of the region which have been most directly affected by the Gulf war and we have made efforts to ease the plight of refugees. We have committed a sum of £3 million this year in respect of food aid for Egypt and to ease its balance of payments difficulties arising out of the economic disruption caused by the sanctions imposed following the invasion of Kuwait. A further £0.5 million has been provided for developing countries, in particular the priority countries for Ireland's Development Programme. Half of this will be spent on food aid for the Sudan which is facing severe famine conditions at present. A small grant is being given to the Irish Council for Overseas Students to ensure that students from the Gulf area can continue their third level studies in Ireland despite the economic hardship which the Gulf crisis has imposed on them and their families. Last year we contributed a total of £158,000 to assist in the repatriation of refugees fleeing into Jordan from Iraq and Kuwait. These contributions were channelled through the European Community, the Red Cross, Concern and Trocaire. We are also making an additional contribution of £25,000 to the Red Cross in respect of the temporary transit camps which they have set up in Iran to handle refugees from Iraq. We are closely following the situation in Iraq which has resulted from the war. There is an urgent need to address the humanitarian problems of the people of Iraq; the full extent of these are still being assessed by the relevant international organisations. We will consider the situation further in the light of the Ahtisaari mission to the area and requests from the UN agencies.

In the event of the establishment of a UN observer or peacekeeping contingent we have signalled our readiness to contribute to any such force. Any peacekeeping operation should, of course, not be seen in isolation but should complement the peacemaking process. We have already several hundred members of our Defence Forces serving in the Middle East region. They are there because of the difficulties involved in securing a settlement to the political problems of the region.

Peacekeeping operations are not designed to solve political problems between states. These have to be addressed by the States concerned with the encouragement and help of others. Now that the UN has shown itself to be effective in the Gulf crisis, it must display the same persistence and determination in the search for a settlement to the broader problems of the Middle East.

Together with our partners in the Twelve we are studying what type of contribution we can make to the overall peace process. The Troika consisting of the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, Italy and the Netherlands visited the Middle East last week for discussions with a number of key countries in the region. Deputies will be aware of the contacts made in the area this week by the US Secretary of State, James Baker.

It is the Community's intention to maintain the closest of contact with the US and with the USSR. The lessons of the advantages of close co-operation which were learned from the Gulf crisis should not be forgotten now that the guns have fallen silent. Ireland will be intent on making this point. We will be active in promoting the role of the United Nations in accordance with the Charter in preventing future acts of aggression and, along with our partners in the Community, in actively promoting an acceptable final resolution of the situation in the Gulf as well as a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Above all, the Twelve will be urging a solution to the tragedy of the Palestinian people, still after over 40 years in search of the realisation of their legitimate rights — a homeland. Security Council Resolutions are valid here just as they were in the case of Kuwait and it is high time that Resolutions 242 and 338 found concrete expression and that on that basis provision can be made for the security of all states in the region, including Israel, and for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

Mr. J. O'Keeffe

The Gulf crisis provided an opportunity for Ireland to make a modest but meaningful contribution as a member of the Community of Nations to the upholding of the international rule of law and to the resolution of the crisis on terms consistent with that rule of law. It also gave us an opportunity to promote our national interest by establishing Ireland as a mature, self-confident member of the United Nations, ready and willing to discharge our obligations as a member to that international body. Neither of those foreign policy objectives was achieved.

Ireland's contribution to the resolution of the Gulf crisis was virtually nil. Our contribution to upholding the international rule of law was insignificant. The Government adopted the role of passive spectator and took the bare minimalist view of our legal and moral obligations as members of the United Nations. Effectively we can take no pride whatever in the role we played, or did not play, in the resolution of the Gulf crisis. I do not for a moment suggest that as a small country it was possible for us, acting on our own, to exert a major influence in the Gulf. I believe very strongly, however, that having been members of the UN for the past 35 years we have legal obligations and moral responsibilities to stand four square behind the UN. I do not believe that we fully and honourably discharged those responsibilities and obligations.

Article 49 of the Charter of the United Nations requires that the members of the United Nations shall join in affording mutual assistance in carrying out the measures decided upon by the Security Council. The UN Security Council Resolution 678 of 20 November last authorising the use of all necessary means to uphold the earlier resolutions following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was very specific in that it requested all states to provide appropriate support for the actions undertaken in pursuance of the resolutions. On that basis there should have been an open, generous response from Ireland to the Charter obligations and the Security Council request.

What did we do by way of open and generous response to this request? What did we do to show solidarity with the 28-member coalition who committed their forces to ensure that the international rule of law was enforced and that the Iraqis were forced out of Kuwait? There were many possibilities. We could have actively explored ways in which we could have been of assistance. We could have sent a field hospital unit to the Gulf, as Fine Gael suggested in the earlier Dáil debate. We could have sent an oil pollution team when Saddam Hussein tried to add an environmental catastrophe to all the other catastrophies he had caused in the Gulf. There were many ways in which we could have expressed our solidarity, but effectively we did nothing. The Government decided on a bare minimalist approach. Nothing was offered. We received a specific request in relation to landing facilities at Shannon. Fortunately we did not join the international pariahs like Cuba and Algeria and disgrace ourselves altogether by refusing this request. That is as far as our contribution went.

I note that the Taoiseach in his speech found it worthy of mention that after the declaration of the ceasefire he sent a telegram of congratulations to President Bush. I suppose we should add that in as part of our contribution to solving the crisis. Essentially the Government were found wanting in their response to the crisis. Part of their difficulty was the ambiguity surrounding our foreign policy generally, specifically our policy of neutrality. Even when the announcement was made that landing facilities had been granted at Shannon, there was a ritual genuflection to this policy. Neutrality had nothing to do with this decision, nor did it impede in any way any decision to act in solidarity with the 28 members of the UN who were ensuring that the UN writ ran in the Gulf. It is time for some clear thinking and talking about neutrality. The Government are quite ambivalent and ambiguous on the issue and this is no help in the development of our foreign policy. It will be a major hindrance in the immediate time ahead when serious decisions will have to be taken in regard to European political union. A full debate is required on those issues.

I will confine myself to making it clear as far as Fine Gael are concerned that we were not neutral, nor should the country have been in any way neutral, in the efforts by and on behalf of the United Nations to get Iraq out of Kuwait. On that issue we should have stood four square behind the UN. Any other approach was not consistent with our membership of the UN. So far as any compromise of our neutrality was concerned, that decision was taken in 1956 when we joined the UN. It is worth noting that the Swiss took the decision not to join the UN for that very reason.

To dispel further the myths that surround our policy of neutrality, I questioned the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the issue in the Dáil on 14 February and in the course of a lengthy reply the only specific point to emerge was that our policy of neutrality meant that Ireland does not belong to any military alliance. It is important to bear in mind that our policy on this issue, or on any other issue, is not written on tablets of stone and is capable of being refined, developed and changed if it is considered in the best interest of the country. Our policy of neutrality, such as it is, did not in any way restrict us from wholeheartly supporting the UN. We did not do so and we will regret it.

The Taoiseach

In what way did we not?

Mr. J. O'Keeffe

Apart from responding to a request from the United States in relation to landing facilities at Shannon, we did nothing.

The Taoiseach

We supported the sanctions.

Mr. J. O'Keeffe

We made no offers of facilities and made no attempt to show our solidarity with the 28-member coalition in the Gulf. We should have done so and we will regret that failure. After 70 years of independence we have a mature, self-confident role to play in international affairs but it is not possible to assume that role unless we have clear principled positions on the foreign policy issues of the day and unless the ambivalence which has characterised our position on neutrality is fully clarified.

While the grudging reaction of the Government in merely being willing to sell aviation fuel at Shannon to one of the allies did us no great credit, it is also clear that if we had followed the advice and urgings of the parties of the Left this country would have been disgraced altogether. They seemed to overlook that the cause of the problem was Saddam Hussein's invading and annexing the small country of Kuwait and seeking by force to wipe that country off the map. As a small nation ourselves, one might have expected almost universal support here from all sides of the political spectrum for concerted United Nations action to assert both the authority of the UN and the right of small nations to exist. President Mitterrand in France and Neil Kinnock in the UK were socialist examples in Government and in Opposition of those who followed that principle. In Ireland things were different. While Kuwaitis young and old were being tortured and murdered and dumped on their own doorsteps, we had pacifist populist panderings from the Labour Party and The Workers' Party. We had worse. We had sustained anti-American invective to such an extent that very often the evil of Saddam Hussein and his minions was overlooked. It was no wonder that I had occasion to refer to the parties of the Left as Saddam Hussein's brass band.

It is important to assess what would have been the position if Saddam Hussein had been left in control of Kuwait. That would have been utterly counter to the interests of Ireland as a small nation. Furthermore, the authority of the United Nations would have been dangerously weakened. The awful atrocities which were occurring in Kuwait right up to the day of liberation would, of course, be continuing. More importantly, no state, big or small, could rely on the effective protection of the United Nations and this would have encouraged all states, including the poor states in the Third World, to build up their military resources. At the very best, those who opposed the United Nations on the issue of Kuwait and those acting with its mandate have shown a grave lack of political judgment. At worst, some of the unprincipled anti-American statements from the Left indicated that they were prepared totally to abandon the United Nations on this issue, were not prepared to distinguish between what was right and wrong and were prepared to forget also our national self-interest in maintaining good relations with our neighbour to the West where 40 million Irish Americans now live.

As Europeans we should also be concerned at the disunited and fractured response of the Community to the Gulf crisis. It is clearly in our interest that Europe should play a more coherent role in world affairs. It is also in our interest to play a full part in the shaping of that European role in world affairs. There is no doubt that the political stature of the European Community has been damaged by its feeble efforts at diplomacy in the run up to the war.

What is done cannot be undone. From the European point of view, what is now important is to ensure that at political and diplomatic level there is a strong and coherent voice in relation to the settlement of the post-war issues. This, however, would not of itself require the calling of an emergency summit meeting of the European Council on 5 April. Those issues could be worked out at foreign affairs level. What is really important is that the reasons for the lack of a coherent response to the Gulf crisis be examined and the necessary action be taken from the point of view of the establishment of common policies to ensure that they do not happen again.

This gives rise to a question on which I have been seeking answers for some time. What is Ireland's attitude to European political union and, more specifically, to the proposal for common foreign, security and defence policies. I had hoped and, indeed, expected that the Government would have responded to my request to produce a White Paper on these issues. At a minimum, we should have a clear statement of the foreign policy options and the Government's preferred options as a foreign policy objective. What we have instead are broad generalities which tend to obscure the fact that the Government do not have a clear idea of where they are going on these issues while at the same time at the Inter-Governmental Conference on Political Union we continue to hide behind the coat-tails of the UK, who are opposed to common policies for very different reasons to ourselves.

It is time this charade was ended and that we faced up to the full consequence of EC membership and the prospect of constucting a European union. We could have a significant input and a full constructive and creative role in the development of a European union if clear-sighted policies had been established and, preferably, debated and approved by the Dáil. If we follow our present course of action of merely sitting on the sidelines hoping that the problems will go away, we will have done our country no sevice and we will have avoided the possibility of a meaningful contribution to the development of Europe.

This debate also allows us to express in general our views as to how we should react to the post-war situation. We should record our gratitude to the United States, the United Kingdom and the other members of the 28 member coalition force who were prepared to risk life, limb and liberty on behalf of us all to enforce the rule of international law.

We should record our absolute horror and disgust at the inhuman savagery of Saddam Hussein and his minions who inflicted and continue to inflict such loss of life and suffering on so many, particularly their own Iraqi people. He is directly responsible for the appalling loss of life which continues right up to the present in Iraq. There is one point on which we can unanimously agree, that is the sentiment in the opening paragraph of the leading article in The Cork Examiner yesterday which stated:

There is general agreement on the dispensability of Saddam Hussein as the ill-gotten leader of Iraq.

Can the scale of the casualty list be imagined if the policy of appeasement had been followed to the point where Saddam Hussein had completed the development of his nuclear weapon capacity?

We should rejoice in the liberation of Kuwait and the fact that the United Nations has been able to ensure that its resolutions have been enforced. The role of the United Nations has been vindicated, its credibility enhanced and, hopefully, this will act as a signal to all tyrants and bullies in the future that the days of unpunished conquest and violent annexation of nations are over. Kuwait should acknowledge the enormous contribution made by so many to their liberation and the desire to see democratic and equitable structures established there.

Many other post-war issues now arise in respect of which we should have a view and a principled stand. We must be prepared to help in any way we can in Kuwait. We must also express our solidarity with the people of Iraq, as opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime, and in so far as we can help the Iraqi people, we should do so. Our doctors and nurses were performing a fine role in Baghdad before Saddam Hussein brought the country to its knees. Hopefully, the proud record of our medical people can be re-established on a basis, of course, which involves help for the people of Iraq rather than just the ruling elite.

Of all the issues that must be addressed, the age-old Israeli-Palestinian problem is the one where vigorous efforts to seek a solution must be made by all. Let such attempts not be retarded by the hypocrisy of Hussein in attempting to justify his lust for loot and expansionism in Kuwait by post-invasion linkage with the Palestinian cause. Neither should efforts to find a solution be affected by the current international unpopularity of Yasser Arrafat and the PLO. They, for a variety of reasons, backed Saddam Hussein and, as a consequence, severely damaged their international image.

Any solution must be under United Nations auspices and must, as provided for in Resolutions 242 and 388 of the Security Council, involve respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of the state of Israel, and indeed all the other states in the area. It must also involve Israel's right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats and acts of force. Israel has been under threat from Arab states since its very foundation. The Jewish people have had their holocaust at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis earlier this century. The six million dead are a constant reminder that anti-semitic expression of views can ultimately lead to killings and horror on an unimaginable scale. While the territorial inviolability and political independence of the State of Israel must be guaranteed, provision must also be made for the national aspirations of the Palestinians. The PLO have blotted their international copy book in recent times by their backing of Saddam Hussein. That should not take from the basic justice of the Palestinian cause nor from the fact that the PLO had attempted earlier to find the moderate middle ground in their willingness to accept the State of Israel.

The major powers have not so far been successful in the search for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Ireland may have a useful role in a principled capacity at EC and UN level. I would like to see us exercise that role to the full. We must do our best to ensure that the momentum towards a solution is maintained.

The European reaction to the Gulf crisis was ineffective because it was disunited. The obvious lesson for the future is that to be effective there must be a strong united European voice which hopefully will emerge from the Inter-Governmental Conference on Political Union which is presently under way.

"Saddamery" in so far as it involves butchery on a grand scale has been dealt thankfully a massive blow as a result of the implementation of the United Nations resolutions. It is to be hoped that the United Nations — behind which we must continue to stand four square — will now go from strength to strength and will become more and more effective in establishing peace, stability and wellbeing in the world generally and in the Middle East region in particular.

Mr. M. Higgins

In a much over-rated publication in the history of modern Irish political thought called The Just Society, which purported to change the face of Fine Gael, two lines only were given to their statement on international policy.

It is Fine Gael's foreign policy to open embassies in as many countries as possible and to oppose communism.

What I have just heard from the Leader of Fine Gael, Deputy Bruton, has filled me with deep apprehension.

Mr. J. O'Keeffe

I will give you glasses, Michael.

Mr. M. Higgins

One of the interesting things since you have caught your new image source is that you all sound alike.

Mr. J. O'Keeffe

You never change, Michael.

Mr. M. Higgins

I apologise, a Cheann Comhairle, it was Deputy O'Keeffe. I did not interrupt other people, but I do not mind dealing with interruptions. I want to reflect as well on what the Taoiseach has said, but I want to finish this point that what we have heard is a language and a rhetoric that is one of unique intolerance. We all want to reflect, as the Taoiseach said, on the consequences of the Gulf War. However, let us think of the language we have heard. We have Algeria and Cuba described as international pariahs. We have ended with the invention of the word "Saddamery". We went through several other words which make no attempt to try to understand the principle of foreign policy, of international policy. We have heard disgraceful and inaccurate references, including the description of those people who were in favour of peace as "Saddam's brass band".

To finish this point, of the link with the just society, we have had an offer to us to construct a demonology in the world instead of a foreign policy; and it is truly horrific to think that the Irish people would be represented by people who subscribe to this kind of language, a unique language of intolerance and authoritarianism coming from a party that has been so authoritarian in the past and that has now rediscovered it.

I never thought, Sir, that I would have the slightest difficulty standing in this House and offering foreign policy views in the name of the Labour Party, or countering the arguments of others, but the intolerance of the Fine Gael Party went so far as for one of their Deputies to issue a statement denying the right of a citizen of this country, Sabina Coyne who is my wife, to offer her views on radio, to describe it as appalling to have to listen to her express her grief for people who have been killed, be they Americans or Iraqis. As well as that we were rung by the papers to comment on this. I did not comment on it; Sabina Coyne did. This is the mood of intolerance and a mood supported as well by a kind of sense of shame that the county should be feeling — we should be ashamed of ourselves, ashamed no doubt in another part of their policy to celebrate the independence of this country, ashamed of our size which they say in every speech, ashamed that we did not rush to congratulate the military option, ashamed we did not dress up in uniforms I suppose.

I have rarely heard in this House — to use a phrase of the inglorious Lord Denning on this day — such an appalling vista for Irish foreign policy as I have just heard. It is very interesting to see the way this rhetoric ran the war. Very quickly the Iraqi people faded out of existence. In the speech we heard now they barely surfaced. The Iraqi nation fades out of existence. It becomes a kind of appendage to the demon, and the heroes are after the demon.

Unlike Deputy O'Keeffe, many years ago I condemned Saddam Hussein in this House for his action against the Kurds and the use of chemical weapons, and on that occasion I specified where he acquired the capacity to do this. I have not supported Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. I condemned what he did against the Kurds. Deputy De Rossa can speak for himself, but I think I can fairly say that the parties of the Left, right from the very beginning, in this House, condemned the invasion of Kuwait and its annexation. What we did was to make a case that would have, we hoped, succeeded and avoided the military option. We also believed that the point had not arrived for the exercise of the military option. Sanctions were taking time but were working; and we believed that the principles of international law, and the principles of international diplomacy, are best served by negotiation and by dialogue rather than by force, violence and armaments.

The interesting difference again — this is the last reference I will make to the speech I have just heard — is that I do share the expression of horror and disgust Deputy O'Keeffe spoke about, but I express my horror and disgust at all loss of life, be it white or brown or black, the colour of the people's skins. I also refuse to reduce peoples and cultures to the personalities of their leaders. I think it is a backward, ignorant view of foreign policy, riddled with authoritarianism and having no contribution whatsoever to make to the future structure of foreign policy in this country.

We are asked, by the opportunity to make statements this morning, to reflect on the war and its implications. These implications are immensely moral in a sense. I listened with interest to the Taoiseach. The Taoiseach, surprisingly, towards the end of his speech lays a stress, and a welcome one, on the fact that 90 per cent of the armaments sold into the region, sold into the south if you like, is accounted for by the five permanent members of the Security Council. I welcome that reference in the Taoiseach's speech but we must ask ourselves a question, unless we are complete hypocrites altogether: why cannot this be changed? Is that not a legitimate question? There are some who would not want to ask that question. I want to ask it because that is what I meant by saying there is a moral dimension to our discussion of the consequences of the war. One has to ask why is it that the members who have now been described as the people we were slow to congratulate for making the world safe, are selling 90 per cent of the armaments? Is it that Deputy O'Keeffe has not been to the Security Council to convert them, or what is at stake? The reality is that there are countries who go through the guff of peace who are selling instruments of death into the south every day and they are the very people who want neither a new international economic order that might be built on cultural principles of mutual respect, nor an end to racism — and the debate about this war was riddled with racism.

I will turn to it in detail in a moment because there are people even in this House who will not see the death of an Iraqi child as equal to the death of an American child or a child anywhere else. They do not condemn the death of an Iraqi young boy of 17, a conscript in an army, or of thousands of them in retreat, shamedly carrying television sets, loot and so forth, cornered and trapped, and dead. It is racist when one does not condemn death unequivocally, when one makes selections, when one refers to one side's people who die as losses and ignore all the others. A moral issue posed by the conduct of this war was its international coverage where the nadir, if you like, of the media was reached, rescued perhaps by people like Robert Fisk and John Pilger.

We had this low point of our moral existence when people were invited to watch their war on television each evening, with military video games, people using interesting kinds of language about target-rich Baghdad and precision bombing. I repeat: I was unequivocal always in my opposition to the actions of Saddam Hussein; I make that very clear, but here are the contradictions. If one could bomb with precision, does one use that precision, for example, to avoid the water supply of the city or does one use that precision to knock it out, to place the children and the babies of that city at risk to cholera? Language was an early casualty in the war.

An obscenity I have seen in different parts of the world was regularly acted out again — journalists in uniform for a fortnight, feeling macho, humiliating themselves to be part of the pool. Distinguished people — as there always are in professions — who wrote about this, and papers that printed it, spoke about how humiliating it was for people whose training is to tell the truth of events. That is why Robert Fisk writes with convincing clarity, on going into Kuwait and finding what he called the stench of evil, the appalling mutilations, tortures, the appalling losses of life that were visited on the Kuwaiti people. I can read it and believe it from Robert Fisk because I know he would also go to Baghdad and write about casualties there.

In one of the analysis of the tabloids someone prepared this: on Sky, when an attack was imminent, "we", that was supposed to be us — Deputy O'Keeffe felt "we" were not "we" enough —"we", take out; "they"— that is the Saddam people, they are not Iraqi people anymore —"they" destroy, "we" suppress; "they" destroy; "we" eliminate, "they" kill; "we" neutralise, "they" kill, "we" decapitate; "they" kill, and so the analysis goes on; our people cause collateral damage, that is children, women, houses, hospitals, "their" missiles cause civilian casualties. That is what I meant by saying that language was a casualty in the accounting of the war. Behind the use of language, behind the partial condemnation of the death and killing was a quiet, deep racism, also an overhang of colonialism, a deep kind of cultural blindness that has provoked the major conflict on this planet and will provoke them in the future.

I stood on the Hill of Nebo with a member of a university who said to me: in this area the three great religions of the world were created, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. He spoke about the origin of mathematics, the first stable cities of Sumer, Ur and others in the Mesopotamian Valley, an ancient civilisation whose history has been changed by the presence of oil. Is that civilisation now obliterated in the distortion of the State of Iraq? Saddam Hussein distorted Iraq's identity. Certainly many aspects of that culture were defiled by him.

Because we must look to the future there must be, in foreign policy, some kind of radical relocation on assumptions that are moral in relation to cultural tolerance, in relation to the right of people to tell their own story, in unconditional respect for the sovereignty of options, in relation to development, in allowing people to choose new and significant regional alliances; in continuing to negotiate: simply, when a person opposes one in subscribing to the United Nations Charter, in its totality, not selectively, its totality that stresses that it came into existence to render wars unnecesary, but what opportunity has one if one is going to start referring to Algeria as a pariah or to Cuba as a pariah? I heard more intelligent speeches in my time in the Middle East from Ricardo Alarcon than I did from over there.

Mr. J. O'Keeffe

Intelligence equally equates to acceptability.

Mr. M. Higgins

On 9 January I was speaking about the war — I suppose this was one of the times one could be called part of Saddam's brass band. Speaking in the new Ormond Hotel I said:

In 1988 the world's nation states devoted $1,000,000,000,000 — $200 for every person on the planet — to the means of warfare, but failed to scrape together the $5 per child it would have cost to eradicate the simple diseases that kill 14 million a year — cutting military expenditure by just 10 per cent could pay for a doubling of development aid.

While all the killing was going on, while people were being urged to respond with alacrity, a famine was going unnoticed in Africa. This time there were no cameras to catch the flies on the face of the child as it died in Africa and to encourage the guilt that would give the relief rather than the regular structural aid. The people who were operating them were dressed up in uniform filling the world in on the latest in armaments technology.

I have a question to pose to many people in this House who are interested in foreign policy. How is it that one can hear regularly that there are logistical difficulties standing in the way of our response to famine? Yet there are no logistical difficulties standing in the way of our ability to go to war within 24 hours if necessary. Is not the logistical argument about inability to respond to world hunger gone forever after this, bearing in mind the speed with which one can draw on the information by satellite on materials, technical items, and installations. It is all there. The truth is that we are entering a very dangerous phase in international relations. I was not the only person to say that. There were many people who felt at the end of the Cold War that we were entering into an entirely new kind of world. Our movement to that point was not sudden and dramatic.

There has been documents about which I would have some reservations but whose moral intention I supported, such as the Brandt report, which spoke of the construction of a new international economic order, which even made the case that if we cannot convince people to do this for ethical or moral reasons, can we not restructure trade for self-interest? It was interesting that Ted Heath was of that persuasion. When I watched the debate in the House of Commons I said how extraordinary it was that Ted Heath was so much to the left of Fine Gael. I began to think about the speeches he was giving. Intelligent speeches which showed respect for the Gulf region in general and for international relations were made by Ted Heath and Denis Healy — people with experience, people who wanted to bring thought to foreign policy rather than rumbustious rhetoric: "Come on, the army are in town coming home, round up the lads to clap louder". What a thing of a foreign policy that would be? Is it any wonder the country is responding to the general invitiation to smother itself in some kind of national shame? I am not ashamed to be in favour of negotiation rather than militarism or of a foreign policy that will take time to establish or of addressing issues that are complex with patience, no more than I am ashamed to celebrate the independence of this country because I realise that the people who established the independence of this country made it possible for me to speak here today.

The moral issues raised are immense. The new geo-political order, in a world from which the Soviet Union has retreated internationally, before the war in the Gulf had the possibility that the United Nations might have been a catalyst in providing options for regional peace in Central and Latin America, Southern Africa, Asia and the Middle East; but after the Gulf War the role of the United Nations is now made precarious — apart from the point made by the Taoiseach that the five permanent members of the Security Council sell 90 per cent of the armaments to the world and also do not attain their overseas development aid commitment.

Another issue arises in relation to the balance within the United Nations itself. An interesting question, which is a giveaway in the Taoiseach's own speech — I do not want to go over material we have covered already but to try to look to the future as much as possible — is that when sending his message of congratulation he did not send it to the United Nations, he did not send it to Perez de Cuellar and say: "Congratulations, General Secretary of the UN, Ireland was looking on all the time and we were behind you", but he sent it to President Bush. When we go back through the speech we find the key to this extraordinary source to which the message of congratulation was sent. It appears that President Bush was exercising leadership on behalf of the whole of the UN — that is the answer to the second option for the new geo-political order. Will the new geo-political order be one in which those with the greatest military capacity will be some kind of moral guardians in the world internationally, moving in here, staying out there and so forth? I think the Taoiseach — and I support him in this — is correct to refer at the end of his speech to the importance of the ambiguity between the lethargy in implementing those resolutions dealing with the occupied territories and the recent resolutions of the Security Council. That is an unsustainable ambiguity.

When I was in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank some years ago, it was perfectly clear to me that there was a great opportunity for the European Community; and it looked likely for a while that the European Community would hold a conference which would begin to acknowledge certain principles. In the case of Israel there was a reasonable aspiration to have secure borders, to have respect for its existence, to have assurances as to its right to exist as a state. There was an equally valid aspiration, which was older, for a Palestinian state and there were issues in relation to the occupied territories and so forth. What I meant by saying that the option that has been damaged by the dominance of one member of the Security Council, the role of the Security Council and of the United Nations itself, is that the capacity of the UN to respond to these regional difficulties is now seriously damaged and it will have to be restored. Let us be positive about this, because as a Foreign Affairs spokesperson I have to look forward now and see how we can reconstitute a meaningful role for the United Nations in the future.

A lot of nonsense has been spoken in this House about the different resolutions of the Security Council. Those of us on the Left are accused of not understanding them. I want to be very clear: my commitment to the United Nations is not partial, at least it had not been up to the time of this war. I have some views now about the insecurity of the international organisation, but my commitment is unconditional in the sense that it is to the totality of the Charter. The Charter is unambiguous. The basic articles governing disputes say that where there is a violation against another member state one must first seek to supress the incident. One must then go through a process, as we were going through, in relation to the sanctions.

It is interesting that in the evolution of the conflict the build up of the military potential moved very quickly from being a defensive force to being an offensive force. Even when talks were going on and, for example, the initiative of King Hussein of Jordan and when there seemed to be a possibility that there would have been a resolution of the dispute which certainly preceded 2 August, these were regarded as not real talks. What is not said in the subtext is that these are Arab talks, which are different than talks involving the major powers. The future is one in which the authority of an international forum has to be recreated and its legitimacy has to be reasserted. Its legitimacy will only be reasserted when it is able to take action on the urgent human problems such as deflecting the expenditure on armaments to the tasks of development, to dealing with questions of famine and questions of aid.

The distinguished professor of international law at Princeton, Richard Falk — I suppose he is a member of Saddam's brass band as well, without knowing it, and they are all probably anti-American in Princeton — wrote about some of the technical difficulties associated with Resolution 678, which were real. The charter requires that there be a unanimous decision, but there was not as China abstained. The articles are very explicit on the roll on from moral suasion, to sanctions, to military force. The procedures are supposed to be there for the leadership of that force, but these were not specified. Neither was the time at which the military option would commence and end specified. It is interesting to note that, despite other decisions of the United Nations, a decision on the non-use of chemical or nuclear weapons was not specified.

We could all get technical and argue about the manner in which Resolution 678 was implemented and used. However, I am not too interested in this. I will confine myself to saying that the speed with which the Security Council and its resolution process was used has placed the institution of the United Nations in a very difficult position. It is only the mindless who would say that the United Nations have gained from this conflict.

As we head into the season of Easter we in this House need to restrain our language a little bit. Is war not always a failure? Why do people want to talk about the possibilities of war above the possibilities of diplomacy? What kind of mind would think that the greatest death making capacity will finally end the argument? This is why people in the so-called Third World — I prefer to call it the South — believe they have to buy air strike capacity. They are the beneficiaries of the war.

As I want to leave time for other speakers to get in, I will refer briefly to another view which exists here. Scarcely was the ceasefire shakily in place when Mr. Jacques Delors made a speech. I understand that questions to the Minister for Foreign Affairs have been rescheduled. I had put down a question to the Minister on the Government's position in regard to Mr. Delors's speech. Mr. Delors believes that we cannot be real Europeans unless we go to war too. Therefore, there must be political union, defence union and some kind of joint military action. It was an outrageous speech; but I was not surprised by it, as France is a major arms producing country and sells a great deal of armaments to the Third World. The House will notice that I did not use the word "security". That is the intellectual challenge. All serious students of international law and diplomacy know that it is possible to build common security without having a common military capacity. Everyone knows that, except Fine Gael, whom I cannot understand. Thankfully, this new outbreak of bellicose material in their ranks is not working with the people.

In the context of Mr. Delors's speech we will have to positively envisage a Europe which will be much bigger than the Twelve. For example some African countries are interested in membership, the way has been cleared for a Swedish application, an Austrian application has already started and both Malta and Cyprus are interested in a relationship with the Community. These are all neutral countries and they all have different views. It is only people who do not understand the concept who go around saying "God forgive me, I am Irish. God forgive us for being neutral, for not having an army and for not having killed anyone lately and please forgive us for not wearing uniforms."

Proinsias De Rossa

Fine Gael have abandoned the House.

Mr. M. Higgins

We should always remember that the only threat to democracy in the history of this State came from that stable.

I want to refer to a dimension of the debate, where it arose to any extent at all, in regard to foreign policy and what Irish foreign policy would be. The Right and their apologists seem, where I can detect a coherence in their approach, to have operated from a theory of interests. Their theory of interests is as follows. There are interests of the free, by which they mean the liberal market world, and within this there are Irish interests, which are neither moral, cultural or anything else; they are economic. You move from this dominating theory of interests, primarily asserted in economic interest, and try to make a series of statements about international events which you call foreign policy. Just to show you are not illiterate you say something about a different part of the world every month. There is no coherence in Irish foreign policy if it succumbs entirely to a theory of interests and, particularly, a theory of interest which is essentially economic at its core and justified usually by a language which is called pragmatism. People use this language of pragmatism to argue that one does not have an opinion on anything apart from trying to suss out the situation as best one can for one's own advantage.

I had hoped that we would have debated this matter much earlier. We should bear in mind during this debate the issues which arise in relation to the Geneva Convention. I accept that there have been appalling Iraqi atrocities committed in Kuwait. I ask people to please not insult our intelligence by saying that The Workers' Party, The Labour Party, the Independents or the Green Party are not condemning the atrocities committed in Kuwait. Of course, we condemn them, as we condemn all atrocities. Why was no reference made by the Taoiseach in his speech to the Geneva Convention in relation to the conduct of war and particularly the treatment of civilians, the giving and delivery of humanitarian aid and the right of the Red Cross and Red Crescent to visit these countries?

I want to refer to the old principle used in relation to an army in retreat. I suppose I will be called anti-British for this. I am not anti-British and have worked in England. However, I am anti-Mrs. Thatcher. One of the greatest acts of international terrorism was the sinking of the Belgrano. This was a major breach of international law and the law of the sea which protects sailors. Proportionality is the principle at issue. How was this implemented in the management of the retreat? It has been described as pathetic and Robert Fisk has written about it. Those people going home loaded with loot. That is what armies do. Then they are dead, blocked in with no escape and eventually wiped out. In the newspapers the prisoners of war on one side are regarded as heroes while the prisoners of war on the other side are scarcely regarded as even human. Do militarists want to win wars by showing pictures of young 17-year-old conscripts scrabbling in the sand for a bag of food which has been thrown into their midst, the final humiliation? Is it only when everyone has been humiliated that the new international order can be created? How do people recover from this and what future can there be?

It would serve us well to remember one to the truly horrific dimensions of this conflict, the ecological dimension. Certainly, the release of oil into the seas, the destruction of forms of life, the elimination of species and the hanging clouds of burning oil all remind us that in future wars there will be more than civilian casualties and they will damage the capacity for life of future generations. We will have to bear this in mind.

What we have had since this began is the use of metaphor. The idea has been to construct heroes and demons. There is no future for international diplomacy, for coherent international relations, for the 14 million children who die each year or for the different species that we want to see continue to exist on this planet and there will be no hope that arms expenditure will be deflected towards development, if we substitute demonology for foreign policy which supports the view that the hero is strong militarily and the victim is mad. Once you have identified the victim, there are no people anymore as one eliminates the people and nations. What one is left with is the demon.

If this goes on there will be no civilised exchange or construction of a new international economic order. What we must hope for is the setting up of a foreign affairs committee in this House and the production of a White Paper outlining the major options facing us in relation to the international order and the future evolution of Europe. As a result, Members of this House will come to know intimately the different regions in which there are conflicts and will be able to speak about these conflicts in a way which gives practical assertion to the equality of all people, irrespective of gender, race and culture on this planet.

Proinsias De Rossa

Tá sé thar am an deis a bheith againn an t-ábhar seo a phlé, ach tá áthas orm go bhfuil sé os ar gcomhair anois.

It is difficult to describe the Taoiseach's speech other than, being kind, to say that it was disappointing. It made no attempt whatsoever to analyse where Ireland now stands in the international arena and what its attitude will be in the future to the United Nations and the actions that it may or may not take in response to aggression. It also made no attempt to define, in any more precise detail, the question of Irish neutrality or to justify, or otherwise, the level of casualties in the war. I recall that in at least one of their statements the Government welcomed the low casualty rate in the war — they were obviously referring only to the casualties that the Allies had suffered — regretted that there were casualties on the other side but made no attempt to question whether the levels of casualties, estimated at close to 200,000 by some, were justified by the ends achieved.

The Taoiseach made no effort whatsoever to examine the issue of sanctions. We cannot have a debate in this House about whether the war was justified or not without also addressing the question of sanctions and whether they would or could have worked. Neither the Taoiseach nor indeed the main spokesperson for the Fine Gael Party sought to address that issue. Yet, it is a fairly common feeling around the country that sanctions should have been given more time to work. If the Taoiseach and Fine Gael believe that they will come out of this situation unmarked and without having generated a degree of discontent and dissatisfaction with Irish foreign policy as a result of their stance on this war they are gravely mistaken.

I am aware that there was grave concern among Fianna Fáil supporters and some Fianna Fáil Deputies about the prosecution of this war. I do not know about Fine Gael as I have not heard any expressions of regret about the war from them. All I heard were `gung ho' statements such as "we should have been in there with our boys on the side of the Brits and the Yanks kicking ass in the Middle East". Therefore I think this debate on the issues which face us should take place on a more reasoned and mature level.

Regrettably, I have to stand here again today and state that from the outset I have condemned the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. To give the Taoiseach his due, he did not repeat what has been said outside the House by some Fianna Fáil spokesmen in relation to their claim that I and others opposed to the war supported Saddam Hussein but the Fine Gael spokesperson here today lambasted the parties of the Left and declared that we were part of a Saddam brass band. That is gratuitous, patronising and insulting behaviour and unbecoming a person on the Front Bench of a major political party in this House. He knows, as I and everybody else knows, that it is not the truth. It is regrettable therefore that at the outset I have to make clear again the position of The Workers' Party on the invasion of Kuwait, especially in the light of attempts by the parties of the Right to misrepresent and distort our position. The Workers' Party were not and were never neutral on the question of the invasion of Kuwait nor did we ever suggest that the Government should adopt a neutral position on the invasion.

On 2 August, the date on which Iraqi troops moved in, I issued a strong statement on behalf of The Workers' Party condemning the invasion, describing it as unjustified and a clear breach of international law. Later that month, following the decision of the Government to recall the Dáil to discuss the Goodman affair, I wrote to the Taoiseach and other party leaders suggesting that the Dáil should on that day pass an all-party resolution which would have allowed the House to speak with one voice in condemning the invasion and calling for the release of Irish hostages.

With regard to the declaration by Deputy O'Keeffe that the parties of the Left are part of Saddam's brass band and are disregarding the principle of the rights of small states to exist, I find it ironic that the attempts to establish an all-party consensus by me in this House on the invasion of Kuwait were scuttled by Fine Gael. Various motions acceptable to the Government, the Labour Party and The Workers' Party were prepared, but Fine Gael objected to them for what were essentially petty and irrelevant reasons. It was clear to me from my involvement in the discussions that while Fine Gael clearly opposed the invasion for some obscure reason, they simply did not want an all-party motion passed by this House condemning the invasion. I do not know whether they can explain that, but it is quite odd that they can stand up here declaring that we are part of Saddam's brass band when they are the people who scuttled an attempt in August to have an all-party motion passed in this House condemning the invasion.

I want to make it clear that we condemn without reservation the horrific atrocities carried out by Iraq and her occupying forces against Kuwaiti citizens. There is strong evidence that Iraqi troops were responsible for appalling crimes in Kuwait which cannot and must not be tolerated by the world community, but that in itself does not justify the launching of a terrible war. Indeed, I will refer later to evidence of similar appalling atrocities in the countries of some of the allies who prosecuted this war. It was precisely because of our humanitarian concern for the people of Kuwait and Iraq that we opposed what was an unjustified and unnecessary war. We are proud of the role we played in resisting the stampede towards war and opposing the shameful decision of the Government to support the war and co-operate with the war effort, and I have no doubt we were articulating the views of a very large section of the population of this country. I do not believe physical force is never justified. I do believe however that war should be a last resort and not a first option. The use of force as a political weapon can only be justified when all other peaceful options have been exhausted, and when force is used there is a clear requirement of proportionality.

The United Nations' Security Council resolutions, which the United States and its allies claimed as a mandate for the war, incorrectly and unjustifiably in my view, sanctioned the use of all necessary means to achieve Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. The basic question is, did the war constitute necessary means? There is every evidence that it did not. It was certainly not necessary at the early date it was declared. Analysis of the impact on UN sanctions in the period of approximately four months for which they were applied before the declaration of war shows that the functioning of the Iraqi economy had been reduced by up to 60 per cent. The director of the CIA, Mr. William Webster, told the US Congress shortly before Christmas that sanctions had cut Iraqi exports by 97 per cent and imports by 90 per cent. No country could long withstand such pressure on its economy. It is likely, given that Iraq depends for about 90 per cent of its revenue on oil exports and 70 per cent of its daily needs on imports, that had sanctions been allowed to take their course internal forces would have either forced Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait or led to a change of leadership in Baghdad with a similar consequence.

Simplistic comparisons have been made between Saddam Hussein and Hitler. Language has been used which tempted to link back to the forties in relation to this crisis. Even the title, "The Allies", was dragged forward in order to give the impression of a Second World War scenario. Suggestions were put forward that those who opposed the war were similar to those who sought appeasement with Hitler during the thirties. Indeed that language was used again today in the House by the Fine Gael spokesperson. Certainly both were evil dictators who showed contempt for human rights, and indeed for human life, and international law, and who brought suffering and misery to their own people. It has been suggested that unless Saddam Hussein was destroyed militarily he would overrun the Middle East as Hitler had conquered most of Europe in the early forties.

The war showed that the Iraqi military machine was no match whatsoever for the coalition forces. Furthermore without a continued supply of technology, new weapons and spare parts, the Iraqi military machine would have ground to a halt. Unlike Germany in the thirties, Iraq did not have a self-sustaining industry and economy and was therefore extremely vulnerable to the type of pressure which sanctions can exert. There is no evidence that Iraq had the capacity to seriously threaten any further countries in the region. Indeed at this stage we must wonder to what extent the power of the Iraqi military machine was artificially hyped by the west in order to justify the war. This was, we were told, the fourth largest army in the world, an army made of battle-hardened, highly trained troops. There was, we were warned, a massive air force with the most sophisticated planes and armaments which could pose a major threat to the security of Israel. The Iraqi military, we were advised, had chemical, biological and possibly even nuclear weapons, and were led by a man who would use them at the drop of a hat. As we saw, the Iraqi air force failed to fight and the Iraqi army disintegrated. We know that Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons because they were supplied to him by western countries such as Germany. Indeed, he had previously used them to massacre large numbers of his own people, let it be said, to the silence of the rest of the world. These weapons never appeared in this war, either because Saddam Hussein did not have the political will to use them, or more likely, he never had the technical capacity to use them in a battle.

Even if we were to accept that the Gulf War was justified — which obviously I do not — I would still argue that the level of force used by the Allies was excessive and unjustifiable. The level of aerial assault against Iraq was unprecedented. About 100,000 bombing raids were launched during six weeks of the war, roughly equivalent to the number of raids on Germany during the whole of World War II. That works out at about 100 sorties per hour. We saw on our television screens graphic pictures of the carnage caused by a direct hit on just one air raid shelter in Baghdad which left several hundred civilians dead. Massive destruction was caused to the infrastructure in Iraq, with the decimation of water and electricity supplies. At one stage during the war it was reported by reliable independent journalists that up to 50 babies per day were dying in Baghdad simply because there was no power, no incubaters and no medicines to treat them. We still do not know the full extent of the military and civilian casualties on the Iraqi side, but estimates range from 100,000 to 200,000. The Taoiseach and Deputy O'Keeffe may consider that this was an acceptable price to pay for achieving by war in six weeks what could have been achieved peacefully by sanctions in 12 months, but I do not.

Now that the war is over many people are asking what it was all about. We were told it was about ensuring implementation of UN resolutions, about respecting the right of small countries and about defending human rights and democracy. Yet look at the record of those who made up the anti-Iraqi coalition. The United States and Israel have habitually ignored the United Nations, and both have on a number of occasions invaded other countries. Syria is now an honoured member of the coalition, yet President Assad of Syria has been as guilty of atrocities against his own people as Saddam Hussein, and was until recently denounced by the United States and the United Kingdom as a major sponsor of international terrorism. With the greatest respect I would suggest that the world has little to learn about democracy from Saudi Arabia princes or Kuwaiti emirs.

I want to draw attention to some further facts in relation to the allies. I have an advertisement sent to me by Amnesty International which they had published in various national newspapers in Britain. It is headed: "With allies like these who needs enemies?". I do not think anyone can claim that Amnesty International were on anybodys side in this war or indeed in any other conflict; their primary interest concerns human rights, regardless of whether the people concerned are black or white and irrespective of their race, creed or nationality. I will read a number of the comments: "A man is half-suffocated, tortured, beaten senseless and his bruised body is dumped in the desert. Is this Iraq or occupied Kuwait? No, the venue is Saudi Arabia and the victim is a citizen of neighbouring Yemen, his crime is his Government's pro-Iraqi stance. A woman is tortured to death because she owns a Shi'a prayer book and a portrait of Ayatollah Khomeini. The victim, Zahra Habib Mansur al-Nasser, has been killed by the Saudi police. But when we called for an inquiry into the death, the authorities do not even reply."

Amnesty International have evidence that Saudi Arabian security forces tortured and ill-treated hundreds of Yemeni nationals since the Gulf crisis began. Their report goes on: "During the 1980's Amnesty reported human rights abuses not just from Iraq but from every country in the Middle East." The world's governments had the opportunity to deal with these issues but they did not; they paid no attention to the human rights records of countries to which they gave military security and police assistance, despite the fact that such aid was being, or could be, used to commit further violations. The report goes on to ask whether realpolitik — each nation's selfish political, military and economic considerations — always take precedence over morality. That is the reality of a number of the coalition forces which took part in the attack on Iraq.

I do not raise these points to in any way justify the atrocities of the Iraqi army in Iraq or in Kuwait. I cite them to emphasise that right does not exist on one side or that all wrong does not exist on one side. We were led by the nose by a massive propaganda campaign which sought to imply that the white knights were challenging the evildoers of the world and that we must be on their side; if we opposed the war we were on the side of the evildoers.

Of course, as I said already, the war was not about questions of democracy or human rights, it was about oil, access to it and its cost. It was also about the United States seizing the opportunity presented by the end of the Cold War to assert political and military domination of the strategically important Middle Eastern region. It was also about domestic United States politics and about the need for President Bush to be seen to be assertive and powerful in foreign affairs to ensure his re-election to the White House for a second term.

I should like to remind Deputy O'Keeffe that there were tens of thousands of American anti-war demonstrators because he seems to think that anybody who opposed the war was anti-American. If that is the case, clearly many Americans would fall into that category. One of the placards carried by the anti-war demonstrators in America read: "OK, we believe you, you're not a wimp". They were pleading with President Bush not to go to war. President Bush took an enormous gamble with the lives of tens of thousands of young Americans and can be said to have won but one of the real losers in the aftermath of the Gulf conflict is the United Nations. There is now an urgent need to look at ways of restructuring the United Nations if it is not to suffer irreparable damage following its marginal role in the conflict when the war was launched.

I want to draw attention yet again to the question of why the war was launched because, to a large extent, we were given to understand that the invasion of Kuwait was sudden and without warning and that the United States did not have any knowledge of it. There was a report in the New Statesman of 8 February 1991, written by John Pilger, who cannot be placed on one side or the other in relation to the war although he clearly believed that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. I will quote a number of paragraphs from his article because they are relevant to our understanding of why this war was launched. He opened his piece by quoting I. F. Stone, one of the greatest American journalists who said that every government is run by liars and that nothing they say should be believed. Of course, he went on to say that I. F. Stone was exaggerating. In relation to the war he said:

The biggest lie so far was uttered by George Bush on 17 January, and echoed by Major, Hurd, and so on. It is that the sole aim of the war is the "liberation of Kuwait".

The truth is to be found in events notably excluded from the present "coverage". Last May, the President's most senior advisory body, the National Security Council, submitted to Bush a White Paper in which Iraq and Saddam Hussein are described as "the optimum contenders to replace the Warsaw Pact" as the rationale for a continued cold war military spending and for putting an end to the "peace dividend".

On 25 July — a week before the Iraqi invasion — the US ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Saddam Hussein that she had "instructions from the President" that the United States would have "no opinion on your border conflicts with Kuwait".

That was about a week before the invasion of Kuwait.

She repeated this several times, adding: "Secretary of State James Baker has directed our official sopkesman to emphasise this instruction from the President." It was clear, wrote the syndicated American columnist James McCartney, one of the few journalists to study the leaked transcript, that the United States "with deliberation" had given Saddam Hussein "a green light for invasion".

During the week when the ambassador met Saddam Hussein, General Norman Schwarzkopf, head of US Central Command, convened his top commanders for an exercise which, according to the New York Daily News, simulated “exactly the contingency” of an Iraqi drive into Kuwait.

"The similarities were eerie", said the paper's source, adding that: "When the real thing came, the one way they could tell real intelligence from the practice intelligence was the little `t' in the corner of the paper — `t' for "training".

There is other evidence, for which space is not available here, that Saddam Hussein was deliberately squeezed or "entrapped" into invading Kuwait. As a US client, he had become too powerful, too cocky and so like Noriega — he had to go.

Again, they are facts which need to be taken into account when we are considering why this war took place; why, after only four months of sanctions, a war was launched by the US, not by the UN — by the US and its allies. The Minister of State, Deputy Seán Calleary, is shaking his head to my statement that it was not launched by the UN. That is a fact. It can be claimed that it was launched with the authorisation of the UN but it is clear from all the facts that the UN had no control whatsoever over that war, either the date it was launched or the date it stopped, what kind of weapons would be used, the degree to which bombing would be carried out, the number of casualties that would be permitted. It had no control whatsoever. In fact, the General Secretary of the UN pointed out that he only heard about the launch of the war from the news media. How can we claim the UN were in charge of this war, that it was a UN war?

There is a need to look at the disproportionate power enjoyed at present by the permanent members of the Security Council and to seek ways of making the UN more representative of the wishes of all the 159 member states; let me emphasise, not just the states themselves but the people who make up those states. While the UN is now being praised by the political leaders of the small group of economically powerful nations which spearheaded the war against Iraq, I believe its standing has been seriously damaged in non-aligned and Third World countries which constitute the vast majority of the world's population.

For several decades the UN had been ignored and even derided by some of those who in the last few months used it as a cover for war. In the past the US in particular treated the UN with contempt, vetoing Security Council motions, critical of its activities, ignoring General Assembly resolutions and withholding funds due to the UN for peace-keeping operations. As a result of the overuse of the veto by some of the permanent members of the Security Council the UN was mostly reduced to the level of spectator during major international crises since the fifties, such as Berlin, the Cuban missile crisis and the two Arab-Israeli wars. Many people were hopeful that with the ending of the Cold War the UN would take on a new lease of life and play a leading role in the resolution by peaceful means of international disputes, but sadly the UN fell at the first obstacle.

In many respects the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait should have presented the UN with the ideal opportunity to assert a new moral authority. Here was a clear, naked act of aggression by one country against another. The Iraqi invasion was universally condemned and for almost the first time on record there was virtually unanimous support for the application of sanctions. At this point I say I agree fully with the Taoiseach that Saddam Hussein had it within his power at all times to pull out of Kuwait and prevent war, but to draw from that the conclusion that the only option available to the UN was to launch a war when Saddam Hussein did not do that is a misrepresentation of the situation and clearly it aligns us in a situation where war is now seen as a valid tool in the implementation of foreign policy. I think that is deplorable, given the size of this country and the dependence we have on exports and imports from all over the world.

Unfortunately, despite the successful application of sanctions, the Security Council, which constitutes just 15 of the 159 member states, allowed itself to be pressurised by the US into passing a series of vaguely worded motions which those seeking a military solution interpreted as a blank cheque. I ask people to bear in mind the points I have quoted from John Pilger in relation to events which predated the invasion, supporting my view that the US wanted this war from day one. Once these motions were passed the initiative was taken from the UN and the US and its allies were allowed to dictate the course of events.

The failure of Security Council Resolution 678 to define what constituted "all necessary means" authorised to force Iraq out of Kuwait was a particularly grievous error. It imposed no limit or restriction on any military action and enabled the US to claim a UN mandate for the launching of the biggest aerial bombardment of any country since the Second World War. The Security Council and the Secretary General were reduced to the role of virtual unlookers. As we know and as I have said, Perez de Cuellar learned about the launching of the war on 17 January from the news media. The Security Council was called into session only towards the end of the war as a result of pressure from the Soviet Union to discuss its peace initiative.

Does the Gulf War indicate a new determination by the international community to see all UN resolutions implemented? Can anyone seriously see the UN authorising the Arab countries to use all necessary means to end the illegal Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank? I certainly hope not. Can anyone see the UN authorising Greece to use all necessary means to end the occupation by NATO member Turkey of one-third of the island of Cyprus? No, I hope not. But we are told that the invasion of Kuwait justified this appalling war.

The brutal truth is that with the ending of the Cold War the UN has become, as a distinguished international lawyer, Professor Richard Falk, recently put it, a virtual tool of US policy. If it is not to be permanently reduced to this lamentable status, urgent structural changes are needed, starting with the Security Council. The Security Council is the key body, but it is not an independent entity and must not be allowed to become one. It must be bound by the spirit and the letter of the Charter. Whatever justification there might have been in 1945 for the allocation of the five permanent positions, none remains in 1991. For instance, why should all five permanent members be from the northern hemisphere and none from the south? Why should three of the five be NATO members? Why should there be three European countries and none from South America? What special claim has Britain or France to a permanent position? If the Security Council is to have a key role, reforms must be introduced to make it more representative of the world community in general, otherwise we will see the status of the UN permanently diminished and reduced to serving the needs of the handful of dominant economically powerful states.

While the war is over, the problems of the region remain. Iraq is in ruins and in political chaos verging on civil war. The Workers' Party will shed no tears at the removal of Saddam Hussein if it happens. As I said, he was a dictator who brought suffering and death to his people and the people of Kuwait; but the future of Saddam Hussein and the Government of Iraq is a matter for the Iraqi people and must be left to them.

We should also be wary of assuming that the removal of a particular individual solves political problems. There is a strong possibility that there might emerge from the current chaos in Iraq a fundamentalist, Muslim régime which could create even greater problems in the region. I might add that the after effects of this war were well known as likely to occur before it started and were either ignored or accepted, apparently, as an acceptable price.

Irrespective of what political developments evolve in Iraq, it is going to take possibly thousands of millions of pounds to undo the structural damage done by the war, and to rebuild both Iraq and Kuwait. Those who inflicted the damage cannot now walk away from the responsibility for reconstruction. The Iraqi people were not consulted by Saddam Hussein about the invasion of Kuwait. They have already paid an enormous price in terms of human suffering. Unless steps are taken to undo the damage to the Iraqi infrastructure, their suffering will continue and indeed worsen.

We must also remember that a solution to the plight of the Palestinian people must be a central feature of any overall settlement to the problems of the region. Indeed, I welcome the reference by the Government and the spokesperson for Fine Gael to that fact. I am concerned that some countries will take advantage of the outcome of the war to further marginalise the Palestinians or to come up with some sort of phoney solution that will not deal with the problem, and which will simply perpetuate the conflict.

As long as the Palestinian people are deprived of a homeland and as long as Israel is allowed to retain control of territory it won by military conquest, there will be no permanent peace in the Middle East. There must now be an international conference to discuss all aspects of the problems of the region and particularly the Palestinian question, and neither the United States nor Israel should be allowed exercise a veto over the re-establishment of a Palestinian homeland.

Another serious casualty of the war has been the credibility and standing of Irish neutrality. The way in which our Government, ignoring the requirement of Article 29.2 of the Constitution to seek "the pacific settlement of international disputes", endorsed the war, facilitated the military effort by the provision of overflight and landing facilities, turned a blind eye to the civilian casualties, and joined in the rejoicing at the triumph of military might, was a matter of great shame to many Irish people.

What does Irish neutrality now mean? We were told that because we were members of the United Nations we had no choice but to go along with and support the implementation of the UN resolutions. But membership of the United Nations cannot absolve us from the obligation of making a moral evaluation of acts carried out in the name of the United Nations. If we believe that the United Nations has made an incorrect decision then we should have the courage to say so. "The United Nations right or wrong" should be no more acceptable than the attitude of "my country right or wrong".

I want finally to deal with the allegation made against those of us who opposed the war, that we were motivated by some sort of anti-Americanism. If we were anti-American then so were international statesmen like Edward Heath and Denis Healy, who expressed similar opinions to ours, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who demonstrated against the war and against their Government's policies in the region. We are not anti-American no more than we are anti-British. Our criticisms of this war were as much directed at the British as at the Americans and at the other coalition members who took part in or supported the war. Like almost everyone in Irish society, The Workers' Party members have relations and friends in the United States. We recognise the living that the United States has provided for generations of Irish people, which successive Irish Governments have failed to provide. We recognise the enduring contribution America has made to the world in terms of industry, technology, literature, cinema, music, sport and to a range of other areas of life. I would draw attention again to the fact that wide ranging sections of American society opposed the war and were not described as being anti-American for doing so. The National Catholic Reporter of 25 January 1991 listed a number of churches in the United States who opposed the war — the American Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, the American Friends Service Committee, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Church of the Brethren, the Southern Baptist Convention, the United Church of Christ and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. They all opposed the war. It cannot be reasonably claimed here that the people who made up the Gulf peace committee are anti-American. A range of something like 30 organisations, a number of them religious organisations supported the Gulf peace committee of which I was a member — Afri which deals with Third World aid, Al Sadaqa which deals with human rights of Palestinians, the Alternative Green Network, Amarach Ireland 2000, which is an organisation committeed to defending Irish neutrality, Campaign Aid, John de Courcy Ireland, Paul Durkan, the El Salvador Support Committee, the Franciscan Justice and Peace Committee, the General Union of Palestinian Students, the Green Party, Greenpeace, Harmony, Irish CND, the Irish Jesuits, the Irish Peace Council, the Irish Missionary Union, Kerry Peace Group, the Labour Party, the Laois Justice and Peace Committee, the Limerick and Clare Gulf Peace Committee, the Mennonite Community, the Milltown Students Union, the Nicaraguan Support Group, the One World Group, Palestinian Communities in Ireland, Senator Joe O'Toole, Pax Christi, the Social Justice Group, Waterford, the Society of Friends, the Holy Ghost Fathers, the Voluntary Missionary Movement, Women for Disarmament, The Workers' Party, the Students Union of University College, Cork, the Union of Students in Ireland, Viatores Christi and the Teachers Union of Ireland. Surely Fine Gael and others are not implying that all of those are anti-American because they opposed the war. That is utter nonsense and it does not do justice to the question of how we in this country address international issues.

It is important to keep in mind that opposition to particular foreign policies of any country does not imply that we or anybody else are opposed to the people of that country or are generally opposed to the Governments of that country. What I cannot accept is how successive Washington Governments have viewed small underdeveloped Third World countries, often thousands of miles from its shores, as being major threats to the interests of the US. As long as the US reserves for itself the right to act as self-appointed international policeman — a position which will be strengthened by the war in the Gulf — as long as the US believe they are morally justified in interfering in the affairs of other countries, up to and including military intervention, as long as the US believe that the level of casualties we saw in the Gulf War is an acceptable price to pay for achieving their ends, I and The Workers' Party will continue to speak out against their military foreign policies.

Mr. Lenihan

It is important to get to the heart of the matter. The Gulf crisis was created on 2 August by the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the subsequent annexation of Kuwait by Iraq. For the first time since the formation of the United Nations after the Second World War we had a direct challenge to its authority implicit in that act of aggression and annexation. For the first time a states' integrity, as a member state of the United Nations, was assaulted. The authority of mutually recognised international law was flouted. That happened on 2 August for the first time since the formation of the United Nations. That is fact which cannot be gainsaid.

Historical parallels are dangerous but one is remained of the parallel case in 1935 when Italy, a member of the League of Nations, proceeded to act in a similar manner against Abyssinia and the League of Nations failed miserably to counter that act of naked aggression. From then on the League of Nations went down and eventually disappeared. From that flagrant act of aggression by Mussolini's Italy flowed similar actions by Hitler in regard to Austria and Czechoslovakia and his interference against the legitimate Government of Spain. Mussolini also interfered in the Spanish Civil War. The events of the late 1930s, which flowed from the failure of the League of Nations in regard to Abyssinia, led directly to the Second World War. The League of Nations found itself increasingly helpless to deal with the situation, became discredited and eventually disappeared.

After the Second World War the main thrust in the establishment of the United Nations was to ensure that in serious cases of disregard for international law the UN would have some power, some means of enforcing the legitimate authority of the world community of nations. For that reason the Security Council was established as a means through which effective action could be taken against aggression or disregard for the international rule of law.

It is worth recalling Article I of the Charter of the UN, which states that the whole purpose of the organisation is to maintain peace and security and that the UN shall take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace. It goes on to deal with the use of peaceful means and negotiated settlements of international disputes, which is the desirable approach in all cases.

That language has been included to provide for precisely the sort of situation that arose on 2 August last year when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Unless the United Nations, representing the community of nations, has the ultimate sanction of enforcement, then it will go the same way as the League of Nations and the same way as any state or community would go without internal powers of enforcement against a wrongdoer. In this case there is no doubt that the act of aggression on the part of Iraq and the subsequent annexation of Kuwait were wrong on any principle of international law.

I am not foolish enough to disregard the fact that there were other aspects, such as oil interests, which were part of the overall equation in the Middle East; but the basic reality is that on 2 August a member state of the UN was invaded and subsequently annexed by another member state. The UN proceeded to do what they saw fit under the articles of the Charter. The first step was to condemn the act of aggression and to seek by moral persuasion to induce Iraq to fall back from its position. That did not succeed. The next step was sanctions. We all cooperated in the implementation of sanctions, which are still in force. Distinguished leaders have argued that sanctions should have been given more time to work, but that is a matter of debate. It does not go to the kernel of the matter. The sanctions were rightly imposed, but they showed very little sign of success over the four months prior to the outbreak of hostilities.

My judgment is that in a society such as that of Iraq under Saddam Hussein sanctions would have very little chance of success by reason of the totalitarian means at his disposal to suppress any discontent arising in Iraq due to the effects of sanctions on the standard of living, jobs and so on. The very nature of the regime would prevent sanctions from having the effect of toppling the type of dictator Saddam has proved to be. The whole purpose of sanctions is to act as a means of pressure to induce a community to come to its senses and make them realise that they must remove their leadership and come to terms with the crisis they have created. In other societies such sanctions would have created massive unrest, dislocation and an intense desire to remove the leader in question. Having regard to the nature of the society imposed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, sanctions showed very little sign of succeeding in that respect. It is a matter of judgment but in my view, to put it bluntly, he would have weathered any sanctions by reason of the controls he had of that society. Sanctions would not have succeeded and all the evidence appears to bear that out. I know distinguished people have suggested that sanctions should have been given a greater chance but when one looks at the world record of sanctions in freer societies than Iraq, one sees how hopeless they have proved in the past. A classic example were the sanctions imposed by a Wilson government of Britain on Southern Rhodesia, before Zimbabwe was created. For a long time the British Government placed great reliance on sanctions there but they failed completely. The British Government placed a measure of sanctions on us in the thirties but all it did was enhance our Government's democratic stature in the eyes of the people.

I can see no example in history where sanctions worked and imposed discipline on a country that disobeyed international law or for some other reason. I do not know of any example of a Government collapsing as a result of the imposition of sanctions or embargoes to circumscribe their economic development. They are nice in theory. Sanctions on Iraq, a country with a high dependence on oil, should in theory have had a heavy penal effect, but the penal connotations that might have been effective were Iraq a normal functioning society with democratic expression were not effective and would never have been effective. The UN was dealing with a tightly controlled society in which Saddam Hussein had total control of the security forces and had, in effect, an administration of terror at his disposal to deal with his own people.

The third option was ultimately adopted. Under Resolution 678 of 29 November, the Security Council decided to commence hostilities on or after 15 January 1991 in the event of Iraq not withdrawing from Kuwait. Iraq had a long period for reflection. Saddam Hussein had all December and up to the middle of January in which to decide to withdraw, as he ultimately did after the ground hostilities started. During that period we had energetic diplomatic initiatives on the part of the European Community, France in particular, and other Arab nations, such as Egypt, seeking to persuade Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. All of these measures were fruitless.

When we come to write the history of what happened from 2 August 1990 to the cessation of hostilities, it will show that every reasonable effort was made to persuade in the first instance then through the application of sanctions, through a limited form of targeted war and, finally, through ground hostilities to induce Saddam Hussein to pull out of Kuwait which he ultimately did only when the sanction of ground forces was invoked to clear his troops out of Kuwait.

When one examines that scenario rationally and carefully one sees it not as a condemnation but as a vindication of the United Nations. We must realise that the United Nations is primarily an organisation for the protection of small countries, such as ourselves. It is in order to avoid the jungle warfare of large countries imposing their will on small countries that the main justification for the United Nations resides. The existence of a rule of international law lies in ensuring that through the mechanism, such as the United Nations, there exists a way of settling international disputes and curbing any member of the international community who invokes the law of the jungle and proceeds to annex or invade a fellow member of the United Nations. The United Nations is there to protect the members of the United Nations and provide protection against larger states who seek aggrandisement. The United Nations guarantees the safety of all nations and provides a safety net against war. It protects against war based on aggression or on non-recognition of law or morality. The United Nations will fail inevitably unless it has the teeth of enforcement written into its Charter and resolutions, giving authority to the Security Council to take the appropriate action if necessary. That is basic.

I would like that we as a society would reach a consensus that the United Nations is there for the benefit of small countries, that it protects small countries, such as Ireland against the aggression of other countries and that active membership by a small country such as Ireland means that we are playing a positive role in having a rule of law obtain in the world that will lead to a new world order and a moral law in international dealings.

My basic point is that this beautiful edifice can fall apart, and will fall apart, unless at the end of the day there exists the sanction of enforcement after all other avenues have been explored by the UN and they have worked legitimately by way of resolution giving the authority to act to the Security Council, the effective operational mechanism which is at the will of the body of nations assembled in the United Nations.

On this occasion all this was done. All the resolutions, winding up with the final Resolution 678 of 29 November, were adopted in proper legitimate form. We were asked to subscribe to the United Nations resolutions and to give appropriate support as sought by the Security Council in implementing the resolutions properly arrived at, particularly Resolution 678. We were asked to provide facilities at Shannon Airport, which we rightly gave. I do not think anybody in his senses would seriously suggest that we should not have given them. I am appalled that anyone would seriously suggest that the minimal facilities we gave at Shannon Airport should not have been given. It was the minimum that we were asked to do and we did it. I am glad we did so. I am certain that if at any stage we were invited by the United Nations to give similar support we would give it.

I am a believer in our neutrality being not of a negative but a positive kind. If we are asked by the UN to make a contribution by way of personnel and resources to any peacekeeping force or observer group that may require to be established in the Gulf area we will do so with alacrity as we have always done whether in Cyprus, the Congo, Lebanon or Central America. We have a very constructive role of positive neutrality.

Because of our size we are not involved in major military operations. We can perform a peacekeeping role and our credentials for performing that role are precisely that we are good members of the United Nations in that we observe UN resolutions and give appropriate support when these resolutions are implemented by the United Nations. We cannot have our cake and eat it. We would not be regarded as having the right credentials to give personnel and resources for peacekeeping missions if we were not good members of the United Nations. We are, however, regarded as good members of the United Nations because we take part in UN discussions on a positive basis of support for UN resolutions when they are adopted and implemented by the Security Council.

Ireland was very much to the forefront, particularly when the late Éamon de Valera, as President of the League of Nations, advocated precisely that point of view, that it was necessary for the League of Nations at that time to take positive action, and small countries were ultimately the countries best protected by the UN taking positive action where required against international wrongdoers. If any international wrongdoers emerge in the world in the future, I hope that if the United Nations takes action of the kind that ultimately had to be taken in this case, we will be there in support. It is because we are regarded as an appropriate country with an efficient defence organisation that we are asked to help in such circumstances. We have experience of helping in trouble spots for 30 years. Because of that record and our credentials of behaviour we are automatically selected by the UN Secretary General to take part in peacekeeping missions throughout the world. Whether it is observing or utilisation and deployment of infantry as in the case of Lebanon, our personnel have proved themselves excellent. On two counts we are on the automatic list for selection by the UN, first because of the excellent professionalism shown by our personnel in handling these peacekeeping missions and, second, because we have the credentials of being a good member of the UN. One cannot dine a la carte at the United Nations table; one cannot pick and choose. When a resolution is taken one has to follow through. With 28 countries making a positive military contribution in terms of direct involvement we, as good members of the UN, had to give whatever support was appropriate as sought by the Security Council. In this case it turned out to be something very mimimalist in the way of provision of facilities at Shannon.

Another matter that tends to be forgotten but which in my view holds out hope for the future is that all of the Arab and Moslem countries in the region cooperated very actively in providing personnel and resources for this UN coalition of forces that was assembled in the area. The fact that Syria, Turkey, Eqypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Pakistan and all the neighbouring countries were active in the provision of forces and facilities and that Iran, while not as directly involved as the others, still recognised that the matter of Saddam Hussein and the aggression of Iraq had to be dealt with is a heartening sign for the future. A new order must be created for the future in that whole region. A new approach to that region must be adopted by the world community, particularly by the United States and the EC. The real problems of the area have to be addressed.

The Gulf War, now over, is only a symptom of the malaise that exists in the area. People have concentrated on the Israel/Palestine issue. That is one of the issues. Of course a homeland will have to be found for the Palestinians; there will have to be proper recognition and guarantees as far as the State of Israel is concerned. Another matter that will have to be addresed is the terrible social inequalities as a result of the wealth of oil being held by a limited number of feudal sheikdoms in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. There are huge social problems in Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran itself, in most of Iraq, countries with huge Arab populations which are not deriving any benefit from oil revenues. That is a major problem that has to be addressed by organising a system of overall control in the area or direction of funds, economic management and social direction that will ensure investment in the areas of the region where the population is and where the oil does not exist. That is a major cause of tension in the whole region which countries like Egypt in particular would be anxious to deal with in whatever settlement is now organised.

What is required is a major international commitment, particularly on the part of the United States and the European Community, to the type of development and advanced social approach to the Middle East that was taken in Western Europe, for instance, after the Second World War by way of the Marshall Aid developments instigated and developed by the United States Government at the time. To the eternal credit of the United States, as a victor in that war, the lead taken by them, after the Second World War, in rehabilitating Western Europe was one of the most enlightened acts ever taken by a state in the history of mankind. A similar type of enlightened approach is necessary now in the Middle East to deal with the post-Gulf position, one that cannot revert to what had existed before 2 August 1990. What had obtained before 2 August 1990 was a position of privilege in regard to the control of oil on the part of certain states, a position of huge social inequality and discrimination against the great mass of Arabs and Moslems living in other Arab and Moslem states right across the whole spectrum of that area from the Lebanon to Pakistan, that is apart from the indigenous Shi'ite/Sunni problems between fundamentalist and secularist Moslems.

Let us not address that problem, one which falls particularly within the provence of the Moslems themselves. But the world at large, the community of nations, can address the two main problems obtaining there, of discrimination between the oil producers and the masses of Arab and Moslem peoples and the need to harness the wealth created by oil to the settlement of the social and economic problems in the area. That is the first problem to be tackled.

The second problem to be tackled is the endemic one of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the need to create a homeland for the Palestinians. These are two areas in which the world community should now proceed, whether by way of international conference or discussion, to engage directly because, unless that is done, inevitably we will be facing into a bleak future in which other crises of a similar kind to the Gulf one will arise. Those two central problems of social asjustment within the region as a whole, as far as the Arabs and Moslems are concerned — as between states and areas in the region and the problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — can be resolved only by accommodation for the Palestinians and the recognition of the bona fides and integrity of the Israeli State. Those two factors in the latter equation have been acknowledged by the Western world since 1980 in the famous declaration by the European Community in Venice at that time. It is quite clear that that is the only way forward but no progress has been made for over 11 years in seeking to implement it.

It would be my hope that, out of this recent conflict and war, some good may come, that it may act as a catalyst to stimulate action, in really bringing about a resolution of that Arab/Israeli conflict. It is in this post-war climate that that matter can be brought to some sort of conclusion because of the urgency being injected into the whole matter by reason of the conflict just ended. I hope it will have that positive effect. If there is to be any stability in the area there must be a redress of the social and economic wrongs caused by all the oil revenues being in a part of the whole region, where there are no social problems, where such revenues have tended to be appropriated by particular families or groups, within the oil production parts of the region and do not find their way to the masses of people in the other Arab/Moslem countries of the region.

In any debate on the Gulf, or on extension of the problems into the region as a whole, it is important to avoid simplistic, black and white approaches, or allocating wrong here and right there. It is not that type of situation, it is a very fluid, varied and subtle one, one in which the only guidelines to be followed are those working in accordance with the legitimacy born of the United Nations, the observance of a rule of law by the United Nations working in concert together.

The resolution of the recent conflict could not have happened were it not for the fact that the whole operation was conducted within the framework of the United Nations, on foot of United Nations Resolutions, involving a coalition group of countries, including practically all the Arab countries. Were it not for all of those factors having been in place I do not think this matter would have come to the conclusion it did. Nobody regards it as a best conclusion in the world — there has been enormous destruction, damage and loss of life — but, at the end of the day, the enforcement process had to be invoked, And, if it had to be invoked it was right and proper that it be invoked in a legitimate manner, with legitimate authorisation through the United Nations and Security Council Resolutions, followed through in a legitimate manner by a coalition of countries, including the Arab countries.

I recognise the major role played by the United States. Again, in the modern world, they were the nation with the major technology available to deal with the conflict; that is a fact of life. In my view it was very welcome and it bodes well for the future of the United Nations that, on this occasion, the major power involved, that is the United States, did act within the framework of the world community of nations, in concert with the United Nations and, in accordance with Security Council Resolutions, went in a serious way about negotiating a coalition of Arab and Moslem countries to associate with the eventual war which in this instance, events forced on the United Nations.

Mr. Rabbitte

They dictated it, not negotiated it.

Mr. Lenihan

I must disagree with Deputy Rabbitte about that. We must look on this whole episode in a hopeful, constructive way. We should not start using pejorative terms. As Deputies Michael Higgins and Jim O'Keeffe said earlier, we had sufficient pejorative terms of the Right; we do not want any pejorative terms of the Left in regard to an anti-American philosophy. That is not helpful in this regard. The only way forward for a small country like ours — seeking to play our part in introducing a certain moral order in the world, in particular a moral order in this Gulf/Middle East area — lies in attachment to and involvement in the United Nations. I am not saying the United Nations is perfect in all its procedures; a lot of work needs to be done in that respect. Many points of view in that regard were raised by Deputy De Rossa but that legitmate criticism can be made of the United Nations.

When one got to the heart of the matter — here the heart of the matter is that there was naked aggression and annexation on the part of Iraq against Kuwait, by one member state against another member state — action had to be taken. It was taken through the stages of persuasion, sanctions and, ultimately, enforcement. At all those stages the matter was conducted in accordance with the United Nations Resolutions. The United States had to be a major player. A number of other United Nations countries were brought in, with the United States, to secure that ultimate enforcement. It has worked out that way at a terrible cost but the aggression has been dealt with and the authority of the United Nations has been established. That is excellent from the point of view of the future in that any Saddam Husseins of the future will pull themselves up and seriously examine the situation. The United Nations' authority has been established. Where the League of Nations failed to establish its authority in 1935 in regard to Italy against Abyssinia, the United Nations' authority has been established in this instance. That is a clear warning to the Saddam Husseins of the future that the United Nations have teeth to impose enforcement, in other words, to ensure that the peace is successful and that aggression is eliminated.

That is the major matter that has emerged from this unfortunate conflict. In the longer term it is a very positive and emphatic message to the Saddam Husseins of the future and for the future of an international rule of law in which small countries such as Ireland can play a very positive and fruitful role. In that spirit I am glad that this debate is taking place. I feel sure we can play such a positive and constructive role in putting together the pieces that need to be put together in the whole region and that Ireland, by reason of its adherence to the United Nations and the well recognised credentials which we have within the United Nations, can play a positive role in whatever measures are adopted by the international community to deal with the undoubted major problems that exists in the region as a whole.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Before calling Deputy Taylor-Quinn I hope the House will understand if I acknowledge the welcome breaking of an extended silence by Deputy Brian Lenihan.

Mrs. Taylor-Quinn

I would like to join with you in that remark. I am very pleased to see Deputy Lenihan back here in the House in such good form and good health and capable of making such a positive and constructive contribution.

In any discussion on recent events in the Middle East it is right that we should reflect in the first instance on the scale of human suffering involved. Our first thoughts must be with the Kuwaitis — their country was callously invaded, their people brutalised, tortured and murdered and their infrastructure and oil fields shamelessly destroyed. We must think also of Israel and its citizens who were subject to terrorist attacks from the forces of Saddam Hussein with the sole intention of widening the conflict. We should also remember the allied troops who died to restore freedom to the small country, to the Kuwaiti people. These troops were acting on behalf of the United Nations, of which Ireland is a full member. Our sympathy must also extend to the Iraqi people and indeed to the horrendous scale of casualties suffered by them. We must remember that they also were victims of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. We should not forget that the heartbreak of an Iraqi mother, father, brother or sister is just as painful as for the Irish, the British or the Americans.

The ceasefire in the main battlefield does not mean the end of the violence. For Iraqi people the nightmare continues. There is no peace for them as they now find themselves engulfed in a potential civil war. Even in liberated Kuwait, the Palestinian people are forced to pay the price for the stupidity of their leadership. We in Ireland should be particularly aware of how little justice there is in revenge attacks and the midnight knock on the door.

The recent events in the Middle East have clearly demonstrated the need to control the sale of arms and military technology to countries in the region. There should now be a moratorium, for at least one year, on the sale of arms to this region. Such a ban would create a more favourable atmosphere for diplomacy to solve some of the very complex disputes in the region.

Saddam Hussein and his unsavoury regime became a major threat to the whole Middle East and to the world oil supplies because he was provided with a vast array of weapons, largely by the permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations. During the seventies and eighties arms suppliers from all over the world flocked to the Middle East and flogged their destructive wares without any concern for the future. In many cases their arms sales shored up regimes which routinely tortured their own people and actively threatened their neighbours. For those living in the region the tens of billions of dollars spent on arms in the region were a very poor bargain — the pay-off was not peace and security and the price included suffering and death on a very large scale. Control on the sale of arms to countries in the region is central to the process of establishing a framework for peace. Ireland should actively seek the support of like-minded countries in the United Nations to seek to have the necessary resolutions passed by that organisation.

Members of the European Community, particularly France and Britain, are major arms suppliers to the Middle East. European security is intimately connected with events in the Middle East. Ireland, through our political co-operation procedures of the Community, should propose policies to restrain the sale of arms to the Middle East. In the wider context of the inter-governmental conference on European political unity we should seek to bring the production and sale of arms and military technology within the Community under Community control.

It is important that a full scale review of the response of the United Nations to the aggression by Iraq be now undertaken. This review needs to be carried out in open forum by the General Assembly and the security council. Areas that require examination include the sanctions policy which was initially implemented against Iraq. The mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of the sanctions and how a judgement is reached as to their effectiveness leave much to be desired. The role of the General Assembly, which was only marginally involved, is a matter also that requires attention. The Office of the Secretary General was remarkably slow in pursuing diplomatic solutions in the months and weeks leading up to the outbreak of hostilities on 15 January. From the time the allies commenced hostilities the whole area of the monitoring of the war by the United Nations and the crucial question of the calling of a ceasefire requires close examination. In fact, the United Nations should examine very closely their active level of involvement in monitoring the war once the war had commenced. In particular, legitimate questions regarding the bombing of the Iraqi Army as they retreated, causing thousands of casualties, need to be asked. As a member of the United Nations we should initiate and be very much part of putting these questions, because answers must be given. I do not think the world at large appreciated that activity.

Following the sanctioning of war by the Security Council the veto mechanism operated by the permanent members can have the function of prolonging the conflict against the wishes of the majority of the council. This is an aspect that must be examined. Another matter that needs to be examined is the fact that the major world powers have control of the Security Council and lesser nations, although if they were put together represent a large number of people, do not have the same clout within the United Nations.

Now that the major hostilities have ceased, peace and permanent security must be actively pursued by the individual states in the region, the regional organisations such as the Gulf Council and the Arab League, the United Nations and other interested parties. The European Community has a key role to play and Ireland, as a member of the European Community, should be actively to the forefront in pursuing a key role for Europe.

An element of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people which has led to a wider conflict between Israel and the Arab states.

In addition, there are the traditional rivalries between the different countries in the region and the involvement of the great powers. Their interests have intensified the regional conflicts. Western involvement in the region has built a great reservoir of bitterness among many Arab people against the West. The various elements contributing to instability in the region have interacted with each other in a most explosive manner. A window of opportunity now exist whereby some of the underlying problems can be tackled and the spiral of violence stopped.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is the key challenge facing those who now seek lasting peace in the region. Israel's need for secure borders recognised by its neighbours must be acknowledged. Israel's needs, however, cannot continue to be achieved at the expense of the Palestinian people. Their right to autonomy, a homeland and a state must be acknowledged and acted upon. The suffering of the Palestinian people must be eased. In some ways the Palestinian people are paying the price for European and American guilt over anti-Semitism. The shame of anti-Semitism should not result in uncritical support for Israel. Specifically, the element in Israel who seek the annexation of the West Bank and the further dispossession of the native Arab population must be strongly resisted. I hope the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs is actively pursuing this matter. The European Community has a distinctive approach to the Israeli-Palestinian question which is different from that of the United States. This approach was set out in the Venice Declaration and should form the basis of European Community policy on this issue.

Questions as to who should speak for the Palestinians are best left to the Palestinians. There is an awareness among the Palestinian political elite that they have been badly served by their leaders over the invasion of Kuwait. As we have observed, the PLO have responded to the criticisms they justly deserve. However, we should bear in mind that the PLO are not a monolithic organisation, they operate under very difficult constraints and have come a long way in that they now pursue their aims by peaceful means rather than by violence.

The European Community should support the principle of fully free internationally supervised elections in the West Bank and Gazza Strip so that local Arab leaders will have the status and authority bestowed by free elections. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the Palestinian people are now scattered throughout the Middle East and beyond. They rightly insist that their voice must be heard. The PLO seem to be the only organisation who can, with any justification, claim to speak for the majority of Palestinians. Acknowledgment of this fact would mean a willingness by all those involved in the conflict to negotiate with the PLO.

On the wider issue of regional security, the Italian proposal that a conference on security and co-operation in the Middle East be established deserves support. Modelled on a similar conference in Europe, it would have the following core principles: recognition of and respect of internationally agreed boundaries, economic policies to use the immense wealth available in the region for the benefit of all the people and support for institutions and conventions guaranteeing some basic democratic and human rights.

The involvement and interference of Europe and the great powers in the Middle East has been a deeply unhappy experience for the people concerned. Europe and the United States need to fundamentally examine their attitudes to the Arab people. For too often and too long they pursued their selfish interests in the region and have been all too willing to support brutal dictators when it suited them. It is now obvious that there is strong support for the setting up of democratic institutions in Kuwait. It should be pointed out to the al-Sabah family that the liberation of Kuwait does not mean the automatic restoration of dictatorship there. Clear support must be given for the democratic forces within Kuwait. Western powers should make it clear that they would welcome the establishment of democratic institutions in Kuwait every bit as much as they welcomed the establishment of democratic institutions in Eastern Europe.

It is much too easy to hold the racist view that the Arabs like strong leaders. Ireland can play a small but significant role in developing strategies for building peace. Given our history, we are sensitive to the dangers of imperialism. Ireland is a respected member of the European Community and the United Nations and we have a certain influence on two of the major states involved, the United States and Britain.

Our major activities must be carried on within the structures of the European Community. During the conflict the members of the Community were divided without any clear direction. It is unfortunate that there was no clear united European approach to the Gulf conflict. It was evident from the start of the conflict that there was a wide variance of opinion on the issue. The United States dominated the international response to the invasion of Kuwait and dictated the pace of events. There was a need for a clear coherent European response to that conflict. I hope there will be a united European approach to such issues in the future. There are great risks in the United States being the only great super power. It is important that a balanced European viewpoint is clearly stated by the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Europe.

Ireland needs to have a more energeitc and creative foreign policy. In our anxiety to preserve our policy of neutrality we have somewhat stifled ourselves. We should contribute more to the international community and not have such a strong fixation on one aspect of our foreign policy. We are very nervous of anything which might impinge on our neutrality in any way. Yet when one looks at the history of neutrality one has to ask the question: how neutral is neutral? Deputy Lenihan drew a very subtle distinction between positive and negative neutrality, a distinction which is worth examining.

There is a great lack of understanding and appreciation in the western world in general and, in particular, in Ireland and Europe, of the Arab and Muslim communities in that region. We have an opportunity to get rid of the old prejudices and put a stop to the propaganda to which we have been conditioned over the years. One way those prejudices can be broken down would be for us to establish a department of Arab and Muslim studies in one of our universities. We need to educate a core of Irish people on Arab and Muslim culture, politics, religion and society. The setting up of such a department would be a move in the right direction. This is an opportune time for Ireland to take a lead in promoting world peace. I appeal to the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs to adopt a constructive approach in our attempts to secure world peace, peace in the Middle East and a reduction in the sale of armaments to Middle Eastern countries in particular.

Mr. Gilmore

I must confess that I had not expected to contribute so soon.

Mr. G. Mitchell

Would the Deputy like to give way?

Mr. Gilmore

We have waited a long time for this debate. Deputy De Rossa, in particular, had, over a long period sought to secure a debate on the Gulf War in this House. It is a great pity the Government did not afford us the opportunity for this debate until after the war. This debate presents us with an opportunity to reflect on the reasons for the war, on the way it was conducted, its implications for our foreign policy, international peace and security and relations between states.

It is worth looking back to note some of the comments and observations made by Members on the occasions Deputy De Rossa requested a debate on the Gulf War. I would like to refer in particular to comments made on the Order of Business on 28 February the day after the war ended when Deputy De Rossa again asked the Taoiseach if he would make time available for a debate in the House. The Minister for Industry and Commerce made a very interesting comment. He said, "their fellow got beaten". That is typical of the comments made. If one in any way opposed the war there was an automatic knee-jerk assumption that one was anti-American and pro-Iraq or, as somebody said this morning, part of Saddam's brass band. It is one thing for that kind of comment to be made by people outside this House but it is quite a different matter when it is made by a senior member of the Government, the leader of one of the parties in Government.

There was much distortion of the truth — that opponents of the war were supporters of Saddam Hussein — during the course of the war. This should make us reflect on another event which occurred during the past few days — the release of the Birmingham Six. It is worth recalling that, when we are less than generous with the truth, injustice can be done. For example, in 1975, very few people in Birmingham would have taken anything other than the immediate knee-jerk assumption that the Birmingham Six were guilty. It is also interesting to note how people who sought their release, such as Chris Mullin, were treated by the British press. It was assumed that they were pro-IRA and terrorist just because they sought the release of the Birmingham Six. Taking liberties with the truth leads us to this situation. I very much regret that a person as senior as the Minister for Industry and Commerce should have sunk to that low level of debate.

That comment also betrays the fact that the official explanation of the Government position on the war was also less than honest. It has been explained that the reason the Government supported the war was that it was a United Nations' war but I suspect that, deep down, there was a more partisan reason for their support for the war. That reasoning is betrayed by the comment by the Minister for Industry and Commerce.

I would now like to refer to another comment made on the same day by Deputy Noonan of Fine Gael. He said:

On Monday night Deputy Gilmore, speaking for The Workers' Party, said that the Americans were like the Provisional IRA in pursuing the war. I would like to know how we could get them to explain that statement in the House.

I am glad to have this opportunity to explain it. First, that is not what I said. What I did say was that the kind of language used to justify the bombing of air raid shelters containing civilians, including children — described as a legitimate target — is similar to the language used by the Provisional IRA to justify their attacks on civilians here. That is what it is. However, that was not the intention of Deputy Noonan. It was his intention to paint the view that it would be outrageous for opponents of the war to compare a terrorist organisation, whom we all condemn, with the army of a member state of the United Nations. This is yet another distortion of the truth.

In the course of his contribution Deputy Lenihan repeated the argument most commonly made in support of the Government's position on the war, that it was a United Nations' war. It was, as he put it, a simple situation, a small state had been annexed by a larger state, that it was the job of the United Nations to defend the rights of small states, that we, as a small State, should take note of this and support the position of the United Nations. Let us take that argument a little further. Certainly, the United Nations made its position clear very swiftly on the invasion of Kuwait and there is no doubt that this received widespread support throughout the international community and within this House. I have heard no one in this House attempt to justify or diminish in any way the international crime of Iraq invading Kuwait but it does not follow that the United States and the coalition forces should have gone to war within five months of the invasion.

There is no dispute about the role of the United Nations in defending the rights of small states and nations but there is a dispute about the decision to go to war within five months of the invasion without the sanctions being given enough time to work. That is where the differences arise between us.

Everybody agrees that the United Nations should have acted quickly and decisively on the question of sanctions and the world community was united in its opposition to the invasion of Kuwait but their is a world of difference, and I say this with respect to Deputy Lenihan, between the way sanctions were operated in Southern Rhodesia, where a handful of countries were involved, and the way they were operated in this case where the entire world united in imposing sanctions on one country. You cannot say that sanctions have never worked when the United Nations had mobilised the entire world community to enforce sanctions. There is no comparison between that and the situation where a smaller number of states had agreed to impose sanctions on another country.

Following on the argument about the role of the United Nations in defending the rights of small states, are we now to assume that that role will be applied consistently, particularly where the small states who are at the receiving end of aggression are states who are at odds with the big players in the United Nations? For example, are we to assume that Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua and such states who may find themselves on the receiving end of United States foreign policy can rely on the United Nations as the defenders of their position? That is where the argument about the United Nations being the defender of small nations will become greatly undermined. There is a lot of evidence that there are many small states who as a result of this war have lost confidence in the United Nations, who now see the United Nations as an instrument of United States foreign policy, who see that the United Nations was used by the United States and its allies in this war and who can quote, for example, that the conduct of the war was not determined by the United Nations but by the United States and its allies.

In so far as the United Nations was involved, the only evidence that can be offered in support of that is Resolution 678. Of course, that resolution in turn did not specifically refer to going to war. It referred to taking all necessary steps to enforce United Nations resolution in relation to Iraq and Kuwait. It is a very debatable point as to whether all necessary steps at that point, in mid-January, involved the use of force and the unleashing of war. I take the view that it most certainly did not. It is very much stretching what United Nations Resolution 678 authorised to say that it automatically and immediately authorised the use of force.

Reference has been made here on several occasions to Ireland being a member state of the United Nations and that we have to take our responsibilities in the United Nations seriously. The phrase that has been used repeatedly is that we cannot dine a la carte at the United Nations table. That is true, but where does that leave our position in relation to development aid? For over 20 years there has been a United Nations resolution that 0.7 per cent of GNP should be devoted to development aid and that we should attempt to meet this target. Instead, the Irish Government have been retreating from that target. Of the developed countries we are among the lowest contributors to development aid to the Third World. I do not hear the same kind of outcry about not dining a la carte at the United Nations table in that regard. It seems the Government are dining a la carte because they are quite happy to support the Gulf War and to talk in very sanctimonious terms about our commitments to the United Nations. Yet, when it comes to development aid and our commitment in that area, it seems the Government are prepared to turn a blind eye to it.

The war we have just witnessed in the Gulf has resulted in enormous human tragedy. I am surprised at the international media, who seem very reluctant to try to establish for us the full extent of the human carnage and destruction that resulted from the incessant bombing of Iraq. It is remarkable that we are getting very little information about this. It is possibly the case that a media which was able to bring us first hand information, which was practically able to be in the aeroplanes as they engaged in their acts of war, cannot now establish for us the extent of the human and physical tragedy in Iraq? We are certainly being given information about what happened in Kuwait, and what happened there is horrific — I think every Member of this House would share that view — but it seems we are being given very little information about what happened in Iraq, what the effects of the bombs were, how many people were killed and injured and what the position is. Is the story of the destruction of Iraq being deliberately distorted or denied to us because it is a truth that does not fit with the Hollywood-type image portrayed of this war.

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a dictator who caused enormous misery for his own people long before the outbreak of this war. Many of us had been aware of that before the invasion of Kuwait and the outbreak of this war. It would be worth reflecting on the consequences of war. For example, Deputy Lenihan made the point in passing that the attempt using sanctions against this country in the thirties produced popular support for the then Government. That is true, and to some extent I suppose they are still living off it.

Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs (Mr. Calleary)

You have a long way to go yet.

Mr. Gilmore

We are moving in that direction while you are moving in the opposite direction. We will meet in passing.

Mr. Durkan

I hope it does not cause another war.

Mr. Gilmore

It is worth mentioning that the bombing of countries can produce results which are less desirable than simply winning the war. It is worth recalling, for example, that the bombing of Combodia in the early seventies brutalised the Cambodian people so much that it produced the Pol Pot regime, who ironically ended up being supported by the people who bombed Cambodia in the first place and who produced that monstrosity. To what extent have the Iraqi people, or indeed the Kuwaiti people, been brutalisied by the bombing and by the consequences of war? To what extent is that going to produce a regime in either of those two countries which no democrat would want to see being produced? These are the consequences of war that we have yet to learn about. We know, to some extent, about the human and physical tragedies and we have seen the ecological tragedy which will be with us for many a long day as the consequences spread wider and wider.

Many people in this country were disgusted by the war and many were disappointed at the position which our Government took on it; outside this country many people were also unhappy with the war itself and the way it was conducted. I include in that many United States citizens. I listened this morning to a young American woman being interviewed on RTE. She was asked to list the reasons she would like to live in Ireland. Apart from the obvious reasons one reason listed was that we are militarily a neutral country. Many people in the United States share that view and a wish that conflicts can be resolved without the use of force.

There was a moral obligation on the United Nations — in particular on its stronger members — to show leadership by saying that an international conflict could be resolved by ways other than the use of brute force. Admittedly we might have had to wait a bit longer but would it not have been a much better lesson for the international community to learn that problems like the Iraqi invastion of Kuwait could have been dealt with by the combined action of the states of the world to freeze the Iraqi regime by the use of sanctions than for them to learn — as they have as a result of this war — that the way to solve conflicts is by brute force, that might is right? That has been the principal outcome of the war and the tragedy is that there are many lurking dictators and would-be monsters who will have learned that the way to assert authority is by the use of force. It is a regrettable lesson learned from this war.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. O'Malley)

The first and most important point is how relieved we all are that the hostilities between the Allied Forces of the United Nations and Iraq have now ceased and that Iraq has accepted all the UN resolutions, which this Government supported.

We were all saddened by the need for the world community to respond in force to the expansionist lust for power on the part of Saddam Hussein and his regime. We must feel sympathy for those who lost lives in the course of this war, the Kuwaitis who were butchered at the start and throughout the occupation since 2 August, the allies who fought to liberate Kuwait, the Iraqi people who suffered for their leader's transgressions — and for no other reason — and the ordinary Iraqi conscripts who died in their thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — on their neighbour's soil, where most of them had no wish to be, and on their own soil.

We must also be mindful that although the hostilities between the Allies and the Iraq military have ended, the situation within Iraq is still unstable and lives are still being lost on a daily basis because of the understandable resistance on the part of many Iraqis to the terrible regime that led them into this awful slaughter and to the dismemberment of their own country. We can only hope that out of this war, which was costly both in human lives and in the economic life to the Iraqi nation, a more stable and peaceful regime will emerge.

I listened to the latter part of Deputy Gilmore's speech and I wondered — as I often do when I listen to people like him — whether he and I are talking about the same war and the same crisis because my view is fundamentally different from his and I cannot imagine that the United Nations could have exercised more patience than they did——

Mr. Gilmore

Five months?

Mr. O'Malley

Precisely, and numerous calls on the Iraqi regime to honour the resolutions of the Security Council. There were also numerous clear warnings as to what the consequences would be if that did not happen. Therefore, to blame the United Nations and the allies who fought under their flag for the outcome is a total travesty of the truth.

Mr. Gilmore

People wait longer than five months for a medical card.

Mr. O'Malley

This problem was caused by the expansionist actions of a very ruthless and undemocratic regime and its undemocratic nature is still clearly evident, even in the immediate aftermath of its enormous defeat, when it is dealing with its own people in the way it appears to be today.

The seeds of further conflict still remain and the Middle East is still a very unstable environment. The process of democracy replacing dictatorships and theocracies is painfully slow, and unless democracy gains acceptance in many of these countries we must expect continued instability and the continued abuse of basic personal freedoms.

We must also hope that the continuing plight of the Palestinian people will be resolved. This problem has provided an ongoing source of instability throughout the region. While Saddam Hussein had no legitimacy in attempting to link this issue with his lust for the wealth of his neighbour, Kuwait, those of us who wish for peace in the region must recognise the central importance of finding an accommodation between Jew and Muslim and between Israeli and Palestinian.

I hope that the cautious optimism expressed by Mr. James Baker, the US Secretary of State, when he said that he detected a "window for peace" will be followed by substantive measures to bring an accommodation of the legitimate aims of both groups for self-determination and a secure existence.

I should like to deal with some of the economic effects of the war and the outlook arising from it. The war has had a serious effect on the economies of the world. The impact on Ireland was probably most evidenced by its impact on the stock market. At the start of business on 2 August the index was 1567.34, by 25 January it had fallen to 1112.65 and since the outcome of the war became evident it has constantly risen, to close yesterday at 1519.08, a 36.5 per cent increase on the January low. While the stock market index in itself is not that important, it is indicative of commercial feeling and confidence and, therefore, reflects in a broad way at least the economic prospects as they are seen on the market.

At this time the ultimate impact of the Gulf crisis is indeterminate, not only on the Middle East itself but on the world economy in general. It is also unclear what the impact will be on the immediate economic prospects of two of the main participants, the United Kingdom and the United States, countries which, together, still account for more than 40 per cent of our exports and over 56 per cent of our imports.

Following the ceasefire, it now seems likely that the drain on US and UK budgetary resources should ease during the course of this year and help contribute to the expected recovery in these economies from 1992 onwards. Irish exporters to these two markets will find trading conditions quite difficult over the next year or two and far less buoyant than in recent years.

Over the past three years, however, Irish unit wage costs in manufacturing declined by almost 20 per cent under the influence of the moderate wage settlement and the associated industrial peace negotiated under the Programme for National Recovery. There is every reason to believe this trend will continue under the new programme. The resulting improvement in competitiveness places Irish industry in the post Gulf crisis situation in a better position to withstand the international economic downturn of the early nineties than would otherwise have been the case.

The prospects for Irish trade with continental Europe are more promising than they are with the UK or the US over the next few years. Germany will remain the main engine of economic growth of the Community. Economic and monetary union of the two Germanies took place last July with political union following in October. The further unification process now well under way has involved a collapse of a great deal of the former production capacity of East Germany and an upsurge in demand for Western products. This demand is underpinned by massive public transfers to the former German Democratic Republic from the former West Germany. Large-scale structural investment in housing, infrastructure and the environment is now under way. Germany is already Ireland's largest export market after the UK — accounting now for some one eighth of our total exports. It will continue to be a major target market for Irish exports during the nineties with good prospects of increased trade.

There will be considerable opportunities for Irish companies during the rebuilding and recovery stage in the Middle East following the resolution of the Gulf crisis — particularly in the areas of building and construction, pharmaceuticals and consultancy services. The Government have already taken steps to try to ensure that Irish companies will obtain some small proportion at least of the very considerable rebuilding expenditures which will be incurred in Kuwait during the coming years. In particular, many of our established and accomplished sub-contracting companies will be able to bring about fruitful relationships with some of the major contractors from the US, Britain and France who are likely to land the major contracts for the rebuilding of Kuwait. It seems to us likely that this would be a more fruitful approach than would a direct approach to Kuwait itself where the scale of Irish companies may not in many cases be adequate to cater for the scale of the contracts which are likely to be on offer.

A further positive feature underlying Ireland's growth prospects in the nineties which has come more into focus since the Gulf crisis started is the degree to which this country has improved its energy efficiency and reduced its relative dependence on oil products over the almost 20 years that have passed since the first major oil crisis. Primary energy requirements per unit of GDP in Ireland are now a quarter less than they were 20 years ago — an improvement slightly better than the average of the European Community over that period but less than that achieved by either the United States or Japan.

I would like once again to express my relief at the ending of this war, and my satisfaction that it was of such short duration. We must all be concerned, however, that so many lives, regardless of on which side they were lost. I hope we will see a more stable situation arising now in the Gulf region and in the Middle East generally. I commend the efforts of those who are now dedicated to trying to achieve that stability in what is the most sensitive and volatile part of the world. They have a great responsibility but I think those concerned will do all they can to respond to that task, and I wish them well.

In this Gulf War we have seen the UN acting in the interests of overall world peace in a most effective way. Unlike others who think the use of force in itself is wrong and that it will, as Deputy Gilmore suggested, encourage certain despots or would-be despots to resort to force, the net effect will be to discourage these despots or would-be despots from taking any such line. Iraq was represented by the fourth largest army in the world and that army, including the air force and the navy were almost entirely obliterated by the UN troops.

It is well to remind ourselves that as a small individual country we are every bit as vulnerable as Kuwait was on 2 August last. God forbid it ever should happen, but if we were invaded by anybody in the manner in which Kuwait was invaded, who would we have to look to but the UN? Who, but the UN, would vindicate our right as a nation and our right to sovereignty and self determination? Therefore, while the events of the last six or seven months have been sad in the human toll that has, unfortunately, been exacted, nonetheless they are reassuring for countries like ourselves throughout the world who would otherwise be vulnerable to aggression from powerful neighbours or other countries who might turn on us. It is very sad for the Iraqi people that they were led by the man who has led them for the last 15 years, and I hope that in the final resolution of this great difficulty the Iraqi people can look forward to the establishment of democracy in that unhappy country because democracy is the only way in which the long term stability of Iraq and its neighbours can be guaranteed.

Mr. Deasy

The successful conclusion of the Gulf War should be greeted with relief by all those genuinely interested in world peace and the freedom of small nations. All humanity should be grateful to those countries who materially helped to implement the wishes of the UN. The invasion and occupation of Kuwait were engineered by one of the most ruthless dictators in modern times, Saddam Hussein. The decisive action of the US and its allies in general stopped this tyrant in his tracks once and for all, it is to be hoped. We have in our midst those who maintain that war is never justified. I do not share that view.

Improved education and living standards are not protection against evil individuals such as Saddam. The world may become a more civilised place to live in, but if there is anything to be learnt from this war and all wars it is that we cannot take our civilisation for granted. There will always be tyrants like Saddam and Hitler waiting to dominate and murder their neighbours. Luckily there are countries such as the US and Britain who will not allow this to happen. Let us give them every support within our means for doing what they have been doing whether in this war or the last two World Wars. Small countries like ours are the beneficiaries of the actions of the US and Britain. We were saved from the holocaust and the domination of Hitler in the Second World War.

Recent events have alerted western European countries to the need to arm and protect themselves against aggression. Many of us were lulled into a false sense of security when the communist world started to crumble about 18 months ago and it looked as if the threat of an East/West War was gone forever. Many of the countries in eastern Europe have got their independence in some formal manner, but that does not mean that we are entirely safe. There is still the instability of the Soviet Union which threatens world peace. Unfortunately while Mr. Gorbachev seemed to have complete control initially, he seems to have lost that total control in recent months and the army now seem to be calling the tune in the Soviet Union and adjoining states such as the three Baltic states. That is very worrying and we cannot be sure that there will not be problems when that situation pertains. It is a bit frightening. The nice scenario we had up to a year or 18 months ago has faded somewhat as have the prospects for peace. That is unfortunate.

For all practical purposes NATO and the Warsaw Pact have outlived their original reasons for existence. Now, with liberation of the eastern European countries from communism there is a need to form a military alliance within Europe for our mutual protection. We can hardly expect to be excluded from such an arrangement. Because of our isolation we may feel relatively safe, but it is not certain, and we should be prepared to play our part in a Europe which has integrated, politically, economically and militarily.

The aggression in Kuwait has taught us that no small country can be guaranteed its sovereignty. The word "militarily" might raise some hackles but it does not inhibit our neutrality or our wish for continuing freedom and peace. We should protect ourselves. We have a small Army and we take part in duties with the United Nations in peace-keeping forces, and if force is needed our military people will use it. That is as it should be. If our safety and the safety of Europe generally is threatened we should be prepared to play our part. I do not make any apology for saying that. It is about time we faced up to that fact.

The situation is now considerably different from what obtained in 1939 when we were a new nation without resources or the links with other countries in western Europe that we now have. We were not close to them in trade, politically or in any other way. Now we are part of the EC. Shortly we will see political integration which will bring a great deal by way of additional responsibilities. We must accept that there will be responsibilities in the field of security. If Europe must protect itself we should not be afraid to take part in that protection. I am referring to protection and not to aggression.

The Arabian states had a peace pact but it was so weak that it could not raise a gallop because of the power of Saddam Hussein who commanded the fourth strongest army in the world. That type of peace pact is not worth the paper it is written on if it is not backed up with the material resources required. In that case they did not exist.

The Kuwait episode raised a question. If the US had not taken the initiative could Saddam have been stopped? Will the American people continue to sacrifice the lives of their own young people at destinations all over the world, or will they become fed up fighting other people's wars? Such an attitude may well grow among the American public, leaving us all that much more vulnerable to tyranny. We should remember that they were the people who bailed out the free world in the last two great wars, the 1914 to 1918 and the 1939 to 1945 wars. Where would we have been without them? Most of us would probably be speaking German and three quarters of us would be doing the goose step at some stage in our lives because of conscription. The US saved us from absolute domination. One day they will decide they have done enough, that they suffered grievously in Vietnam, considerably in South Korea and that they have been fighting all over the world to protect other people's interests. They will consider that in the latest episode between Kuwait and Iraq they did not get much help from some people whom they might have expected to have been of more help and that in future they will let people fight their own battles. That point of view is bound to become a flashpoint in American politics and in that country's foreign policy in the future. The Americans will not be there eternally to fight our wars. Ireland and other countries in western Europe, apart from Britain who could always look after themselves in that regard, and France to a lesser extent, should look to their resources and defend themselves.

If Saddam had not been stopped and driven back, how far would he have gone? I have not heard any military analyst surveying that possibility. At the very least he would have annexed the whole of the Middle East, probably North Africa, and some of Europe and Asia. Who would have stopped him, and where would he have been stopped? He would have been like a snowball gathering snow as he stormed through the Arabian countries, Egypt and northern Africa and into the Muslim countries in Western Asia, such as Turkey, Pakistan and perhaps Iran. He definitely played his holy war card to the limit. Instead of having an Army of one million or two million men, in a short time he could and probably would have ended up with an army of ten million or 12 million. That prospect is so frightening it does not bear thinking about. People do not seem to want to listen to that view. When I listen to left-wing Members I wonder if they are in control of their senses. I must believe they are being absolutely mischievous. Nobody could be so stupid not to see what this man had in mind. It was not Kuwait he wanted but the oil fields of the Middle East which contained the bulk of the world's oil reserves. If it meant domination of a considerable portion of the world, that it what he was after.

Saddam was like Hitler. Hitler's great mistake in 1940 was after Dunkirk. If he had crossed the Channel into England after Dunkirk the war would probably have been over and there would not have been a foothold for the Americans in Europe. Saddam must be eating thorny wire in his bunker and asking why he did not go into Saudi Arabia initially and gain control of the whole Arabian peninsula before the Americans had an opportunity to gain a foothold. That thought must be giving him nightmares, if the man is capable of nightmares. He does not appear to have any qualms of conscience about the torture and slaughter of tens of thousands of people. Where would he have stopped or could he have been stopped at all?

We are told by left-wing politicians, by analysts on RTE and in letters to the newspapers, particularly The Irish Times, that we should have given sanctions more time to work. As Deputy Lenihan pointed out, sanctions have never been a complete success. Saddam could have lasted for years and still have been a very formidable force, no matter what sanctions were imposed. There is no evidence that sanctions could bring any country to its knees, particularly a country run by a dictator.

There is no doubt that Saddam intended to corner the bulk of the world's oil reserves, to dominate the Arab world and to liquidate Israel. He brought in Israel rather belatedly when he realised the Americans meant business and were not joking. Until then he was talking about the 19th province of Iraq, namely Kuwait. Then he attempted to rally the Muslim world in what he called a holy war to set about the liquidation of the State of Israel. I do not believe religion enters into his vocabularly very often. It is a case of domination, taking over as much as possible and subjecting everybody to brutality. His track record over the previous ten years was such that his intentions were obvious.

In view of Saddam's abominable behaviour, including mass murder and numerous atrocities even among his own people such as the Kurds, we were less than magnanimous in our support of the allies. We expect the parties of the left to be antagonistic towards the United States on ideological grounds, but I can find no grounds for the unhelpful and downright biased attitude of a State body such as RTE in this episode. The parties of the left have suffered the traumatic experience during the past two years of seeing their own doctrine being rejected by country after country in eastern Europe and even in the Soviet Union itself. They continue to see that rejection in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and in Albania, the last bastion of diehard Stalinism. The American system and that of the free world — our system — is totally contrary to their ideology. They do not want to see free enterprise and open Government. That was never part of their plan.

What we learned about the Gulf War was through the media, either RTE or the newspapers. None of us saw the events at first hand. Our views and those of the people were formed for us. This station, on television and radio, did not attempt to give a balanced commentary on the events in the Gulf. As a result the Irish people, who were overwhelmingly on the side of the allies, have been grossly misrepresented. I dare anybody to contradict me on that. It is obvious that a certain number of people in key positions in RTE have orchestrated this misrepresentation. The manner of the presentation of news and current affairs programmes was repeatedly loaded against the Americans in particular.

It is extraordinary that the British MPs predominantly featured on RTE were not just from the Labour Party but from the extreme left of that party — Tom Dayell, Tony Benn and Clare Shortt. The British Labour Party generally supported the UN Resolutions and the initiatives of the allies in the Gulf, but every one of their members who did not seemed to be paraded on Irish televison and radio. Miss Shortt had left Niall Kinnock's front bench on precisely the issue of the Gulf War. The constitution of the panels of current affairs programmes as such that a clear impression was given that the Americans were wrong to go to war over Kuwait, a view not shared by a considerable majority of the Irish public. Maybe there were some members of Parliament from Britain on the moderate side of the Labour Party or from the Conservative Party on television. I am sure there were some Conservatives but those from the Labour Party had to be the dissident element, the extreme left. That is all RTE seemed to be interested in — those who would knock the allies' efforts to give freedom back to the people of Kuwait.

If the RTE Authority cannot see that the Irish people are properly represented by the national radio and television station, then the Minister for Communications has a duty. That authority should be disbanded and he should appoint people with the backbone to oversee the proper utilisation of our airwaves and TV channels. The station's coverage of the war pinpoints the stupidity and dangers of appointing political hacks to such responsible and sensitive areas. There has been an unfortunate tradition whereby political appointees get first preference on State bodies. When one looks through the list of members of the RTE Authority, they stick out a mile. How can we expect fair management when the best people are not appointed to the job? It is a disgrace. That type of reporting and coverage is doing this country irreparable harm and the people responsible in RTE and the management do not seem to be able to control it. If they do not, then the authority should see that the public are properly represented and that the views of this House are properly represented.

We had a vote on this issue as recently as two months ago and there was an overwhelming majority in favour of the United Nations Resolutions. That view has not been represented by RTE. They are the primary opinion-forming body. They control the national airwaves and the TV channels. I am afraid that body has been infiltrated by a number of highly undesirable people in key positions representing groups who should not be tolerated in that area.

I am all for free speech. I am all for fair representation for people with different opinions but I am not in favour of domination by certain people whose opinions are held by a tiny minority. That is what we are getting at the moment. Why should the representatives of the Provos, The Workers' Party and every anarchist group in this country be dominating that station, dictating to the public and indoctrinating our children? I am as open minded as anybody else, but things have gone beyond a joke. This is too serious a matter. I do not wish to be accused of McCarthyism or shouting about Reds under the bed. I can give and take the same as anybody else but we are being given a totally biased and slanted version of what is happening in foreign and national affairs, and in particular what was happening in the Gulf War, which for many people including myself was the last straw. I had a lot of correspondence on this issue, some people saying it was right but some people were quite abusive. That is normal, it is par for the course. I said much the same thing to Deputy Haughey, the present Taoiseach, when the Falklands war was taking place. If you express yourself freely you expect to get brickbats, that is part and parcel of being a politician. You get some praise but for the most part you are abused and insulted, and that is all in a day's work.

Quite a few Deputies over the past five or six weeks have told me privately that what I was saying about the Gulf War was right. It may be remembered that ten or 12 weeks ago I said the Government should grant landing rights at all Irish international airports to American planes going to the Gulf. Of course, there was a furore from the left. However, five weeks later, the Government decided to do that and granted landing rights at Shannon. When I said a couple of weeks ago that RTE were extremely one-sided and biased in their presentation of news and current affairs programmes on the Gulf I got quite a bit of stick, but that is to be expected. A number of TDs from all sides — I cannot remember any TDs from the left, but perhaps some of them may have wished to do so, Deputy Mervyn Taylor did not vote in that instance — told me I was right and that they fully agreed with me. They said — and I am paraphrasing them — they would have liked to say the same thing but they were afraid because it might not go down too well in the constituencies where there are many pressure groups and they might lose their seat on the next election. These people are very successful in manipulating the media and they are trying to intimidate and cow people into silence — that is the whole point of the exercise. This is most regrettable. I will not be cowed into silence and I hope a number of other Deputies will come out and say what needs to be said. I will keep saying it as long as it needs to be said, even if I am in a minority of one publicly; I know the clear majority feel as I do. I wish more people would say this openly.

The notion that sanctions would force the Iraqis into withdrawal was a favourite tactic bandied about for not having a war. "Give sanctions time to work" was the great catchphrase. I do not believe any intelligent person thought sanctions would work within a reasonable period of say, six or 12 months, or even several years. Were the Americans and Allies supposed to wait for sanctions to work? Were they to allow their armies to fry in the desert, an army of half a million men and women? Were they to keep the army there for years at enormous expense? The war was costing billions of dollars every week. Perhaps the left wanted to see the Americans brought to their knees financially; meanwhile Saddam was laughing up his sleeve, he could sit there forever. I have a shrewd idea that this is what the left wanted to achieve by their glorious catchphrase "let the sanctions work". If the Americans were ruined financially, perhaps their left wing friends might get into positions where they could create anarchy, eventually giving them some form of control.

During the ground war we had outbursts repeatedly in the Dáil from the left condemning the Americans, as if they were the aggressors. We heard this day after day. One would have imagined that President Bush had started the war and that the Americans were the aggressors. Their comments were avidly reported on RTE. It had all the semblance of being stage managed by left wing elements in the Dáil and RTE. It was as if the left were told "you fire the shot lads and we will see you get well reported". Deputy Michael Higgins alleged in this House that the West, and in particular the Americans, had armed the Iraqis. What nonsense. These lies must be nailed. Not alone did the Russians provide the bulk of the guns, tanks, aircraft and Scud missiles being used by the Iraqis, but they had hundreds of military advisers in Iraq when that country invaded Kuwait last August. The bulk of the Iraqi armaments were Russian provided by the comrades of the left wing parties in this House, who falsely alleged that armaments had been provided by the West, and particularly by the Americans. However, the French are not totally blameless; one can point to Mirage jets and 15 years ago when the Iraqis tried to build a nuclear installation the French gave them some assistance. I am not going to defend the French but primarily the Russians were involved. Let us not lend credence to these false allegations.

Never once during this period of since have we heard one word of condemnation from the parties of the left of the oppression in the Baltic States which has been ongoing for the past couple of years. The oppression in Albania and in Yugoslavia is being carried out by the Communists, comrades of the left wing parties. I have not heard Deputy De Rossa, Deputy Spring or Deputy Michael Higgins say a word in this House about the oppressive measures that have been and are continually being carried out. I refer also to the oppression in all the other East European countries and of the people in the Soviet Union over the past 45 years, since the end of the Second World War.

Another familiar catch phrase during the recent conflict was that the money spent on the war should have been used to feed the starving millions in Africa, a very plausible sentiment no doubt; but how convenient to ignore the savagery and brutality that would be meted out by Saddam on countries not just in the Middle East but quite likely in North Africa and the other places I have mentioned, portions of Europe and Asia as well, because he had the fourth largest army in the world at his disposal. For the reason I have already stated he would have travelled far beyond the borders of Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia if the Americans had not stopped him in his tracks. The argument about using the money to feed the poor is very plausible but you have to make sure that you can protect yourself first and foremost, having internal security and security through the United Nations, and that is what saved the world in this instance. With his well catalogued history of atrocities, it was imperative that this tyrant be stopped and his war machine rendered ineffective.

I am not coming into this House pretending — may be the Americans will still maintain — that the total objective was to free Kuwait. There were several reasons that person and that country had to be taken on. One was that Saddam was not just concerned with Kuwait, he wanted to get his hands on the Middle East oil fields. The second was that his army was capable of butchering millions of people.

The most worrying aspect of the Gulf war where Ireland was concerned has been the reluctance of the Government to openly support the efforts of the Allies. The granting of permission for American planes to land at Shannon was given belatedly and with a certain lack of grace. To think that when the Americans were so successful, people here including the Taoiseach came out, like they did when Stephen Roche won the Tour de France or when Ireland did wonders in the World Cup, and praised them when the whole thing was over. I understand our Government were, in fact, charging landing fees to the Americans for all their planes coming into Shannon. There was no big deal. We were never seen to have a positive effect when it came to helping to fight for the freedom of small nations. We took quite a mercenary view.

The Government have made no effort to counteract the very definite anti-American bias in RTE and other elements of the media. We witnessed a continuing campaign of vilification against successive American Presidents, whether it was Reagan or Bush; and I have no doubt that it will continue with Bush's successor and his successor as well. It is a campaign and it does not matter what the President's name. It is just a case of these people not agreeing with that ideology and wanting to destroy it. However, we are part of it. We are part of the western world and we have a duty to see that this western society is preserved.

Ireland will probably and unfortunately be best remembered abroad as the country where elements responded most viciously to Saddam's request for attack on countries that made up the Allies. I refer specifically to the murderous attacks the IRA made on Downing Street and Victoria station during that land war. Saddam Hussein was on Baghdad radio at the start of the war asking people all over the world to rise and destroy the enemy, and by the enemy he meant the Allies. There was not much done. A few bombs went off harmlessly here and there. One American was shot in Turkey. However the IRA had to do the dirt again and they did it in Downing Street and Victoria station, slaughtering and maiming civilians. Where they are concerned, bigotry knows no bounds.

I want to refer to a letter in The Cork Examiner on Thursday, 7 March, from a man by the name of Clem Ryan from Kilrush, County Clare, to pinpoint the type of argument I have been making about the war. He wrote that he rang up the “Pat Kenny Show” on RTE to protest against the prominence that the left wing elements are getting on that programme and on RTE in general. He mentioned that the previous day he had heard Deputy Proinsias De Rossa being interviewed on the “Pat Kenny Show” giving a tirade of abuse about the Americans. That night he saw Deputy De Rossa being reported on the “Nine O'Clock News” on television and he heard him again some other time. I do not want to quote the letter because it is too long but, he said who appreared on the “Pat Kenny Show” the same day he wrote the letter about his telephone call to RTE but Deputy Dick Spring. Every left wing Deputy in the House who wanted to express his views was able to do so; the airwaves of RTE were only waiting to receive them. At the end of his telephone call — and he was being very courteous — the girl who received the call said to him “are you really serious about all this”? I think that sums up RTE's attitude. They did not want to know about any criticisms of their coverage. She asked him if he was really serious protesting about all these Deputies here, Deputies Michael D. Higgins, Dick Spring, Proinsias De Rossa etc., and Eamon McCann — think of any anarchists and they were all paraded one by one——

An Ceann Comhairle

I have to express concern about the reference to persons outside the House. It is a privileged Assembly and we ought to be slow to refer in a derogatory fashion to persons outside it.

Mr. Deasy

A Cheann Comhairle, you and I face the public. We get elected or defeated time and time again. We suffer the consequences of what we say. The people to whom I am referring, the elements in RTE, do not have to do that. They do not have to suffer. That is why I feel so annoyed about this. There does not seem to be any responsibility. This House has responsibility for the appointment of Ministers. Ministers have responsibility for the setting up of State boards and the appointment of individuals to State boards. State boards have a responsibility to see that the people we represent are properly represented in the views that authorities and bodies like RTE propogate. I say that is not happening. That letter from Mr. Ryan of Kilrush, County Clare, sums it up. The man is obviously just an ordinary member of the public, and anybody like him who has tried to make his point has been shouted down, as they try to shout me down; I know RTE are very annoyed about what I said two weeks ago, but I will keep saying it.

I heard the Minister, Deputy O'Malley, say we would play a significant part in rebuilding Kuwait. My information is that the Kuwaitis will only be asking to work out there people who played a significant part in freeing their country. As I see it, we did not. The ordinary public wanted to. The people of this country were four square behind the Allies, but we were grossly misrepresented abroad. The overriding view abroad would be that the Irish sat on the ditch hoping that the Americans would fall flat on their faces and that the Iraqis would win. That was the impression that the left wing and RTE wanted to give. Thankfully it did not happen. They said there are no winners in war. There are. In this case democracy won; the peace forces won. Unfortunately there were many casualties, hundreds of thousands, but we must remember that we were dealing with a ruthless individual in this Saddam Hussein. He did not care who died, whether they were American soldiers, English soldiers, Kuwaitis or Saudi Arabians. He did not care if they were his own soldiers or his own people. In regard to his own people in particular, he was prepared to see millions of them die so that he could stay in power and expand his empire. I say well done to those who had the courage to take him on and defeat him.

Mr. Durkan

The question of the Gulf War was discussed in this House previously when there was almost universal support for the action taken by the United Nations and the follow-up on the part of the United States. Some speeches made in this House on this matter over the past five or six weeks make me wonder just how much we have learned from history or whether all of the Members of this House have learned adequately from history. While I do not claim to be an expert on international affairs I would contend that I have read as much history as anybody else. One thing I learned a long time ago was that one should never condemn a group or nation that may have been wrong in the past every time just in order to be right. In recent times there has been a tendency in this House to take the view that automatically the United Nations were wrong. One might well ask why the United Nations were wrong. They were wrong because the Americans were on their side and, as a consequence, everything had to be wrong with them. I do not agree with that view at all.

I would ask the House to advert to the origins of the war and what was likely to happen. Very few people have done so at any stage in this debate. Let us face it, there are those who say that this war was avoidable. At the outset let me say I am opposed to war; it was regrettable and a terrible catastrophe that war should have taken place at all and that lives should have been lost but, once an aggressor takes control of those on the war path, which goes right back to Roman times — there is a consequent loss of life unless one allows that aggressor or aggressors to continue. That is what would have happened in this case.

We must ask what the war was about. There are some people in this House who would contend it was about oil. Perhaps it was about oil but we must ask: who really wanted the oil, who wanted it badly? There are those who contend that the Americans wanted it. I do not accept that; I do not believe the Americans needed the oil. I still do not think they need the oil. Indeed, if all of the oil in Kuwait, Saudia Arabia and the Middle East disappeared, I contend the Americans could still survive. As far as I can assertain it was not about oil as far as the Americans were concerned. But Saddam Hussein needed oil in a very big, bad way. Having waged a long, horrendous war with his immediate neighbour Saddam Hussein needed oil because his economy had been decimated and the morale of his people was at a very low ebb. He needed to get control of a resource with which he could rebuild his army. Had he been able to rebuild that army, which he could have done over time, with the massive amount of revenue he could have generated from that oil, he would have been in a very strong position.

Let us consider what was happening in the Middle East in the early stages. King Hussein of Jordan was in a very difficult position. On the one hand he was supportive of the United Nations, but, on the other hand, there were people demonstrating daily on the streets of Jordan supporting Saddam Hussein calling for a holy war — a Jihad — portrayed in the media generally. In those circumstances naturally one would assume tht King Hussein would have had to give way. He was not master in his country; he could not command the support of all of his people. Therefore, one might well assume that the natural progression of the march of Saddam Hussein would have been into Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan. Then he would have been in a position to build an army the like of which had not been seen since the days of Adolf Hitler.

I am somewhat worried about attitudes expressed in this House at times. For example, in recent years Israel and the occupied territories have come into focus on a number of occasions. I do not agree with many of the things the Israelis have done in Lebanon and so on. For example, I do not support their present attitude to the West Bank, where there have been some horrendous scenes. Neither do I support the manner in which they and their people were treated over the past 50 years. Everybody has spoken of linkage. People who wanted to, inside and outside House spoke repeatedly of linkage, asking: what about the West Bank: what about the occupied territories and so on. Let us determine who is right and who is wrong; there may well be wrong on both sides. But do not let us ever forget how the occupied territories came to be occupied in the first place in the sixties and later. Do not let us forget what was happening, the provocation by the Palestinians, or people inspired by them, of the Israelis over that period and the horrendous loss of life perpetrated on the Israelis. I know there are some people in this House who hold views dangerously close to anti-Semitic ones. Neither should we allow that to control our thinking even though that too might be akin to being anti-American. Incidentally, I should point out that I have never been a supporter of American foreign policy — I have said so inside and outside this House — nor have I been a supporter of their economic policy in many instances. But we do depend largely on them here for investment and on many of their subsidiaries throughout the world. If we condemn everything out of hand, on the basis that it is American, we will find ourselves in a most peculiar position.

An Ceann Comhairle

In retrospect I think the Deputy will agree with me that he ought not to attribute anti-Semitic views to any Member of this House.

Mr. Durkan

I do not think I did mention any Member, a Cheann Comhairle. I had been referring to some speeches I had heard in recent weeks.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is something the Chair and his predecessors would deprecate.

Mr. Durkan

Some of the views expressed on the last occasion this matter was discussed in the House left me concerned. Were I an Israeli or a member of the Jewish race, living in Israel, looking around at all my enemies arrayed on all sides, I would be more than a little concerned. I would have to ask where my friends were in such circumstances. I would also have to remember that I occupied a very thin, narrow strip of ground between some of my enemies and the sea, a very crucial, strategic area. Probably then I would take a different attitude from the one I can afford to take as a Member of this House and far removed from the problem.

There is one lesson to be learned from history, as referred to by other speakers, and it is simply that war is a horrendous visitation on any community. There are lessons to be learned from previous wars which it would appear has not been learned by many Members of this House. One of them is that appeasement is about the worst possible means of dealing with an aggressor. It just does not work, it has not worked before; it did not work in 1937-38, it has not worked since and will not work in the future.

There are those who say that sanctions should have been allowed longer to bite — so they might — but the one difficulty was and many commentators said that Saddam Hussein was a very clever, political man and he was. Undoubtedly he was watching to ascertain the manner in which he could manipulate the free press, in fact the free western world.

By playing his game in the way he did he knew he could generate sympathy; he knew that the calls for appeasement repeated by genuinely peace-loving people would be to his advantage because that would give him more time and time was what he very badly wanted — time to utilise the Kuwaiti oilfields, time to continue in occupation, time to expand in the Middle East. Had he been given time he would have been able to generate the necessary resources to build an army of the kind he wanted. He was very successful; he did it very well; he got his message across. In fact he received as much coverage on western television as did the western side. When a country sends a military force abroad to fight a war a certain amount of jingoism, reminiscent of the great white heroes, riding white steeds and so on is bandied about. I take all of that with a grain of salt as I am sure do most people in this House.

Whether we like it or not, Saddam Hussein was able to get his message across clearly. Let us ask ourselves, where do we go today? What happens now? I have also said before here — and repeated it outside — that the cost of war in human life is horrendous and we should never set it aside without pointing out all our responsibilities in relation to any such action. We must remember also that in 1936, 1937 or 1938, 100,000 lives would have been a horrendous cost of peace at that time. Had anybody mentioned the loss of a million lives at that time as a means of ending the aggression that was about to take place the free world would have risen up in arms and said: "This cannot happen" yet, in excess of 40 million lives were lost before that war was over and, ultimately, it came to war. It was a terrible tragedy which visited virtually every household in the nations of Europe in a big way, including many households here.

The lesson to be learned is that if we have to deal with an aggressor, such as Saddam Hussein there are two ways to deal with him, in the initial stages when it is possible to deal with him, or later when we have to deal with him. The lesser of the two evils, in my opinion, is that the aggressor can be controlled if he is dealt with in the initial stages.

I marvelled at the commentators when Saddam Hussein was in control of Kuwait. Various aspects of the media considered the manner in which the allied forces could deal with the situation. They talked about a ground war, a direct assault on Kuwait and so on. Anybody who has ever read anything about military history must surely know that that was the last thing the allies would do. If they had learned anything from any of the wars that ever took place previously the obvious thing was to move in somewhere else. They did this, moved closer to the homeland of the aggressor and put the pressure on him in his own country. That has always been a military tactic. There were fair-minded people who genuinely thought that a ground war should have been started straight away and that the allies should have moved in and attacked and devastated Kuwait. I cannot but ask myself the question: "How serious are these commentaries"? The simple reason is that if we had learned from past lessons in history we would surely have learned that past mistakes should not be repeated.

While I have not been a supporter of US policy I have to say that on this occasion the United States was absolutely correct and I fully support the moves they made. It is regrettable that there was loss of life. This should not have happened. If Saddam Hussein had not annexed Kuwait it would never have happened just as if Adolph Hitler had not annexed Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and the other countries the last war would not have happened.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Technically we must formally call the Minister of State. I gather he has some formula he might present to the Chair.

Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs (Mr. Calleary)

I would need about 15 to 20 minutes. I understand that Deputy Garland has been here all day and I would be grateful if you could allow him to speak now.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Perhaps Deputy Garland will tailor his thoughts to six or seven minutes.

Mr. Garland

I thank you, and the Minister of State, for facilitating me. Having listened to the speeches today I consider that the Taoiseach's unequivocal support for the war and the message of congratulations to President Bush has dishonoured Ireland's reputation. It has stripped us of any integrity in the eyes of the international world who have always seen Ireland as a neutral country. The Government have now formally abandoned Irish neutrality in a particularly devious and ambiguous manner and to the total disregard of the wishes of 70 per cent of our people as represented by the latest opinion poll.

If the Taoiseach's speech was disappointing, Deputy O'Keeffe's speech was even worse. Deputy O'Keeffe attacked the Taoiseach for what he described as his minimalist approach to the Gulf War. He felt that allowing the Shannon stop-over for US planes was the very least we could do. That is not so. He further went on to say that, of course, we would be clearly in breach of our solidarity with the UN if we failed to support the US and allied war. That is not so either. It would be quite in order for Ireland to take a completely neutral stance in the war but we decided not to do so. This stance has not only been accepted by Fine Gael but had Fine Gael been in Government this country would have gone a lot further into the war, God knows how much further.

The final nail in the coffin was Deputy O'Malley's speech which has to be one of the most insensitive speeches ever made in this House. He had the effrontery to mention the Stock Exchange index in the context of the deaths of 500,000 people in the Gulf and the untold ecological damage there. Have we really descended to this level? Can everything be reduced to pounds, shillings and pence? That was absolutely deplorable. It has also been said today — and Deputy Deasy referred to it — that we charged the US Government for the use of the Shannon stop-over. Is this another example of our gombeenism? If we were going to do this we should have made no charge to the US. It was bad enough to allow the US troops to use our airport but to actually charge them for this is deplorable; the blood is on our hands as well as on the American Government. This is one of the most ignoble incidents in our history.

The ground war should never have started. The Russian peace initiative, as finally negotiated with Iraq, gave the allied forces 99 per cent of what they were looking for. The remaining 1 per cent dealt mainly with the timescale of the withdrawal and a couple of minor incidents. This was rejected out of hand by the allied forces. What has happened? Whatever about the destruction of the Iraqi army and the unnecessarily severe attacks by the allied troops on retreating Iraqi forces — which was cowardly to say the least — their dead troops were not even sent home in body bags, they were left to rot in the desert. It facilitated Saddam Hussein in his madness to set fire to the oil wells. We foretold this, we warned the Government that this was exactly what Saddam would do. Had the allied forces accepted the Russian peace initiative that could have been stopped.

The burning of the oil wells in Kuwait will lead to the greatest ecological disaster the world has ever faced. Every nation is saying that. Do not rely solely on the Green Party, ask any neutral observer and they will say that it will take years to put them out, even Red Adair will need three years to put out these fires. In the meantime our atmosphere is being poisoned by CO2 and SO2 and the sun is being darkened. This will have untold ecological effects throughout the world, and all because that necessary 1 per cent was missing from the Russian peace initiative.

It should be borne in mind that people in America have had the courage to stand up and speak their minds. For example, Henry B. Gonzales, a member of the United States Congress, submitted a resolution which proposes to impeach George Herbert Walker Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanours. The Green Party applaud this initiative which we hope will hold those people who have committed war crimes, including Saddam Hussein and his gang and those on the allied side who have committed unspeakable war crimes against innocent civilians and retreating Iraqi troops, responsible for their actions.

The Green Party are very concerned about the oil spills.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I must remind the Deputy that he has been speaking for over eight minutes.

Mr. Garland

These oil spills could have been anticipated and prevented.

Debate adjourned.