David Norris (Independent)

I was arrested on the way in because my comments were not so bland as to please the Indonesia administration.

With regard to the incidence of disease, while diarrhoea is a simple disease to treat, large number of children are dying from it in Iraq. Some 70% of all child deaths recently in Iraq have been diarrhoea related. Dysentery and typhoid are also becoming a significant problem and this is partly due to the bombing of the water and electricity supply infrastructure.

In a recent UNICEF newsletter there is a picture of a young girl, Ayat, picking grains of rice out of sewer in front of her house and washing them so that they can be sold in order to supplement the family income because they are starving. That is a classic method of transmitting disease.

I did not get into East Timor because I was arrested. I am honoured to have been arrested and not to have been allowed in. However, I have been to Baghdad and I have been to the children's hospital. I would like to tell Members what Maura Quinn has to say in her report about the situation there. She wrote: