Mary Henry (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and compliment him on his speech. He and his officials have applied intelligence to the situation because there is no good in being sentimental about it. We are all deeply upset. It is like the joke where a man is asked for directions and he answers that he would not start from here. None of us would have started from here in trying to help Iraq and it is no comfort to those who campaigned against the US-led invasion of Iraq that we are now in this dreadful situation.

It depressed me profoundly to hear the Minister of State say that he had visited Liberia and the situation there is better than that in Iraq. That is terrible if one thinks of the history of Iraq and Mesopotamia as a cradle of civilisation compared to a country that is less than 250 years old and was engaged in a civil war for 15 years. It demonstrates how terrible this problem is. It is encouraging, however, that so many of us here are so interested in what the Minister of State is doing and anxious to support him.