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no reference to the results that Mr. Baker achieved. Perhaps the noble Earl who will wind up the debate will do that.
The situation is not satisfactory. The Chinese and the Russians have not deployed troops. They are plainly reluctant to approve the use of force. Either of them can prevent it under the auspices of the United Nations. Apart from that, it is hard to see, without Soviet acquiescence, that military action can succeed. The attitude of the French is not by any means clear. Apart from Kuwait the attitude of the Arab governments is not clear. Syria and Saudi Arabia have not said plainly that they are willing to participate in action beyond the boundaries of Saudi Arabia even though both those governments have been amply rewarded already for the dispatch of troops to the coalition.
Yesterday President Mubarak said specifically that Egypt would not take part in military action across the Saudi frontier. He undertook only that Egypt would contribute a peacekeeping force afterwards in Kuwait. These governments have strong and particular reasons for wanting the downfall of Saddam Hussein, but all of them, including the government of Morocco, are plainly worried by reactions at home to the spectacle of their governments fighting an Arab country side by side with the United States. Incidentally, their troops are deployed between the British and American and the Iraqi troops. That is a comparatively minor matter but obviously it is an operational headache of the first order. The important point is that we must have grave misgivings about a United States and a United Kingdom commitment to engage Iraq unless there is also substantial Arab support by dispatch of troops to the coalition. The first Arab deaths through American bombing could produce what the noble Lord, Lord Pym, described very aptly as a re-run of the Crusades, and no outcome could be more disastrous than that. Yet it is a possibility.
The Americans perceive themselves as upholding international law and the resolutions of the Security Council and in this instance they are right--but their posture is seriously undermined by their disregarding of international law and Security Council resolutions in other instances. The instance about which the Arabs are most keenly sensitive is that of Palestine. On resolutions concerned with the occupied territories, under President Reagan the United States used its veto 18 times. President Bush has so far used the veto four times and undoubtedly would have used it twice more recently had he not required more support from his Arab allies in the coalition. It is small wonder that the Saudi, Egyptian and Syrian governments hold back and hesitate when asked to ally themselves with the United States against an Arab country.
President Bush showed some awareness of this problem when he stated that after the Kuwait crisis was settled the time would come to handle the problem of Palestine. That does not seem to have had the major impact it should have had. It is not clear to me and here I speak entirely for myself—why, during this difficult and perhaps long period of waiting
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for sanctions to take effect, a period when the United States urgently needs to build up its Arab support, President Bush's offer should not be brought forward and why the Security Council, quite independently of Iraq and entirely on its own merits, should not address itself now to the implementation of its resolutions on Palestine.
Such a move by the Security Council would certainly be supported by all Arabs unitedly, including the Iraqi people. It would help the anti-Saddam coalition to solidify. It would strengthen it. It would further isolate Saddam Hussein. If the coalition found later that it needed to take military action, that action would be taken with greater moral authority and with greater Arab support. I do not expect the noble Earl to commit the Government to my proposal today but I should be most grateful if in due course he could let me know what the Government's attitude to it is.
The outlook in the Gulf is difficult and dark at the present time, but as other noble Lords have said during the debate the Gulf crisis could and should produce positive results as well-above all, the assertion of the authority of the Security Council in other parts of the Middle East besides the Gulf; and the deployment of a powerful United Nations force in the Gulf could be a very useful precedent. Several speakers have referred to the security of Israel. Is it simply dreaming-I do not think it is after the precedents set in the Gulf to think that one could have a United Nations force, with American and European troops, in the West Bank and Gaza, guaranteeing the security of Israel, protecting the Palestinians, as they deserve to be protected, from the treatment they are receiving now from the occupying forces and thus also enabling Israel to dispense with control of South Lebanon, which it believes to be necessary, and which in itself might relieve the Syrians of the need to control the rest of the country?
Of course the realisation of such ideas is a long time away, but it seems to me that what has happened in the Gulf makes them more credible and practicable than before. In addition, as other speakers mentioned, they would make more possible the liberalisation of some of the Gulf regimes. Moreover, the redistribu- tion of some of the vast assets of the oil-producing countries and of the oil companies would help to develop some of the poorer countries in the region. It has been said that after the Gulf crisis the Middle East will never be the same again. Those of us who have had a lot to do with the region in past years may believe that that would not be a bad outcome.
10.40 p.m.
Lord Richard: My Lords, I shall begin by dealing with two pleasant matters before I launch into the debate. I should like first to thank the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for his kind words about me in his opening speech. I am most grateful to him for them. Secondly, I should like to congratulate the two maiden speakers, who both made extraordinary speeches today.
I am sure that everyone who listened to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Dunn, will agree with me when I say that it was a performance which we shall