Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

a 100-odd page report. We welcome the work of the Iraq Study Group. It is one of a number of reviews that have been undertaken. What is interesting about this issue is that the Iraq Study Group agrees with the goal articulated by the United States administration, by the British government and by other coalition partners, of which there are 27 including Australia. The goal in Iraq is ‘an Iraq that can govern, sustain and defend itself’. That is an entirely sensible and obvious, I would have thought, goal.

The Baker-Hamilton report makes 79 different proposals. They are all worth looking at seriously. I will identify one of those proposals, and that is that there should be increasing diplomacy with Iran and Syria. I can say that the Australian government has taken the view all along that it is important we maintain dialogue with Iran on a lot of issues but importantly on this issue. Indeed, just last week I spent half an hour on the telephone with the Iranian foreign minister, most of the time—not all of the time—discussing the issue of Iraq. Whilst the Australian government is much in favour of further diplomacy with Iran and Syria, it has to be said that our hopes are not high for what that can achieve. Nevertheless, we see it as a useful initiative but one that you would have to be heroically optimistic to believe is likely to achieve a significant change.

Next week the defence minister and I will be in Washington for the annual AUSMIN talks with our American counterparts. This will be an opportunity for us to further discuss, amongst other issues of course, the question of Iraq. As difficult as the situation is in Iraq, and especially in and around the Baghdad area, it is important to succeed in Iraq. It is also important to do something else, and that is to take into account the wishes of the Iraqi people. Some people set themselves up as greater judges than the Iraqi people. There are two things that the Iraqi people want. One of the things they want is to be rid of Saddam Hussein, and we helped them get rid of Saddam Hussein, and they do not want him back. The second thing they want is the international presence in Iraq for as long as necessary. Their own domestic security forces, particularly their army, are unable to handle security effectively enough themselves. It was never the object of the coalition to colonise Iraq; it was always the object of the coalition to set up a situation in Iraq where a democratic government would be able to sustain itself.

The Iraq Study Group of course reinforces these very arguments. I know the Prime Minister has mentioned this already but it is worth repeating: the Iraq Study Group, which the Americans would say is a ‘cross-aisle’ group, includes Democrats and Republicans. A lot of people said that the election of a Democrat majority in the American Congress would mean the United States would just quit Iraq. This cross-aisle study group, this bipartisan study group, say that there were some ideas that the group explicitly rejected. They said that they did not ‘recommend a precipitous withdrawal of troops because that might not only cause a bloodbath, it would also invite a wider regional war’. They are the words of Democrats and Republicans. They are the words, if I may say so, of people who have studied this issue in even greater detail than the Australian opposition.

When we are asked if there are alternative policies in a difficult situation, our answer is that there is the Leader of the Opposition’s policy, which is to haul up the white flag and surrender, and there is the Australian government’s policy which is not to surrender but to stand by the people of Iraq for as long as they want us to do so to ensure that a democratic government in Iraq which has successfully been elected is able to survive in the teeth of insurgents and terrorists.

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