Iraq: Ministry Human Rights

Question To The Foreign Secretary

7th June 2004

Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab): The House will welcome the Foreign Secretary's confirmation that 11 of the 26 Government Departments are already in Iraqi hands and that the rest will be by the end of the month. Will he confirm that one of these Government ministries is a Ministry of Human Rights, the only such Ministry in the entire middle east? Does he agree that the UN resolution will assist enormously in the 30 January passage of sovereignty, the 31 January elections in Iraq and the 31 December expiry of the mandate? Should not this House give its best wishes and say Godspeed to the United Nations in the hope that these things come about and that the insurgency and insurrection do not disrupt democracy for all the people of Iraq?

Mr. Straw: I agree with my hon. Friend and I can confirm that there is a Ministry of Human Rights—the only one, I think, in the middle east—which sits alongside the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice to proselytise and establish human rights of a kind that Iraqis have never known.