Howard: Troops must stay until Iraq is safe
It was a “terrible mistake” not to have a properly planned exit strategy from Iraq, Michael Howard has admitted.
But the Conservative leader insisted it would be “irresponsible” for British troops to pull out before they were sure that they were leaving a stable situation behind them.
“The circumstances in which we withdraw have to be circumstances that relate to the state at which Iraq is at that time. Any arbitrary timetable or any arbitrary declarations I think could lead to very serious and dangerous consequences,” he told Today.
Condemning the call by his Lib Dem counterpart for troops to leave Iraq, he said: “It is easy to call for an exit strategy as Charles Kennedy did, without knowing what that should be.”
Defence secretary John Reid this week said that Britain “will not cut and run” from Iraq, and that British forces would stay until the Iraqi government no longer needed them.
Speaking this morning, Mr Howard defended his party’s support for action against Saddam Hussein, but admitted that a plan should have been developed for what to do after he was deposed.
“We never had such a plan; that was a terrible mistake. I think that if we had had such a plan we would not have disbanded the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police,” he said.
A reappraisal of policy in Iraq should now take place, the Tory leader said, but this did not mean immediate withdrawal.
“There is a very real danger that we would leave behind a country that was a hotbed of international terrorism, a centre for international terrorism which could be a disaster for the world. That would be an irresponsible thing to do,” he said.
Particular effort should be directed at dealing with the armed militias in Iraq, he said, who were at the root of the problem and “one of the most dangerous elements in a difficult situation”.
“It has got to be made clear to the interim government that this state of affairs is completely incompatible with the peaceful, stable, sustainable Iraq they want to see,” he said.
