miles: a has-been counter

Note that Blair just won the labour party censure vote on Iraq 6-1....your mate Latham after saving the trees will also be saving Iraq from our troops....



Thu 30 Sep 2004


Iraqi's Plea to Labour: don't Pull Out Troops

By Vivienne Morgan, Political Staff, PA News

The woman who helped swing the vote at the Labour conference over pulling troops out of Iraq today accused party members of naivety about the situation in the country.

Shanaz Rashid Ð whose husband is a minister in the interim Iraqi government Ð was earlier given a standing ovation when she made an emotional appeal not to pull troops out.

Close to tears, she told party activists that many friends had perished under Saddam Hussein and she had kissed the ground with joy on arriving back at Baghdad after the war.

She praised the Prime Minister for "standing up" to Saddam and liberating the country.

"Yes, there have been difficulties. Yes, there have been mistakes perhaps many mistakes. No, you did not find weapons of mass destruction.

"But for the great majority of Iraqis WMD was never the issue. We donÕt understand the criticism of your Prime Minister. All we wanted was to be free."

She added: "I appeal to you all ... to help us build a new democratic federal Iraq that would respect the lives of human beings."

Asked later if she considered Labour members naive about the situation for Iraqis, she said: "Yes I do think so. They donÕt know the reality of their lives.

"They havenÕt lived through Saddam. They donÕt know what weÕve been through.

"It is not fair of them to ask the British Government to withdraw their forces before completing their mission.

"They are going to harm the Iraqi people more. They are going to cause more deaths.

"If they are concerned about the Iraqi children they should not be asking the British Government to leave them alone at the mercy of others."

She continued: "The Iraqi people born 30 or 35 years ago have seen nothing but one kind of rule and that is dictatorship."

"You cannot just change them in a matter of day and night. People of Iraq have become strangers. We need time to be introduced to each other again."

"We should be given time to know one another, to see the differences, to see the options and we need all the help in the world to rebuild our home."

Mrs Rashid is a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a sister party of Socialists International.

She left Iraq in 1973 and has lived in Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen and Kuwait.

Now living in Surrey, she plans to return to Iraq when her two children have finished exams here.

Mrs Rashid, who has attended the conference before, said she had badgered party officials for an opportunity to speak.

"We feel that our fate, out future and our lives are being discussed behind closed doors without involving us," she said.

She insisted the vast majority of Iraqis were in favour of coalition intervention and that life was improving for most people.



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