John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

But the Leader of the Opposition drew my attention to some comments of the head of the British army. He has made a number of comments about this issue, but let me draw the Leader of the Opposition’s attention in the same context to the remarks made at a news conference today by the Iraqi oil minister, a man who has very high repute in Iraq, a man who suffered torture under Saddam Hussein. This is what he had to say:

We expect the international community to stay with the Iraqi people in this war against international terrorism, because if these people are allowed to succeed, God forbid, in Iraq, then they will be a threat to the whole world.

They are the views of an Iraqi minister. You can choose to ignore them, you can choose to wholly embrace them or you can try and put them into some kind of context. But quite plainly what this Iraqi minister is saying—a man who knows better than anybody in this House what it is like in Iraq—is that the terrorists would gain an enormous victory if we were to pull out. And that is our argument. I keep bringing the Leader of the Opposition back to this.

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