Foreign Affairs and Defense

18 May 2005
Ms Diane Abbott: Does my hon. Friend agree that Iraq was the foreign policy issue that was most frequently raised with Labour candidates on the doorstep? Does he also agree that the danger of an indefinite deployment of our troops in Iraq is that they will move from being seen as an army of liberation to being seen as an army of occupation? There is nothing in the history of the 20th century that suggests that the indefinite occupation by western troops of a third world country is politically sustainable.

Jeremy Corbyn: My hon. Friend makes a valuable and correct point. The longer the troops stay when they are unwelcome, the harder it is for them to go, the more brutal is the departure and the more humiliating is the endgame. When the United States finally had to leave Vietnam in 1976, we all have memories of US helicopters evacuating people from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. I plead with the Government to think carefully about the situation in Iraq and to give us some proposals and plans for the withdrawal of British and US forces from that country. They should think also of the longer term consequences within the region of the illegal nature of the war.

...

Ms Abbott: Does my hon. Friend agree that while we welcome and support the personal commitment by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to fighting poverty in Africa and the poorest countries, that campaign should not be conducted at the expense of middle income countries that are our traditional allies and friends? In particular, unless the push towards free markets and liberalisation and the removal of protection from traditional Caribbean agricultural products such as sugar and bananas are carefully managed, countries such as Jamaica and the Leeward and Windward islands will be plunged into poverty. If agricultural labourers are displaced from the traditional crops of sugar and bananas, they will diversify not into computer programming, but into the drugs trade and criminality. We must give careful thought to the process of liberalisation so that we do not make poor people poorer.

Jeremy Corbyn: As my hon. Friend knows, I too am a member of the all-party Caribbean group, and the best years of my life were spent in Jamaica, so I hope that I have some understanding of the problems that are faced by economies that developed around sugar and bananas and other fruit for export to Europe through the colonial system. If we remove that avenue for sale, as we are doing at present, impoverishment will follow, followed by the drugs trade and criminal elements. Tourism cannot solve all problems within the Caribbean; there has to be an indigenous agricultural system there, and we should be supportive of that.



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