E and OE
15 December, 2003
Transcript
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer
Doorstop interview, Garden Island Naval Base, Sydney
REPORTER: Mr Downer, a question you usually ask sporting stars after a victory – how do you feel?
DOWNER: Well, obviously we feel relieved that Saddam Hussein has been captured. I think it wouldn’t be a secret to tell you that we’re absolutely delighted that he’s been captured. I think this has the potential to make an enormous difference to the situation on the ground in Iraq in time. It may not in the very short term, but in time I think there are two effects that it’ll have. First of all, the ordinary people of Iraq will know that Saddam Hussein’s regime is never coming back, and they’ll be very relieved about that.
And secondly, those elements that have been attacking coalition forces and the Iraqis themselves, those supporters of Saddam Hussein and their terrorist friends, they’ll know that their attacks are not going to bring back Saddam Hussein, that his regime is absolutely finished. So I think this is an enormously important point in history for Iraq and for the broader international community. And we couldn’t be more pleased for the success of the Americans in capturing Saddam Hussein.
REPORTER: Have the Americans advised you at this stage what they’re planning to do with him?
DOWNER: Well, I had a discussion this morning with Colin Powell about this. I’ve expressed the view that here in Australia we think it would be most appropriate if Saddam Hussein was prosecuted by the Iraqi people before an Iraqi court. He’s an Iraqi, the people who have been the victims of Saddam Hussein haven’t only been Iraqis but they have largely been Iraqis. And I think to use this war crimes tribunal, or what’s called the Iraq Special Tribunal that has coincidentally only been set up in the last couple of weeks, to prosecute Saddam Hussein would be a very constructive way forward.
I think the Americans are sympathetic with that, they’re obviously looking at the issue. But I think the alternative of dragging him off to the United States and finding a way of prosecuting him in an American court or putting him before some UN tribunal is much less satisfactory than ensuring that the Iraqi people themselves can bring this monster to justice.
REPORTER: What’s your view on the possible execution of Saddam Hussein?
DOWNER: Well, in the end that’s going to be a matter for whatever tribunal he goes before. It might be that the Iraqis will choose that option, that they will choose capital punishment. I personally am not a supporter of capital punishment but on the other hand if that’s the option chosen by the Iraqis, that’s probably what will happen. But we’ll have to wait and see. They have suspended capital punishment in Iraq at the moment, so whether they would reintroduce that for Saddam Hussein now - at the end of the day, I’m not a supporter of capital punishment. But when you look at the list of victims of Saddam Hussein, we found three hundred thousand bodies in somewhere between one hundred and fifty and two hundred mass graves in Iraq since the end of the war.
He started two wars against his neighbours in which over a million people were killed. He used chemical weapons against his own people. What sort of a man is this? And if in the end the Iraqis chose to execute him, that probably wouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody.
REPORTER: So you accept that as inevitable if you’re going through Iraqis determining his fate instead of the United Nations in the international (indistinct)?
DOWNER: I think it’s preferable. I think it’s much better that he be prosecuted by the Iraqis in Iraq. He was the President of Iraq, he’s an Iraqi, and one of the principles that applies to the International Criminal Court is what’s called the principle of complementarity. That is, if there’s a domestic court that can do the job, the domestic court should be given preference over an international tribunal. I think that is a good principle. I think it would be better that he was prosecuted in Iraq.
Now, if for some reason that wasn’t going to happen, that would be a different matter. But it is going to happen, I don’t think the Iraqi people would want to do anything but prosecute Saddam Hussein for the wicked crimes that he’s committed over the last three decades.
REPORTER: Even if the death penalty is somewhat inevitable?
DOWNER: I don’t know that it’s inevitable but I would say it’s more likely than not – that’s up to the Iraqis.
REPORTER: While (indistinct) different operation, does this give us hope that bin Laden can (indistinct)?
DOWNER: The difficulty with Osama bin Laden is that we believe we know the general area where he is but he moves across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, so there are some real jurisdictional issues there. The Pakistanis don’t allow the coalition troops to cross the border into Pakistan. So, anyway it just reminds us we’ve got to get Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar and that they shouldn’t think for a minute we’re giving up on trying to get them. We’re still working at it.
REPORTER: When will you have a clearer picture about the withdrawal of Australia’s military commitment?
DOWNER: Well, it’s too early to make any commitment on that at the moment. I think we’ll have to wait and see how the situation pans out. I think we’ll have some difficult times in the short term in Iraq. But I think, as time goes on, the situation will get increasingly better and the Iraqi people will really now strive to make their country work successfully.
By the middle of next year, Iraq should have more than the Iraqi Governing Council they have, but a genuine Iraqi government and by the time we reach that point, there’ll obviously be some review of military commitments that different countries have made. But let’s just wait and see.
REPORTER: (inaudible question)
DOWNER: Yes, we’ve spoken to the Chinese on a number of occasions about this issue and I’ve spoken to the Chinese myself over the last few years about it. And just before our latest announcement on missile defence, we spoke to the Chinese about it.
Look, their reaction is that they have a position where they have some nervousness about missile defence because of the Taiwan issue. But we explained to the Chinese that, first of all, our role in it would be much more a research and development and scientific role, perhaps in the exchange of data, that sort of thing. And we’re not building the missile defence systems here in Australia or transferring them to Taiwan.
And secondly, this is only a system that is aimed at dealing with missiles from rogue states or rogue organisations. They haven’t made a big issue of it. They haven’t come back to us and made representations since then.
REPORTER: Do you think that now that there (indistinct) … Saddam Hussein’s been called the biggest weapon of mass destruction that … (indistinct) sort of search will continue or…
DOWNER: Oh, no, I think the search absolutely needs to continue. I think there’s been a lot of verballing of the Kay Report, which is the Iraq Survey Group Interim Report produced a couple of months ago.
What the Kay Report demonstrates is from discussions with witnesses and former scientists in Iraq, that Iraq was absolutely proceeding with its weapons of mass destruction programs. What hasn’t been found are the actual missiles or the actual shells loaded with chemical material or a large number of biological agents, though some biological agents have been found.
Obviously, Saddam Hussein himself knows a great deal about the weapons of mass destruction program – he’s presided over it and he’s the one who’s authorised the use of chemical weapons in the past. But there’s another point to make about this. I think Iraqis themselves will be much more forthcoming now in talking to the coalition about this issue because they know that Saddam Hussein is never coming back.
I think a lot of Iraqis are worried that there’d be a lot of political pressure in western countries to get the Americans to withdraw from Iraq and when that happened, then Saddam Hussein could come back to power. Now the Iraqis know that that’s not going to happen.
REPORTER: Just on a lighter note, can I just get a response? We’ve seen some spontaneous celebrations by Australians, sort of, here in Sydney and (indistinct) people taking to the streets – quite joyous about this experience. Does that sort of lighten the heart considering the controversy surrounding the war in the first place?
DOWNER: Well, people like John Howard and Robert Hill and I, we have to be prepared to be big enough to deal with controversy. I mean that’s what we’re paid to do. We’re paid to make good decisions and not paid to make easy decisions.
We could have made an easy decision and if the world had made an easy decision, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today. Sure, that might have been politically easy to do that but it wouldn’t be a good world if Saddam Hussein was still there.
We stood up for a lot of things in the last year. One of the things we stood up for is human rights. It wouldn’t be a good contribution to human rights to have turned your back on the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime and left him in power given a choice, and we had a choice … haven’t always had a choice, but this year we had a choice.
And when we had a choice we took the choice. We took the choice to contribute to the disposal of the regime of Saddam Hussein. That is a wonderful thing for the people of Iraq and that is a great commitment to a more secure world, and it’s a great commitment to human rights. And I think we should be proud of the role our defence force did play and still plays in helping rid the world of that monstrous dictator.
REPORTER: But human rights weren’t the reason that we went to Iraq though, were they?
DOWNER: Well, we said that the legal basis for it, the legal basis for the war was breach of Security Council Resolution 1441. That was the legal basis for it. But I’m sorry to say to people who were opposed to getting rid of Saddam Hussein’s regime that if we had taken their advice, and at one stage it was very popular advice, then Saddam Hussein would still be there. He’d still be in power. He’d still be brutalising his people. He’d still be threatening his neighbours. He is gone. He is behind bars. It’s a great thing.
REPORTER: (indistinct) area of human rights (indistinct)?
DOWNER: Well, I think in the case of PNG, it’s not that there are so much human rights problems, although there are human rights problems everywhere, of course. But it’s not so much a human rights issue, it’s a practical issue. They need help with reinforcing their law and order, reinforcing their police. They need some assistance with improving the efficiency of their bureaucracy and we are able to provide that assistance. And I think it’s an important thing that we do as a country. We make every effort to create a better world and I don’t think we’re doing a bad job.