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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 3562 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

are 200,000 secret police. As Mr Stefaniak pointed out, the republican guards division is 100,000 strong. Members of the republican guards division are well paid and well fed-and to hell with the rest of the country.

These people are not going to be able to rise up and change this regime-they need help. Given that Iraq has a reservoir of weapons of mass destruction, the only way the international community is going to neutralise the effect of that reservoir of weapons of mass destruction is for regime change to occur. (Extension of time granted.)

I did not agree with the imposing of international sanctions on Iraq-they brought a lot of suffering to Iraq-but that is a lesson we learn from history. As I was saying earlier, the west underestimated Saddam's willingness to exploit those sanctions and use them against his own people.

How easy do you think it is for a battered Landcruiser-a typical two-tonne vehicle-to drive out of Iraq carrying anthrax, botulism, and chemical weapons in the back, to be thrown onto an Arab dhow and taken across the Persian Gulf? It is not that hard. In fact, that may already have occurred. It is a scenario we can neither avoid nor ignore.

Saddam Hussein was operating with a terrorist group in north Iraq known as Hezbellah Kurd. This group was working with both the Iranians and the Iraqis in the civil war that had broken out between Kurdish factions in north Iraq. Saddam was working with, arming, and supporting those people. Three years later, in approximately 1997, it was well known that Hezbellah Kurd had links with al-Qaeda. To me, that is an example of how things regularly change in the Middle East. The Byzantine nature of the place is that alliances change.

We cannot ignore the possibility that, even though Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are from opposite ends of the terrorist spectrum, they may join to pursue dual goals. That is why the international community needs to move quickly to nullify this concern. Mr Deputy Speaker, I say to my colleagues on the crossbenches, "Please, you need to see these things-you need to understand these things. You need to understand why the international community must take action."

Clearly Ms Dundas' motion is one which is morally and philosophically sound, because we all want to avoid war. If, for God's sake, we have to go to war-or the international community goes to war-we would prefer to see the UN go to war, if the current UN program fails to disarm Saddam. However, I think we must also say that it is the United States, with its strength, that has brought the situation to where it is now.

What are we going to do? Are we going to have an 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st breaking of the resolution-more cat and mouse games? Saddam is the expert of brinksmanship-playing games-playing on the weaknesses that exist within the Security Council to push these things along. Saddam cares about only two things-himself and his weapons of mass destruction. He does not care about his son, Uday; he does not care about his family in Tigrai; he does not care about his people-he just wants to survive. The only thing Saddam does respect is fear.

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