REGIME IN AFGHANISTAN

Early day motion 549, tabled 4 April 2001 by Harry Cohen (Labour). Signed by 23 members.

That this House recalls the exchange in the House on 8th March 1989, Official Report, column 892, between the honourable Member for Leyton and the then Foreign Secretary in which the former asked why the then Government was backing a rag-bag of fanatics and terrorists in Afghanistan who if they ever achieved power would be a deadly cocktail of the Ayatollah and Pol Pot, keep the country feudal and the Afghani people having to endure incessant hostilities, to which the Minister, now Lord Howe of Aberavon, claimed that by their assumption of power bloodshed could end and further declared that the honourable Member's perception of the matter was wholly at fault; and concludes from this 12 year vantage point that the honourable Member for Leyton was right and the Conservative Foreign Secretary wholly at fault.

Signatures by party: Labour 20, Labour/Co-operative 3.