'Overwhelming' case for UN backing

Ms Short gave evidence to a Commons committee

Re-establishing order in Iraq after a war will be significantly more difficult if the explicit authorisation of the UN has not been sought for the attack, Clare Short has said.

The international development secretary told MPs that a second resolution would be key to ensuring a unity of effort across the international community to help ordinary Iraqis.

The complexity, if there isn't a united international will, will be dreadful

Clare Short

Ms Short was quizzed about UN estimates that war could cause up to 900,000 refugees in the region.

"I think these considerations underline the overwhelming case for a [UN] Security Council resolution if there is to be action," she told the Commons International Development committee.

Charge

"The complexity, if there isn't a united international will, will be dreadful."

Ms Short said key to re-establishing order was ensuring that existing borders of Iraq remained.

She added that a second mandate to back up resolution 1441 would have to set out the arrangement for who would be in charge in Iraq after a war.

Otherwise there would be a power vacuum that would be filled by whoever took the military action.

Ms Short said that if military action forces the end of the UN's current oil-for-food programme it could cause "lots of hunger and disaster".

Risk

She said it would be vital to put new governmental structures in place in a post-war Iraq to avoid such a scenario.

The "most optimistic scenario" was of a short conflict - and that another possibility was that weapons of mass destruction would be used, forcing aid agencies to leave Iraq.

If these food packages do not get to people, they starve

Barbara Stocking
Oxfam director

"There is a risk of the use of chemical and biological weapons, the most dreadfully serious scenario. Humanitarian organisations would not be present, the military would have to deal with it," Ms Short said.

"We are making the humanitarian points very clearly and being listened to by our military," said Ms Short.

She said her department was attempting to ensure that any bombing would take the weakness of Iraq's infrastructure into account.

Sanitation warning

In BBC One's Iraq: Britain Decides debate, being shown at 2030 GMT, Oxfam director Barbara Stocking warns of the humanitarian consequences of a conflict.

She highlights how 16 million Iraqi people are completely dependent on food rations which could not be disrupted.

"If these food packages do not get to people, they starve," she says.

Destruction of Iraqi electricity power stations would also halt supplies of clean water and prevent sewage being pumped away, says Ms Stocking.