Thank you very much for your attendance. I've come to Kuwait first to express the great appreciation and thanks of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the whole of the British government to His Highness The Emir, to the Government of Kuwait and the people of Kuwait for their co-operation and support in the military action which the United States and the United Kingdom have found it necessary to take against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. And, as I expressed to His Highness and to other members of the government, without Kuwait's support and co-operation the military action would literally not have been possible and we owed it to Kuwait to express our appreciation to them. And having been in Kuwait just a few months ago, it was extremely interesting and encouraging to talk to Kuwaitis today and to see the visible relief on their faces and in their voices about a change in their environment as a result of the collapse of the Saddam regime.
I also want to pay my very fulsome tribute to the United States, the United Kingdom and Australian forces who have fought so well in this military campaign. US forces have been in the lead and my respect and admiration for them knows no bounds but they will forgive me if I express special admiration for the professionalism and dedication of British troops. It's been my privilege just to meet Major General Robin Brimms and his colleagues at the British Embassy in Kuwait and to express our thanks and appreciation; to say what a wonderful job people back home in Britain believe that the British troops have done, they're right about that, but also to talk to Major General Brimms and his colleagues about their experiences in the Basra sector over the last 3 weeks. And we know what happened in terms of the military action, but I talked to Major General Brimms about how, I think within a day of him commanding military action he was out of his armoured personnel carrier, talking without any kind of body armour or helmet to ordinary Iraqis on the street and he had a good reception.
Talking to one of our Foreign Office people who was working alongside the in the region, who had organised a Majlis, a consultative meeting of I think 30 Shia clerics. And he and the senior British officer who went into this Majlis did so without any kind of protection in the room, conversation where they were feeling the good sense and good feeling from the Iraqi representatives about the huge change, beneficial change, that is coming to this country.
As an agent of positive change, this Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance will play a crucial role. I'm about to meet Jay Garner and others who will be working on our behalf to help the Iraqi people take the first steps towards freedom and to support them in that exercise of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance. Major General Tim Cross on my left will be the United Kingdom's Chief Representative within the ORHA organisation and he will be one of the deputies, the International Deputy of three who will be joining this organisation, working alongside a number of other British nationals in this exercise.
The urgency of the task which ORHA and others will have to undertake is underlined by the disorder which inevitably followed the collapse of the regime and I say 'inevitably' advisedly because I cannot think of any example in 20th century history or history before that where a totalitarian dictatorship has collapsed and that has not been followed in its immediate aftermath by a degree of disorder. That is not to excuse such disorder, it is to explain it. And if people have only shown order because of a reign of terror, it is not surprising that they do exhibit too much licence when that reign of terror is removed. But our forces, the United States forces, not working increasingly with local police services, are working hard to restore law and order and that is the first task.
Following the removal of Saddam's aggressive regime, we now have the opportunity to achieve 3 great tasks "a free and prosperous Iraq, a more stable Middle East and a safer world" and we need to keep our eyes fixed on these aims amid the sometimes disturbing imagery which the whole world is witnessing from inside Iraq.
What I know for certain is that whatever the immediate difficulties, the Iraqi people's future is going to be far, far better than their terrible recent past. And whatever the dangers which may lie ahead for Iraq, these cannot and will not compare with the brutality of a regime whose barbarous cruelty has been confirmed by the discovery of its torture chambers in town after town. And there will also be a much more secure future for the whole of the Middle East, with Iraq established as a good neighbour, not as a threat. And you, particularly in Kuwait and this whole region, know only too well of the way in which Saddam's brutal politics not only terrorised Iraq but contaminated the politics of the whole of the region. And so the prospects for the future are much brighter than they have been. And I will be discussing the prospects not just for the future of Iraq but for the Middle East Peace Process in Qatar and Saudi Arabia later on today and tomorrow as I have done in Bahrain and Kuwait today. And I have emphasised in these discussions the commitment of President Bush of the United States and Prime Minister Blair not just to deliver the road map on Middle East Peace Process but also to ensure that this is implemented.
And it's worth stressing too that our own security in the United Kingdom will be far greater with Iraq transformed into a free country rather than what it has been "a rogue state, equipped with weapons of mass destruction" a nation of peace rather than a source of instability and a threat to international security. Now in all of this "and again as President Bush and Prime Minister Blair made clear at the Summit in Belfast just 6 days ago "the United Nations is going to have a vital role in the complex task of helping the Iraqi people. Secretary General Kofi Annan is going to be in Athens later this week for discussions with Prime Minister Blair and other European leaders at the Summit which is being held there and I believe that the result of all the work that's going on here and the result of those discussions is that there is an increasing consensus about the steps that need to be taken to rebuild Iraq to provide that better, more prosperous, more peaceful future for the people of Iraq and in doing so to secure a more stable region and a safer world.