Mr John Negroponte (No.1)

EDM number 1275 in 2003-04, proposed by Harry Cohen on 25/05/2004.

That this House is aware that Mr John Negroponte will be the US Ambassador to Iraq after the 30th June sovereignty transfer, in which position he will wield enormous power; notes the content of the CNN.com report in 2001 to the effect that he served as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 during which time he was personally responsible for the illegal policy of training and arming Contra rebels inside Honduras for the purpose of overthrowing Nicaragua's Sandinista government; further notes that he also oversaw the build up of the Honduran military while turning a blind eye to their campaign of death and torture and that during this period the Honduran military's Battalion 316, trained by the CIA, killed or caused to disappear at least 184 political opponents; further notes that despite hundreds of articles in Honduran newspapers reporting the brutality of the government's death squads, the condemnation of international human rights organisations, and the warning to Mr Negroponte by his predecessor about the alarming increase in extrajudicial military executions and torture of political opponents, Mr Negroponte has continued to maintain that there were no death squads in Honduras and if there were, he knew nothing about them; further notes that CNN.com said that either Mr Negroponte is lying or he is totally incompetent and the notion that he could condemn other nations for their human rights abuses is absurd; and believes that, with a record like this, he is likely to be a liability in Iraq and to UK interests there.

This motion has been signed by a total of 30 MPs, 1 of these signatures have been withdrawn.