David Miliband MP, Foreign Secretary

ANDREW MARR: During the past hour the ceremony marking the handover of power in Basra has been taking place.

The British military have formally given the local authorities control of security in Iraq's second city.

About four and a half thousand British troops will remain at their base outside Basra for the time being, to help with training and provide an emergency back-up to the Iraqi security forces.

But the size of the British force is likely to be scaled down further next year.

Well just before we came on air I spoke to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband who is in Basra, and I asked him what was the significance of today's events.

DAVID MILIBAND: All along we've said we want Iraq to be run by the Iraqis. And on the security front, throughout the south-east of Iraq where there's been real violence over the last four or five years, the Iraqi security force has been built up to such an extent that it has the credibility and the authority to take control, that is the significance, and I think it is both material significance but also symbolic because it is saying to Iraqis that the country is back for them to run, and not to be run by outsiders.

ANDREW MARR: In the House of Commons last week Vince Cable said that 40 women had been killed in Basra for being insufficiently Islamic.

There are reports, for instance, in the Sunday Times this morning, about sequences of murders of women for not being sufficiently Islamic. The question is, who are we handing control over to?

DAVID MILIBAND: Well I've raised the issue of violence against women both with the governor and with the leader of the opposition in Basra this morning.

We are handing control over today to Governor Wahili and he will be working with General Mohan who I think by common consent is doing an outstanding job in leading the Iraqi security forces who now number about 31,000 in Basra Province.

But critically we also need to get the police into the right position. That's why the role of General Jahele who's responsible for the police force, because you're right to say that the issue isn't just militia violence which is massively down, but also common criminal violence.

And that needs to be addressed through policing that works, just as it would in any other country. But that is not to say that somehow we're handing over a land of milk and honey, this remains a violent society, whose attentions need to be addressed, but they need to be addressed by Iraqi political leaders. And it's politics that's going to have to come to the fore in the months and years ahead.

ANDREW MARR: I can quote you, for instance, the International Crisis Group which talks about Basra being engaged in a brutal scramble for resources and a vicious cycle of attack and counter-attack. Militias have become by far Basra's principal source of violence.

And a lot of people watching will say, is this what we fought for, to hand back Basra as an extremely violence-riven society with militias terrifying people in the streets?

DAVID MILIBAND: I think that there has been a growing recognition among Iraqi leaders here, some of them with links to militias, that violence is not the way forward. And anyone who clicks onto the Internet can see on the FCO website, the December 4th declaration of about 20 Basra political leaders, all of them committing to peaceful, political means, can see the sort of transformation that is underway in the orientation of people, some of whom have previously had militia links.

So there remains an issue of common criminality, but I think that in respect of the militias there has been a massive change over the last six months, and it is politics and political comprise that's going to have to be important.

ANDREW MARR: And you've, of course, flown in recently from London, going back to London. Do you feel, as Foreign Secretary, you really know what's going on on the streets of Basra?

DAVID MILIBAND: I can't know it in the way that ordinary Basrawees do. It would be absurd of me to pretend so. We're in the airbase, we're not in downtown Basra, we're not in the marketplaces. But I can talk both to our locally-engaged staff and to political leaders here, and get a sense of it.

And our role from now is going to be a supporting role, because it's Iraqis in the lead in security, Iraqis in the lead in politics. We're here to support them. And I think in that supportive role we can listen and offer the benefit of our experience without pretending to have a monopoly of wisdom.

ANDREW MARR: And if, God forbid, next week there is another massive bomb in a marketplace, or an upsurge of violence, do our troops really stay back where they are barracks, is that it?

DAVID MILIBAND: Our troops retain the capacity to intervene again should there be a breakdown of order. But, as I say, 31,000 troops in the Iraqi security force, they've shown their skill and their intelligence in guarding Basra Palace very effectively.

And critically there's a political process, because as I said several times over the last four or five months, there never is a military solution on its own to these problems. The military can provide security but we need economics, we need politics and we need social change as well.

ANDREW MARR: And for all the families of soldiers watching, does this mean any further people coming home before Christmas, or is that an unrealistic thing to think about?

DAVID MILIBAND: I'm not here to announce any new troop manoeuvres, those rotations have been established. Obviously many of the troops are thinking about their families, some of them have arrived in the last three or four weeks and know they're going to miss Christmas.

We ask a huge amount of our troops, but I think, I sense this morning, satisfaction, that there is something to build on. And that's the theme of today's ceremony that will be happening behind me.

ANDREW MARR: Foreign Secretary, since we have you here, let me ask you a couple of things about today's papers. Again, terrible opinion polls for the government, a really big slide downwards again, and headlines about crisis of morale and meltdown. As somebody at the heart of it, is that how it feels, because that's how it looks?

DAVID MILIBAND: It doesn't feel like meltdown at all, and it's the job of headlines to come up with a drama, it's the job of government to do serious business. This is a government getting on with the big and difficult decisions. And big and difficult decisions do arouse opposition, they do arouse concern.

But I would be much more worried if this was a government that wasn't grasping the difficult decisions, wasn't willing to do the things that are needed to move the country forward. And in the end, what counts are not headlines but ideas. And it's the ideas that this government in the end will live or die by.

ANDREW MARR: When it came to one of the other stories of the week of course which was the signing of the treaty at Lisbon, and there you were shaking hands with one of the officials because there wasn't a Prime Minister there.

You have to accept that that looked pretty bad, I mean it looked bad across Europe and it looked bad at home. It looked almost as if the Prime Minister was frightened to be there in front of everybody signing the treaty, alongside everybody else.

DAVID MILIBAND: It was one of those things, Andrew. I say that the Prime Minister has great qualities, but he can't be in two places at once, and he had commitments to the liaison committee of the House of Commons, he had commitments to the European partners with whom he was signing the treaty. In the end he did the liaison committee, he came late to the European partners meeting. I think what counts is that we've got a forward agenda on Europe as well.

ANDREW MARR: And you can really say that the Prime Minister is as pro-European, pro-EU as you are?

DAVID MILIBAND: I've known the Prime Minister since 1989 and he is someone who's always seen that British membership of the European Union is good for Britain, and good for Europe. And the important thing is that we're developing an agenda that isn't looking backwards to the old European Union debates of the 1980s and '90s.

We're developing an agenda shaped around the future, the future challenges of terrorism, migration, climate change. That's the agenda that Europe needs to grasp and I think that the Prime Minister and I, with the whole government, are going to be able to do that.

ANDREW MARR: All right, Foreign Secretary, thank you very much, you've got a busy day ahead. Thanks for joining us.

DAVID MILIBAND: Thank you very much.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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