ANDOVER MP Sir George Young backed the Govern-ment when the vote was taken for military action but said the war followed 'the most spectacular failure of diplomacy in my political lifetime'.

"The world's democracies have failed to get their act together to present a coherent and united front to an obnoxious regime," said the MP during the debate.

"It is that institutional failure, rather than the underlying case against Saddam, that has led to the equivocal response from public opinion. We will need to revisit the whole architecture of international institutional peacekeeping, and re-engineer it radically to avoid future failure.

"I do not give that as a reason for going to war, but I happen to believe it will be easier to make the reforms that are necessary once the Iraq crisis has been resolved, than to do so with the crisis hanging over the United Nations indefinitely.

"The public squabbling about what resolution 1441 actually means baffles our constituents, as do discussions on Newsnight and Today between expensive barristers about whether the war is legal. I believe that if the process had been more open and transparent - if there had been more clarity - we would be receiving a more supportive response from our constituents, because the underlying case is strong."

He spoke of the potential impact of the war on his north west Hampshire constituency. "My constituency, like others, has a high military profile," he told a packed House of Commons.

"I believe that they and their families are entitled to know that their Member of Parliament backs the risks they run in removing an obnoxious regime, and I shall therefore support the Government tonight."