Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament/
Feachtas um D'-arm¦il Eithneach
P.O. Box 6327, Dublin 6, Ireland
F-n: +353 -1-454 0194
Email: irishcnd@ireland.com
Website http://indigo.ie/~goodwill/icnd.html
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The threatened War against Iraq
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Madam,
"Bombs kill before ever they explode", wrote Bishop
Cassidy over ten
years ago in his preface to the Irish Roman Catholic bishops¢
document,
"War and Peace in a Nuclear Age". The bishops claimed
a causal link
between the arms expenditure and world hunger and death. In that
context
it was good to hear Minister of State Tom Kitt recently decrying
the
shame of the enormous military expenditure for the Iraqi "war
effort"
while vast areas of Africa were on the brink of unprecedented
famine.
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But what of Minister Brian Cowan himself? We are now on the
eve of one
of the most contrived wars waged by Western powers since the height
of
the colonial era. There are no known links between Iraq and September
11. The US and Britain seem unable to supply UN arms inspectors
with
their "incontrovertible" evidence of the continued presence
of weapons
of mass destruction there. On the other hand, a report entitled
"Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century"
which was
recently unearthed in the US shows that the Bush administration
has been
planning to attack Iraq since April 2001.
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By all accounts, therefore, this threatened war is a "resource
war", the
first of the 21st century, and the UN is being shamefully used
and
misused to this end. When Norway and a number of other non-permanent
members of the Security Council protested at being "treated
as second
class members" by the US and Britain when denied access to
the full arms
inspectors¢ report, we expected Mr Cowan might finally break
his silence
and support them. We were mistaken.
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Why is Minister Cowan not speaking out? What is he waiting
for? A major
Irish Times/ MRBI poll published last October showed the Irish
people
oppose any war against Iraq even with UN Security Council approval.
Furthermore, the UN and a growing body of international observers
-
among them a number of former US presidents - have stated that
this
threatened war could have catastrophic consequences not just for
the
Middle East but for Africa, Europe and the world at large.
Yours, etc.
Billy Fitzpatrick
Chairperson
Irish CND ¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý¬Ý