KARACHI: Pakistan, India urged to help stop Iraq war
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, March 30: The Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy condemned on Sunday the “imperialist war being waged by the United States and the United Kingdom against the people of Iraq.”
In a resolution adopted by the Forum at a seminar on India-Pakistan relations, it was resolved that the war against Iraq “is illegal war being conducted by these two states in violation of all established norms of international law and the charter of the United Nations.”
It was noted that since the beginning of this unprovoked aggression, the US and the British forces had dropped thousands of tons of explosives on Iraqi cities, destroying homes, markets, communications centres and other facilities, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.
They have laid siege to cities with population of millions of civilians and have cut off the supply of water and electricity to these places. It was noted that the US-led forces had deliberately attacked and destroyed Iraq’s radio and television cutting off the people of the besieged country from the government of Iraq. “These are criminal actions in gross violation of the International Humanitarian Law of the Geneva Conventions,” the resolution stated.
The participants of the seminar and the Forum’s Sindh chapter also condemned President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair for deliberately misleading the international community through misinformation and lies about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The resolution also condemned the US for spreading “lies about Iraq’s programme for production of nuclear weapons by acquiring enriched uranium from Niger.”
“Their actions make it clear that the main objective of neo-liberalism and free-market-democracy is to set up a new imperial order which will be controlled by the international cartel of arms and petroleum companies.
“Theses jingoists represent the most serious threat not only to Iraq but to the entire world. Already there are indications that faced with the fierce resistance from the Iraqi people they have started threatening the neighbouring states of Syria and Iran,” the resolution stated.
The members of the Pakistan India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy called on the governments of India and Pakistan to condemn this illegal and inhuman aggression in the strongest possible terms.
They also urged the two governments to jointly initiate necessary actions in the United Nations to declare this war an act of aggression and call for immediate halt to all hostilities and speedy withdrawal of all allied forces led by the US and British from Iraq.
They also called on the two governments and the international community to initiate urgent steps for sending humanitarian aid and essential supplies to the people of war-devastated Iraq in a dignified manner.
They urged them to ensure that the humanitarian work was separated from the military operations.
The seminar also called upon the international community to denounce the US and British practice of linking humanitarian aid to military objective and their attempts to force the hapless Iraqi people to revolt against their own government in exchange of food and water. At the same time, they expressed complete solidarity with the international peace movement, which represented the conscience of mankind and resolved to resist all attempts to distort the ongoing war of aggrandisement in religious and racist terms.
The Forum also urged its members in Sindh and other parts of Pakistan and India to publicly express their protest against this naked act of aggression by the so-call allied forces of the US and the UK.
They also urged to begin a campaign in both the countries for boycott of all US and British goods. It also urge members to volunteer for humanitarian service in Iraq as a joint team.
