Part 9 - DW062 001 020 009

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9 The British government, which, as one young witness in Birmingham remarked, has done so much to protect Salman Rushdie, did nothing to protect exposed and threatened communities then. Our Commission showed that the British government, like that of the US, actually wanted an atmosphere of hostility and prejudice. It did not want peace or an atmosphere of calm and rational negotiation to settle the Gulf crisis. We hold that this demonstrates a deliberate intent on the part of the British government to go to war, and that it was thus guilty of a Crime Against Peace as defined in the Nuremberg Principles. Currently the war against Iraq continues in the form of the economic sanctions against that country, just as it is in effect waged in similar ways against Libya, against Cuba, against People's Korea, and is threatened against any other third world country that stands up against Western domination. That is why I solemnly call upon you the participants in this Seminar today to endorse the proposal which we shall tonight here from our friend Jaime Ballesteros for the work of the Commission of Inquiry on the aggression on Iraq to be carried forward and continued in the form of the work of a new body, the International Commission of Inquiry on Economic Sanctions. This new Commission of Inquiry would aim to campaign for a prohibition of the imposition of economic sanctions on third world countries, in accordance with the Appeal launched by Ramsey Clark on our return from Iraq in February this year. Just as it is established that the international community reacts with horror and outrage at the very idea of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, so also we aim to awaken public opinion to the effects of this new and terrible form of criminal weapon - the creation of new zones of poverty and destitution in the third world - so that world public opinion may learn to react with the same horror and outrage at the use or threatened use of these killer sanctions by the US and its allies. A provisional statement of the aims of this proposed International Commission of Inquiry is now before you. It suggests in broad outline a conception of the campaigning tasks which lie before us, and we are sure that each and every one of you will have creative and useful ideas on how to reach all reachable sections of public opinion. To give just one example, in Iraq we saw a medicine factory unable to function because import of spare parts and raw materials is impossible under the sanctions, yet the US and its allies who are responsible for this situation are members of the World Health Organisation. Those of us in medical or health fields could campaign to bring shame on them for this outrageous criminal violation of every principle of public health and humanitarianism, let alone the founding charter of the World Health Organisation. I am sure I do not need to contribute ideas on use of the media and tactics for puncturing the media blockade to such seasoned journalistic campaigners as Felicity Arbuthnot, whose stalwart and indomitable single-mindedness in this field is an example to us all. The emergence onto the world scene of this new sanctions threat is closely associated with the high-jacking by the US of the United Nations and other international organisations, which now, under US pressure and domination, have become pitted against precisely those most deserving of international support - the oppressed peoples and nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America who insist on their right to independence and diginity and to build a new society of their own choosing. This situation is epitomised by

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