No way to deal with Saddam

Unfortunately, the United States has many motives for intervention in the Middle East and not merely that of wishing to remove a dangerous dictator. President Bush has advisers who dream of total domination of the region in order to control its rich oil supplies. This could lead to the destabilisation of neighbouring states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Arab nationalists already hate the United States and this hatred will grow if Iraq is attacked. War will also be seen as an attack on Islam, despite the fact that Iraq is a secular state. All this will undoubtedly lead to an increase in world terrorism by heightening feelings of resentment against the attackers, especially the USA and Britain. Arabs are also furious that nothing is being done to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is costing innocent lives on both sides. The USA has enormous influence that could quickly be brought to bear on this conflict. Instead, it is obsessed with Iraq. Meanwhile Israeli and Palestinian children die, week after week.

Huge sums are being set aside for this and future wars. The UK has set aside £1 billion. The American budget is staggering. In addition, our Government is being persuaded to spend a further £10 billion on missile defence' to protect itself against imagined attacks by rogue states'. When will this madness end?

Ethiopia faces devastating famine, millions in other parts of the world have no drinking water and global warming is forgotten or denied. History has a record of civilisations that have wasted their resources in wars and have been destroyed by environmental disasters. This fate also awaits our fragile modern world unless we change our ways. War in the Middle East? Not in my name!

Peter D. Leeming

Kendal

n SIR, If, as you report (Gazette, December 13), the Rev Dr Alan Billings believes "the first duty of a government is to defend it's own people", we must assume the urgent moral duty of the government of Iraq - a country of approximately 20 million people, predominantly desert, the only regions of fertility being the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers - would be to acquire as many "weapons of mass destruction" as possible. That's assuming this is the only way reasonable people have of settling disagreements between nations!

Iraq is threatened on two sides by the accumulated weapons of mass destruction of America - population approximately 250 million - a huge military base in Turkey, just across the border, the country of Israel where weapons of mass destruction supplied by America have been accumulating over many years, a huge American military base in Kuwait and Qatar and aircraft carriers and other weapons of mass destruction from Britain - population approximately 60 million - in the Gulf.

The truth of the matter is that this emotive phrase "weapons of mass destruction" is a thinly-disguised obfuscation to hide the real reason for the conflict which, as Tony Benn has pointed out, is oil.

America, which uses more oil than any other country in the world, controls the oil resources of Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and would perhaps, but for Dr Mussadek, control those of Iran, wishes to control the large resources of this vital commodity underneath Iraq.

If we are to discuss the relations between the small country of Iraq and the largest consumer of the world's reserves, let us at least discuss the real position.

E. Moores

Grange-over-Sands

n SIR, I warmly welcome Derek Longmire's letter (January 3) asking us "to give peace a chance." I believe it is not too late to stop the Prime Minister's seeming determination to take this country into war with Iraq at the behest of the United States. Whatever the UN inspectors find or do not find, it is to be feared that President Bush will initiate military action and that we shall tamely follow him. I believe war with Iraq is totally unjustified and would set the Middle East alight.

Most people know that such a war would not be about weapons of mass destruction, of which America and the UK have large numbers, or about Al Qaeda, which does not appear to be linked to Iraq, but about control of Middle Eastern oil. Do we really wish to be dragged into a war to ensure American oil supplies?

I am convinced that most people in this country are opposed to such a war and I know that a real demonstration of this opposition would influence our rulers. If you feel as I do please write to the Prime Minister at Downing Street (SW1A 2AA) or to our MP at the House of Commons (SW1A 0AA), and give Peace a chance!

Philip Edwards

Kendal

n SIR, A war against Iraq would cause untold suffering to ordinary Iraqis. No modern war is able to target only members of the military and military installations. Civilians are inevitably those who suffer the most. The ordinary Iraqi has already suffered terribly from the results of the previous Gulf War. The sanctions which have been imposed on Iraq have caused further suffering: starvation, an increase in childhood illness and mortality, a loss of educational possibilities, a stagnant economy and an increase in the day-to-day loss of freedom for the ordinary person. Sanctions have not brought about a collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime but have only made life more miserable for Iraqi citizens.

A war against Iraq could bring consequences for our own people which would be very damaging. Our service-men and women would probably suffer the same kind of traumas which have hit combatants from past conflicts. Recent statistics on the homeless and the suicidal have shown that many people in these groups are ex-soldiers, ex-pilots, ex-sailors.

A war against Iraq is likely to increase racial and religious tensions in our own country, at a time when Britain should be proud of its mixed and vibrant culture and the generally good integration of people of all races into our society.

We are basically a tolerant people and we want to live on good terms with our Muslim neighbours. They are as British as we are, and they should not be made to feel responsible, in some obscure way, for the hostility of our leaders against some of the leaders of the Islamic world. But in times of war people become illogical, and undoubtedly the result would be a loss of understanding on both sides.

A war against Iraq is likely to further destabilize an already unstable Middle East. If we attack Iraq we will see more problems of refugees, of famine, of injustice, of bitterness and of hatred. And, therefore, a war against Iraq is likely to increase the impetus towards terrorism as a method of solving apparently unsolvable problems.

A war against Iraq has no basis in justice or in logic. Neither the US nor the UK has the right to infringe on the sovereignty of this nation simply because we don't like the regime which operates there or because we suspect that in the future Saddam Hussein may use weapons of mass destruction against his neighbours, or against ourselves.

If individuals acted in the manner in which our leaders propose to act, they would be perceived as lawless barbarians. And if another country bombarded and invaded our country because of our own weapons of mass destruction, we would find such an action totally out of the bounds of reason. Yet our weapons, and those of the US, demonstrably exist, whilst we have no certain knowledge about the existence of such weapons in Iraq.

A war against Iraq is not justifiable in terms of the September 11. According to a recent UK Government report there is no evidence at all to link Saddam Hussein's regime with this act of terrorism.

Antoinette Fawcett

Ulverston

January 9, 2003 15:00