International Emergency
Antiwar Conference
January 23-24 in Paris
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
Please find below an Appeal for an International Emergency Conference
Against War, which will be held January 23-24 in Paris, France, at the
initiative of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers'
International (ILC), which is one of the component organizations of the
Continuations Committee of the Open World Conference.
Trade union federations, individual unions, and political organizations
linked to the ILC on all continents have been mobilizing against the
impending U.S.-led war against the people of Iraq. (Tomorrow, Dec. 27th,
for example, the Workers Democratic Party of Bangladesh and the National
Workers Federation of Bangladesh are organizing an antiwar march and
rally in the capital city of Dhaka.) The aim of this conference in Paris
is to promote the widest and most massive united mobilizations in
opposition to this war on Iraq.
We urge all supporters of trade union and democratic rights & all
opponents of the U.S. war on Iraq to (1) endorse this Paris Emergency
Conference and obtain endorsements from your unions and/or
organizations, (2) send a financial contribution to help defray the
travel costs to the conference of delegates from Africa, Asia and Latin
America, and (3) send delegates from your union and/or organization to
the conference, or simply participate in the conference in your
individual capacity.
Please fill out the Support Coupon below and return it to us as soon as
possible at OWC < ilcinfo@earthlink.net
>.
Thank you in advance for your interest in and support to this extremely
urgent international campaign against the U.S. war on Iraq.
In solidarity,
Ed Rosario and Alan Benjamin,
on behalf of the Continuations Committee
of the Open World Conference
**********
ENDORSEMENT/SUPPORT COUPON FOR THE INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY ANTIWAR
CONFERENCE (PARIS -- JAN. 23-24, 2003)
[ ] Please add my name to the list of endorsers of this conference. You
can list me and my title for identification purposes only.
[ ] Please add the name of my union or political organization to the
list of organizational endorsers of this conference.
[ ] I pledge $ ____ to the Conference Building Fund. I will send this
amount, payable to OWC, to the address listed above.
[ ] I will be attending the conference. Please send me all the
information regarding registration/lodging costs and other logistical
matters.
NAME
UNION/TITLE (list if for id. only)
CITY
STATE
COUNTRY
EMAIL
(Please clip, fill out and return this coupon asap to the OWC)
**********
INTERNATIONAL LIAISON COMMITTEE
January 23rd and 24th, 2003
Emergency International Conference
No to war!
No to the massacre which is being prepared!
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
In the name of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers'
International (ILC), I wish to invite you to participate in an
International Emergency Conference which will take place in Paris,
France, on January 23-24, 2003, to say:
- No to the imminent war, no to the terror and slaughter against the
Iraqi people.
- No to the continuation and the worsening of a policy which, for the
past 12 years by means of an embargo, has produced the death of more
than 500,000 Iraqi children, according to an official 1996 UNICEF
report. Since then, how many more children have died?
- No to a war which the spokepersons of the U.S. Administration, as well
as the French and British leaders of the European Union, state openly
may be dreadful and bloody. The United Nations is already discussing
contingency "plans" for 900,000 Iraqi refugees and four
million to six million people who won't be able to find the food
necessary for their survival! The carving up of the country could lead
to the compulsory displacement of anywhere between 4.5 million and 9
million persons, out of a total of 22 million inhabitants. There is no
doubt that the horror of this war will exceed even these dramatic
predictions.
- No to a war for which the major capitalist powers, headed by the
United States, have already mobilized 250,000 soldiers. These troops
will be ordered to march into Baghdad and impose the partition of Iraq
into three or seven pieces, all of them under the yoke of a military
occupation and governed by foreign powers.
- No to a war for oil. Iraq is a high-priority target because it has
giant untapped oil deposits and because the cost of exploiting Iraq's
vast oil reserves is five times less than in Latin America and eight
times less than in the United States. Iraq is one of the few
oil-producing countries in which the American oil companies have been
totally absent since the 1970s. Already American multinationals, as well
as European ones, have been allocated the parts of the Iraqi sub-soil
they will have the right to plunder whilst the population will be placed
in conditions of total destitution.
- No to the march toward the war the U.S. Administration wants to impose
upon the whole world -- from Iraq to Palestine, from Korea and
Afghanistan to Latin America, to the Balkans and to Africa, taking along
with it all the governments of the capitalist countries and all the
international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, European Union,
etc.).
- No to the war of terror against the peoples of the whole world.
- Yes to peace and to the fraternal unity of the peoples of the world.
The International Liaison Committee for a Workers' International was
formed at an international workers' conference in Barcelona, Spain, 12
years ago on the eve of the first war against Iraq. A Manifesto Against
"War and Exploitation" was adopted.
Today, when the imminent threat of a new war against Iraq is looming,
the ILC assumes its responsibility for calling this Emergency
International Conference: Everything must be done to prevent this unjust
and terrible war, the consequences of which can't even be evaluated at
this time. Those who say that the military intervention will take place
in the name of "international law" lie. It is an outright lie!
It is already being stated that the 12,000 pages of the report handed
out to the United Nations by the Iraqi government contains major
"omissions." It is also said that some harmless products could
be used to develop dangerous weapons. These are sheer lies!
Let's not forget that 12 ago, when the first war was launched against
Iraq. George Bush Sr., who was then President, justified the war on two
essential grounds:
(1) American satellites had spotted the presence of 265,000 Iraqi
soldiers in the desert near Saudi Arabia's borders -- soldiers, it was
stated, who were poised to invade that country,
(2) Testimonies were reported in the media about newly born Kuwaiti
babies who were killed by being pulled from their incubators and thrown
onto the floor by the Iraqi army.
Those two "facts" were eventually exposed as total lies.
Declassified satellite photographs taken by the military intelligence
services in 1991 show that there was no Iraqi soldier in the Saudi
desert on the eve of the American onslaught. The young Kuwaiti woman who
had made a "confession" about the killing of babies admitted
later that she had lied.
But it was too late: the harm had been done. The war had taken place and
the embargo that would eventually kill 500,000 Iraqi children or more
was being implemented.
It is exactly the same thing which is being prepared today. We reject in
advance the notion that under the cover of one interpretation or
another, or of an omission in one section or in another, of a
12,000-page report, a justification is given to launch a massacre of
which the real motives are basically to step up the plunder and terror
against the peoples.
No, three times no to a war which serves only the interests of the
exploiters and oppressors!
No, three times no to a war which is a war against all the peoples of
the world, including the working classes of the United States, France,
Germany and Britain; a war against their organisations and against their
rights and gains, which are threatened by the same governments serving
the interests of the multinationals that threaten to destroy the Iraqi
people and all the peoples of the region.
No to a war which is already used as a pretext by all governments to
undermine democratic rights in all countries.
In this International Emergency Conference we will state: The workers
and the peoples bear no responsibility for wars, those who are
responsible are those who seat in governments.
The working class has always said "no" to wars. Once more --
whatever the different tendencies and points of view within the labour
movement, whatever the differences -- it is time to unite the struggle
of workers, of organisations and of democrats all over the world in a
common action to prevent the war and to save the Iraqi people.
It is time to unite all efforts to save the very bases of human
civilisation, threatened as they are by this imminent war. There is no
more urgent task today!
That is why we invite all of you to take part in the International
Emergency Conference Against War and Exploitation, scheduled to take
place in Paris on January 23-24, 2003. The Conference will conclude with
a mass public rally in which, by thousands, workers, activists and youth
will gather to state:
Stop the war! Stop the massacre!
In the name of the International Liaison Committee for a Workers'
International,
Daniel Gluckstein,
Coordinator, ILC
***
The Emergency International Conference Against War will begin Thursday,
January 23rd at 10 a.m. in Paris. It will end on Friday the 24th in the
afternoon. A rally where the conclusions of the Conference will be
reported will take place in the evening. To register and to deal with
all the organisational questions, please contact the ILC.
International Liaison Committee
87, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. 75010 Paris - France
Tel. (33 1) 48 01 88 28 -
E-mail eit.ilc@wanadoo.fr
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