GREENPEACE CALLS on the Arroyo administration to support the groundswell
taking place in the UN today calling for the involvement of the UN
General Assembly in resolving the crisis in Iraq.
Contrary to recent government pronouncements, Philippine support
for the US-led attack on Iraq does not serve the national interest.
The US war of aggression threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands
of Iraqi and Filipino civilians.
The war also puts at grave risk the very future of peace and the
United Nations itself. Greenpeace believes that the interest of the
Philippines is best served if the Arroyo government throws its support
behind the growing calls for the invocation of UN Resolution 377,
also known as Uniting for Peace.
In 1950, the UN General Assembly set up a procedure for insuring
that stalemates between countries would not prevent the United Nations
from carrying out its mission to maintain international peace and
security. With the United States playing an important role in its
adoption, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 377 in an almost
unanimous vote.
Uniting for Peace (UfP) provides that if, because of the lack of
unanimity among the permanent members of the Security Council the
Council cannot maintain peace where there is a threat to the peace,
breach of the peace or act of aggression, the General Assembly is
obligated to consider the matter immediately. Under the UfP, emergency
special sessions of the General Assembly must be convened within 24
hours of the receipt by the Secretary-General of a request from a
majority of UN Member States.
Uniting for Peace has been used ten times since 1950. The US, in
fact, used the UfP during the Suez Canal crisis to eject French and
British forces occupying Egypt in 1950. The General Assembly was also
convened in 1950 under the initiative of the US to pressure the Soviet
Union into stopping its intervention in Hungary.
(Yet now that is the aggressor, the US government is alarmed over
UFP developments and has sent out letters this week to each UN member
state with the demand that "calls for an emergency session of
the General Assembly ... be avoided." According to the US letter,
such calls "will not change the path we are on, but will increase
tensions, make divisions deeper and could provoke more damage to the
UN and the Security Council." This diplomatic preemptive attack
by the US was confirmed days ago by its ambassador to Chile, who said
that the US letter was sent in the hopes of "avoiding more diplomatic
problems.")
There is more than enough basis for President Arroyo to embrace this
path to peace. Very recently, majority of the House of Representatives
voted against Philippine support for the then looming war on Iraq.
Early this week, Rep. Apolinario Lozada, Jr., the Chair of the powerful
House Foreign Relations Committee, filed Resolution 1065 urging President
Arroyo to immediately authorize the country's permanent representative
in the UN to either file or support the filing by another UN Member
State of the UfP mechanism. Many Filipino legislators have since echoed
the need for the President to seriously consider the Lozada initiative.
President Arroyo will not be the first to call for the involvement
of the UN General Assembly to resolve the crisis at hand. UN General
Assembly President Jan Kavan of the Czech Republic has said that it
is "very likely" that a special session would be called
as early as next week to take up the UfP resolution. Indonesian President
Megawati Sukarnoputri has also called for the invocation of the UfP
this week so that "the UN General Assembly can meet to discuss
the issue." Megawati also urged the US to stop its illegal war.
The Russian State Duma also approved this week with a vote of 226
to 101 a resolution "calling on the Russian president to seek
a UN General Assembly emergency session" as a way of resolving
the crisis. Other countries such as Brazil and Malaysia are also supporting
the measure.
We urge President Arroyo to immediately extend her support to the
Lozada initiative and to President Megawati's demand for the US-led
attack to be resolved at the level of the UN General Assembly.
We implore President Arroyo to weigh the wisdom in the words of
Archbishop Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace
Council and for 16 years the Vatican's representative to the UN, who
continues to appeal to the UN to immediately hold an emergency session
of the General Assembly so that "all countries could talk and
vote, and the entire international community would face its responsibilities."
The onset of war does not diminish the unprecedented activism for
peace that this country has displayed in recent weeks and months,
in consonance with the global anti-war movement. As the US-manned
war machine in Iraq accelerates its violent march towards oil and
empire, so should all peace-loving citizens escalate the campaign
for peace.
We can all act to stop the war. For starters, we urge the public
to add their names to the thousands who already have signed on their
support to the petition calling for the invocation of the Uniting
for Peace Resolution/UN Resolution 377 at www.greenpeace.org.
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The author is a campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia. He can be
reached at rconstan[at]ph[dot]greenpeace[dot]org.
