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Dear Tim >irrespective of points upon which we obviously disagree, (pretty obvious by >now I think) I want to make it clear that nothing I said was intended to >criticise efforts to achieve proposals a to e below, which are literally >life and death issues for millions of people. . I have had useful comments since our conversation via this group. The area that is key is point d) because that leads to the least number of casualties both in terms of civilians, conscripts and supporters of the regime. If the key people who shore up the regime know that they are safe when the regime loses control then they are going to be less inclined to fight to keep the regime. That is why an organisation external to Iraq will be needed to protect them from the massacres that happened in 1991. Whether this should be the Red Cross/Red Crescent or the UN or some combination is not clear. What matters is that it does protect the people and has the credibility such that people trust it. The conscripts can basically desert if the regime falls to pieces. Those who shore up the regime can lie low for a while, but need an exit route of some form. If d) works well there basically would not be much fighting. (hence no need for any shells). As far as I can tell the military are still talking about 4 days of bombing before trying anything on the ground. I hope to prove that this is not necessary. I have two more meetings later today (I am now in London) with two separate groups of Iraqis. I am hoping that we will have a reasonably good set of proposals by the end of this week. Many of the Civil Servants dealing with these issues return to work on Monday. _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk