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1) Please phone/fax/email your MP/MSP/Member of the NAW about this - Roughly half of Westminster MPs have email: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/alms.htm 2) Please circulate this email Dear all A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO STOP THE WAR As a result of the Turkish anti-war movement's victory in forcing the Turkish parliament to derail the US 'northern strategy' for war on Iraq, it is widely predicted that the war timetable has slipped back by at least a week to somewhere around 1 April. The significance of this is that UN weapons inspectors are supposed to present to the Security Council, and the Security Council is supposed to agree, a 'work programme' for the inspectors by 27 March. This 'work programme' is supposed to include a set of 'key disarmament tasks', defining 'clearly and precisely' what Iraq has to do to satisfy the world that it has disarmed. This is required by paragraph 7 of UN Security Council Resolution 1284. You can find this at http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/ See the Documents section. In other words, by 27 March the Security Council is supposed to START the process of verifiable disarmament. If this happens, it will be, as far as I can see, politically *impossible* for the US to go to war in the next few weeks, therefore putting off the war timetable for some time, and giving us a chance to derail it completely. That's why the US has done its best to fend off and bury the 'key disarmament tasks' aspect of the inspectors work, refusing to support a French proposal to 'speed up' this aspect of the inspectors' work. (You can find out about the Franco-Russo-German proposal at http://www.un.int/france/ .) FOUR MONTHS' DELAY One of the difficult aspects of all this for the US and UK is that Resolution 1284 requires that the inspection/key disarmament tasks process then go on for 120 days to see whether Iraq is complying, and at that point all economic sanctions on Iraq could be 'suspended'. So there is an expectation built into the process laid down by Resolution 1284 (a Resolution proposed and championed by the UK) that inspections go on for at least FOUR WHOLE MONTHS after 27 March. IRAQ HAS NOT YET BEEN TESTED The draft resolution put to the Security Council by the US and UK says only that 'Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded to it by resolution 1441'. How can Iraq 'fail' this test when the UN Security Council has not yet drawn up the examination paper, or presented it to those being tested, or set a deadline for the examination to be over? The 'key disarmament tasks' are also 'key anti-war tasks' for the peace movement. We must press our MPs to champion the process set out in Resolution 1284 and to force the UK and US governments to allow the definition of the 'key disarmament tasks' by 27 March. It is entirely predictable that Washington and London will do all they can to sink the inspection process, and the definition of the 'work programme' in particular. We must not let them get away with it. Please write to/call up the media, write to/call up your elected representatives and bring the 'key disarmament tasks' into public view. WHAT THE BRITISH PEOPLE THINK ‘The advice proffered by a large majority of Britons to Mr Blair is thus clear. He should not continue “to make active preparations for launching an early military assault on Iraq” (32 per cent of British people). Rather, he should inform the Bush administration “that he lacks the necessary public support for war in the UK, and the US will therefore either have to go it alone or else give the UN weapons inspectors more time to complete their work” (63 per cent).’ (Telegraph, 19 Feb., p. 4) Best wishes Milan Rai author War Plan Iraq in a personal capacity www.justicenotvengeance.org _______________________________________________ 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