No war flags at Parliament Square
Greenpeace opposed the war in Iraq and campaigned actively to prevent it. We would have opposed it even if an attack had been sanctioned by the United Nations.
There should be an immediate ceasefire, with the US and UK troops carrying out policing and peace keeping roles, and being replaced by UN troops as soon as possible. We are not calling for an immediate withdrawal of US/UK troops from Iraq. This would effectively condemn Iraq to a complete descent into anarchy and even greater suffering.
Greenpeace opposed the war because:
War has devastating human and environmental consequences
We do not yet know, and may never know, the full extent of Iraqi casualties. Civilian casualties receive most attention, but the death of conscript soldiers, many of them teenagers who fought only because they or their families were threatened, is scarcely any different. These people did not need to die - this war was unnecessary.
Much of Iraq is now contaminated with depleted uranium. Water supplies in cities, on which most of the population depends (Iraq is heavily urbanised) are not working, and disease is spreading.
Greenpeace welcomes the fall of Saddam Hussein, as we would the fall of any brutal dictator. Though Greenpeace does not work on human rights issues, many of the individuals associated with Greenpeace have been working for years to oppose the excesses of his regime or help the Iraqi people - at times when British and American governments were supporting him. But we do not believe that liberating the Iraqi people from oppression was the reason why the US and the UK invaded, and as a consequence there is no guarantee that democracy and human rights will be protected in the new Iraq.
Bush is clearly trying to get control on Iraq's oil reserves
Nelson Mandela described going to war with Iraq as "clearly a decision that is motivated by George W Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries of the USA". Iraq's known oil reserves are second in size only to Saudi Arabia's. The head of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella opposition group, has said that "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil" if he is running the country. He is now in Iraq, being lined up for a leading role in the new Iraq.
The company that stands to profit most from the attack on Iraq, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank, is ExxonMobil, a company that funded Republican candidates to the tune of more than $1.2 million in 2000. Exxon Mobil (Esso in the UK) is also behind Bush's rejection of Kyoto, which is why Greenpeace, with other groups, is calling on everyone to boycott its products.
The British Government has recently announced that one of the top five priorities for foreign policy is securing access to energy supplies. Yet Blair still denies that the attack on Iraq has anything to do with oil.
War is an ineffective way to deal with weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
It is still unclear whether Iraq actually possessed any WMD. But whether it did or not, it is clear that pre-emptive military strikes against states possessing or suspected of possessing WMD do not provide a stable basis for controlling them. It would require repeated armed interventions against numerous countries. States known to have nuclear weapons include India, Pakistan and Israel. North Korea is openly seeking to acquire them. The Bush administration has stated that at least 13 countries are pursuing biological weapons research. Does Bush intend to attack each of these in turn?
What is needed instead is a collective international arms control and disarmament system,. The framework already exists, in the form of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention. But rather than being strengthened, it is being undermined by the hypocrisy of existing nuclear weapons states, and by the unilateralist arrogance of the Bush administration.
If Bush and Blair are genuinely concerned about WMD, they should recommit themselves to the processes of arms control and disarmament.
Five steps to ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction and building real security
1. Full implementation of the NPT
This would mean non-signatories signing up, and also that the nuclear weapons states finally lived up to their promise to negotiate in good faith towards complete global nuclear disarmament. The NPT is a contract: the non-nuclear signatories promise not to acquire nuclear weapons, and the nuclear signatories promise to negotiate away those they possess. The USA, Britain, France, Russia and China have been in material breach of this article of international law for three decades.
2. Fast phase out of so-called 'civil' nuclear power
States seeking to acquire nuclear weapons do so through their nuclear energy programmes. This enables them to get the material, and also to evade detection by inspectors, since many materials are so-called 'duel use' (ie military or civil). Any radioactive material, including all the waste which remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years and cannot be safely disposed of, is an ingredient for a 'dirty bomb'. It is lunacy to allow the nuclear industry to continue creating radioactive material.
3. Minimising the risk from existing nuclear material
Unfortunately, the world has a dangerous legacy of nuclear material from the last five decades of irresponsible construction of nuclear power stations and nuclear weapons. The most widespread problem is in the states of the former Soviet Union. The international community should pay to make the Soviet nuclear legacy less insecure. This would cost a fraction of the cost of a war on Iraq, and would contribute much more to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
The least sensible management option for nuclear waste is to reprocess it. This separates out the uranium and plutonium, making material for weapons more easily accessible, and emitting a large quantity of radioactivity in the process. Reprocessing must end immediately.
4. Strengthening the Chemical and Biological Weapons Conventions
Instead of strengthening them, the Bush Administration is undermining them. For example, in 2001 it vetoed the adoption of a Protocol to the BWC which would have established a verification regime, on the grounds that this would involve intrusive inspections and threaten the commercial interests of its biotechnology industry.
5. Ending dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power by developing the renewable economy
The world economy's dependence on fossil fuels, and oil in particular, distorts international relations and stokes conflicts. Fossil fuels must be phased out, not just for security reasons but also to protect the global climate. We do not need nuclear power to replace fossil fuels. In the UK, we could get all the energy we need (not just the electricity, but the energy for industry, for heating and for transport as well) from renewables.
