Urgent UN reforms required after the debacle of Lebanon.

Jim Addington

The UN Security Council is not functioning according to the UN Charter. The British and US governments were allowed to delay the request for a ceasefire for a month. Several days after the conflict began, the United States government vetoed a resolution, and Britain abstained. The resolution had enough votes to pass (10 out of 15) but Bush and Blair stopped it.

The US and Britain supplied devastating ‘high-tech’ weapons to Israel before and during the fighting and they continue to do so. For several weeks the prime minister Tony Blair and foreign secretary Margaret Beckett refused to call for a ceasefire. When discussions began in New York, the US and UK led the negotiations in order to delay an agreement and enable Israel to achieve a stranglehold over South Lebanon.

The Security Council should decide not to allow states involved in a conflict to vote on it. The British parliament should be recalled to change government policy.

Make your voice heard.

How about writing a letter to the local paper telling them how you feel about replacing Trident with an even more costly and destructive weapon of mass destruction? There has been a £7.5 million shortfall in relation to Kingston hospital, yet the government is planning to waste £25 billion of our money on a weapon of mass destruction that the majority of the public doesn’t want.

Letters are important at this critical time. Jim McCluskey has had a notable success in getting a letter accepted in Time magazine. The question was asked: What would make you feel safe? His reply:

I would feel safe if we detached ourselves from the American foreign policy;

if the West and Israel stopped bombing and humiliating the Arab states; if

the Palestinians were given their own state and it was supported by the West

to the same degree as the State of Israel is supported; If we stopped

demonising Iran and Syria; if we opened a meaningful and respectful dialogue

with the states of the Middle East; if we stopped supporting corrupt Arab

regimes; if Britain and America stopped their gun-running activities; and if

the Muslim leaders in Britain were making it sufficiently clear in the

public forum at large (I am sure they are doing this in the mosques) that

the taking of any human lives is evil.

Best Regards,

Jim McCluskey.