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Bush's war against Iraq has set United States against the United Nations, international law and world opinion with grave unfathomed consequences for the global community for the next few decades


Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang

(Petaling Jaya,  Thursday): United States President Bush's war against Iraq has set the United States against the United Nations, international law and world opinion with grave unfathomed consequences for the global community for the next few decades.

The world map is being rewritten unilaterally by the world's only hyper-power where might is right, putting the clock of international relations and diplomacy back by more than half a century.

No one will shed a tear for any end for Saddam Hussein, undoubtedly the world's most cruel dictator in the 21st century, but humanity may have to pay a very heavy price if the American-led unilateral war against Iraq unleashed a new world scenario where the only countervailing power to the lawlessness of the hyper power is the lawlessness of the despair and the marginalized seeking salvation through new forms of international terrorism.

With the start of the second Gulf War by the second Bush presidency, one immediate question being posed is whether it also sounded the death knell for the United Nations or whether the world institution can survive the first war of the 21st century.

In view of the momentous consequences of the March 20 war today, the Malaysian Parliament should adjourn its current business to proceed to an emergency motion to convey the unanimous all-party condemnation of the US-led unilateral war against Iraq without United Nations Security Council sanction and for the government to lay out its contingency plan in the post-Iraq war, in particular the economic stimulus package which had been completed sometime ago but held back awaiting the Iraqi war.

(20/3/2003)


* Lim Kit Siang, DAP National Chairman