For peace (From Penarth Times)

For peace

ON FEBRUARY 4, I was fined at Watford Magistrates Court for Obstructing the Highway.

With 60 other people I sat in the road to impede entry into Northwood Military Base, the co-ordinating centre for any attack on Iraq. I was allowed to make the following statement:

"The murder of 4,000 innocent people on September 11, 2001, was a dreadful event, completely to be condemned.

But it also requires us to understand why that happened, because a war against terrorism - the official justification for an attack on Iraq - will never be won unless it is accompanied by persistent and dedicated work to end the causes of terrorism.

The same day as those 4,000 people were killed, 19,000 children died in the developing world from conditions which, to a large extent, human beings have the ability and wealth to prevent.

A similar number has died every day since.

Some of these children lived in Iraq where their deaths were made more likely by the ongoing UN programme of sanctions.

More than 500,000 Iraqi children have died because of these sanctions during the last 12 years.

These children are as valuable as our own, and their parents' grief is exactly the same as ours would be.

If the attack on Iraq is unleashed, the UK will be part of a military victory.

But we will also be part of a further deflection from the task of working for a life-sustaining environment.

The way forward is to seek justice by long term peaceful means.

Philip Kingston St Luke's Avenue Penarth