Give peace a chance

At present, millions of people around the world are praying that Iraq will continue to cooperate with the UN inspectors and disarm peacefully so that there would be no need for war, which would kill many innocent people and devastate the country.

George Bush, Tony Blair and their allies seem to have no patience to give peace a chance and go to war only when everything fails and as a last resort.

It is true that Saddam Hussein cannot be trusted, being the cruel dictator he is, but if there is a slight chance of evading war and still reach the goal of what the UN resolution says - then it would be a scandal not to take it. But it seems that the real agenda for Mr Bush and company is to topple Mr Saddam and replace him with a pro-US government so that they could exploit the rich oil wells of the country.

The Pope may have good reason to be saddened by the spectre of war. Archbishop Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's justice and peace department, said recently that an attack on Iraq would unleash terrorism and kill civilians.

He stressed that there were perhaps economic reasons behind the conflict. Mgr Martino continued to speak sense when he emphasised that the West needed to address the causes of terrorism. "It is possible to eliminate one, two or 1,000 terrorists but if you don't go to the cause of terrorism you will never eradicate this terrible phenomenon. And the causes are political, economic and cultural," he said.

Hollywood has again come out against war in Iraq when famous names like Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Kim Basinger, Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Susan Sarandon and many others united to urge Mr Bush to let UN weapons inspectors continue with their work and not rush to war against Iraq. Maybe Mr Bush does not give the least consideration to all the protests from Greenpeace, the National Council of Churches, Oxfam America, etc. But with France, Germany, Russia, China and Belgium, among other prominent countries against rushing to war in Iraq, the time for Mr Bush to decide unilaterally, will soon be over.