Abdullah Muhsin outlines the new Iraqi Workers’ Federation

Abdullah Muhsin’s speech to the Labour Friends of Iraq fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference.

IFTU President sends message to the Labour Party Conference

Supporting the democratic process in Iraq
Monday 26 September 2005

Freedom to live our lives in peace

By Rasem Alawady, President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) and member of the Iraqi National Assembly

My country has suffered terribly for decades from murder, violence and hatred. The tyranny of Saddam’s rule cost the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis. Many, like me, were jailed and forced to flee into exile to stay alive.

As you see on your TV screens, this suffering continues today. Iraq is not yet the peaceful, free and democratic country we had hoped would follow the end of Saddam’s dictatorship.

Your soldiers are under attack from extremists and terrorists. I understand the anxiety this must cause to their families and why it has fuelled demands for your forces to be withdrawn.

But in this anger and pain, you must remember that coalition forces are not the main targets or victims of these fanatics. The principal targets are Iraqi security forces, Iraqi democratic politicians and trade unionists like myself and, above all, ordinary Iraqi citizens whose only wish is to be allowed to get on with their lives in peace.

It is these Iraqi citizens who, in their millions, defied the threats and bombings to cast their vote to elect us to draw up a national constitution. They will vote on our efforts next month. It is these people that those calling for the immediate withdrawal of coalition forces would, unwittingly, be abandoning.

Iraqis are a proud people. We do not want foreign forces in our land. We want them to leave quickly. But we understand, reluctantly, that these forces remain necessary at the moment if we are to defeat the foreign-backed extremists intent on preventing the kind of country Iraqis want to build.

‘When we ask you to leave, we would expect you to do so. But that time has not come yet.’

It is why your and the other international forces are in Iraq at the request of the interim Iraqi government under UN mandate. When we ask you to leave, we would expect you to do so. But that time has not come yet.

Our security forces are not yet strong enough to defeat the terrorists and extremists in our midst. With the help of the UN, our forces are being built up quickly as are the other democratic institutions essential for a free and peaceful Iraq.

I am glad that British trade unions, whose solidarity and support for their fellow trade unionists in Iraq has been so important, understand this position. Whatever their views on the military action in 2003, they recognise that the priority now is to support the democratic movement in Iraq and, in doing so, the hopes of ordinary Iraqis.

Do not be fooled by the terrible pictures you see on your TV screens from Iraq. We want democracy. We want the freedom to live our lives in peace.

But there are those in our country – remnants of Saddam’s fascistic regime and foreign fanatics helped by our neighbours who fear a strong and free Iraq – who will use any murderous method to prevent us realising our hopes.

Withdrawing your troops now, for whatever reason, would play into their hands.

LFIQ message to Labour Party Conference

The following article appeared in the Daily Conference Paper produced in Brighton on 28th September

Let us be clear about what is at stake in Iraq. It could descend into civil war and be balkanised. Or it could develop a decent democracy for a people who suffered fascist-type rule, war and repression for decades.

Millions of Iraqis defied the bombers to vote for a new government. Foreign troops remain in Iraq with the permission of its Government and under a UN mandate.

Terrorists want to block democracy and women's rights. They indiscriminately slaughter civilians. They seek a sectarian bloodbath. They murder trade unionists. They shall not pass.

Iraqi voices are too often ignored. This is why tonight's Labour Friends of Iraq fringe meeting will hear key Iraqi voices - the growing Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions and the Iraqi Community Association. We will talk about civil society, labour rights and women's rights. And how we can make common cause with our comrades.

Please listen very carefully to IFTU President Rasem Alawady. He epitomises the history and bravery of Iraq's labour leaders. Jailed for union activities in 1959, purged by Saddam in 1979, exiled in 1991, back home in 2003.

He says "We want to see the fast removal of coalition forces from Iraq. Regardless of whether their presence is right or wrong, what we are concerned with now is that the Iraqi security forces – army, police, intelligence - are not yet capable of standing on their own feet, facing up to the extremists and upholding the integrity of Iraq. We shall campaign for the removal of foreign forces once Iraqi security forces are in good shape."

You can take this or leave it if you want but be clear: withdrawing early could devastate our friends and embolden our enemies. Iraqi democratisation would be drowned in blood. But let's understand that democratisation is not an overnight process in Iraq or throughout the Middle East. Saddam's brutal legacy casts a long shadow on the present. Only Iraqis can rebuild their country but we can and should help. We should follow the example of those British unions that
provide moral and material assistance to Iraqi progressives who want a pluralist, democratic, federal, non-sectarian and sovereign Iraq.

Such solidarity can unite us behind the Iraqi labour movement and its battle for social justice.

Interview with Kanan Makiya, author of the Republic of Fear

Kanan Makiya is a key Iraqi democracy and human rights advocate. The Middle East Forum website carries a fascinating and wide-ranging interview with him. Amongst other things he says that Crucial to the policy of de-Baathification is society. And he also says that The central error was the coalition's tendency to focus on the 52 "Deck of Cards" suspects, who were at the absolute top of the Iraqi state pyramid. As a result, tens of thousands of trained thugs, intelligence reaching out to those many hundreds of thousands of people who were fellow travelers of the Baath party—not out of ideological conviction, but out of necessity. They had no alternative, and that was the only way to function in officers, and senior army personnel did not believe that they would be held accountable for what they had done under Saddam's regime. Those people should have been arrested, questioned and, at the very minimum, closely watched. That didn't happen though, and these same people are now the leaders of the insurgency.

Our fringe meeting at Labour Party Conference in Brighton on 28 September

Solidarity with Grassroots Iraq: equality, labour rights and new thinking on foreign policy

Labour Friends of Iraq, Unison, the Iraqi Community Association and Demos fringe meeting at the 2005 Labour Party conference

This meeting is an opportunity to hear from those who are struggling to help rebuild an independent labour movement and civil society in Iraq and to hear from a key organisation of Iraqis in Britain.

Chair: Dave Anderson MP

Dave was previously the President of Unison and is the newly elected Labour MP for Blaydon as well as Joint President of LFIQ.

Abdullah Muhsin

Abdullah is the International representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), the leading organisation of the new Iraqi labour movement.

Jabbar Hasan

Jabbar is the Director of the London-based Iraqi Community Association which is the main established registered Iraqi charity in the United Kingdom and promotes the success of Iraqis here, and its diverse colourful cultural identity. Since late 1930's, Iraqis have been coming to Britain. It is estimated that over 250,000 Iraqis live in the United Kingdom that characterised by different periods, which reflects Iraq's turbulent history.

Rt Hon Ann Clwyd MP

Ann is the Prime Minister's Special Envoy to Iraq on Human Rights and also a Joint President of LFIQ

Keith Sonnet

Keith is the Deputy General Secretary of Unison and participated in a fact finding trade union delegation to Iraqi Kurdistan earlier this year

Jane Ashworth (LFIQ)

Gary Kent (LFIQ)

Clarence Room, Hilton Metropole Hotel, 6.30-8.30pm, Wednesday 28th September

Refreshments

Participants require a conference pass and, unfortunately, we cannot supply these.

Iraqi unions getting their act together

Alex Gordon, an RMT activist, examines developments in the Iraqi trade union movement

There have been dramatic new developments within the Iraqi labour movement, which has grown enormously in confidence and strength since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Keith Sonnet, Deputy General Secretary of Unison, which actively organises practical solidarity action with the Iraqi movement, told last week's TUC that "Iraqi unions are getting their act together."

The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) has since its foundation
conference on 16 May 2003 insisted on the need to refound the Iraqi trade unions movement, not on an ideological basis - as with the state-run unions of Saddam Hussein's regime - but as a genuine democratic and national union federation independent from both the state and from political parties.

Months of detailed discussions have taken place between the IFTU and local workers' committees, particularly in the Baghdad area, some of whom were represented by the General Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions (GFITU), a union formation that emerged following the invasion when officials of the former state-run union, the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), left to seek a political pact with the Shia parties SCIRI and al Dawa, but who are dissatisfied with the lack of progress achieved since its formation.

In July, the first meeting took place between IFTU officials and leading figures from the GFITU, whose leaders made clear their organisation's wish to merge with IFTU leading to a united trade union movement centre in Iraq.

They also clearly indicated their disappointment with the sectarian agenda and reactionary social policies of the current government, which is headed by the Shia political parties and led by al Jaafari, the head of al Dawa.

A joint statement was issued from the meeting calling on all Iraqi workers and their committees and organisations to come together at this critical time for Iraq's future.

A lively debate opened up among trade unionists in Iraq, which has brought together many worker activists from divergent traditions.

In August, the IFTU Executive authorised a formal meeting with GFITU
officials and those of the GFTU, one of whom was a former national official under the regime of Saddam, both of whom now openly disassociate themselves from the former regime and its supporters who are inflicting the horrific wave of terrorism against Iraqi workers.

The meeting agreed on principles for a merger to form one united national labour federation, which is the IFTU. There will be no changes to the membership of the IFTU Executive until a further national conference has been held. All IFTU officials are subject to election by union members whether in workplace ballots or at open conferences and there are no appointed officials. This has been a founding principle of the IFTU and contrasts with the top down practices of trade unions both under the former regime and elsewhere in the Arab world.

The IFTU insists that where workers have previously had a recognised GFTU official they will now be subject to workplace elections.

A joint statement signed by IFTU, GFITU and GFTU announced a unification meeting to formally merge into the IFTU, which was this week hosted by the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions in Damascus.

The IFTU President Raseen Alawadi addressed a Unison fringe meeting at the TUC last week on these developments. Raseen Alawadi joined the
Construction and Woodworkers' Union in 1957 and by 1959 had already been arrested for trade union activities. By 1968 he had become International Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) and also Vice President of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU).

In 1979 he was arrested in a purge by the new Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein that included the murder of GFTU President Mohamed Ayish.

Raseen and others accused of plotting against the Iraqi dictator were imprisoned but escaped from Iraq in 1991, returning in April 2003
after the fall of Saddam's regime to establish the IFTU.

Raseen reminded the meeting that Iraq's people continued to bleed from
wounds inflicted by terrorism. Earlier that same day the TUC heard the terrible news of yet another car bomb in Baghdad, deliberately targeted at Iraqi workers queuing outside an employment agency for desperately needed jobs.

This horror followed the great tragedy a few weeks previously that saw a terrorist-inspired panic lead to the deaths of more than a thousand people in the stampede on Al Khadamiya bridge.

Such terror attacks fall on trade unionists on a regular basis, Raseen said: "When we go to our offices in the morning, we don't know whether we will be coming home again."

Yet, Raseen insisted that despite the existence of the fundamentalists who attack working class people in their homes and workplaces and in the street, the IFTU remains optimistic. The foreign intervention feeds such extremism and that is why the IFTU reiterates its position of calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq by foreign armies.

On the furious debate that is taking place in Iraq over the new draft
constitution, Raseen said; "In general we support the need for the new
constitution, although we have great reservations about the current
draft being proposed to the Iraqi parliament."

The IFTU's reservations are firstly the references to Islam and religion as the source of the law under the constitution, secondly the draft constitution's relegation of the position of women, thirdly the crude references to de-Ba'athification, which fail to distinguish between the bloody criminals of Saddam's regime and the many thousands of ordinary Iraqi people who may have joined Saddam's Ba'ath Party because of fear, or to protect a relative, or in order to access higher education or employment. Fourthly, the IFTU supports the principle of federalism in the draft Constitution, but opposes the sectarian way that this is being used by Islamists in the south to divide Iraq.

Raseen said: "We are working for national unity on the basis of equality under the law. We have worked for over two years now for the creation of one united, democratic trade union movement in Iraq and we have now achieved this goal."

It is now more vital than ever that British trade unions and others increase solidarity work with the new, united Iraqi labour movement as a bulwark of non-sectarian values that can help to build a united, democratic, secular, sovereign and federal Iraq.

Alex Gordon is an RMT member who has visited Iraq as part of his union's solidarity work

Gary Kent explains in the Yorkshire Post why troops out now is wrong

Bloody images of violence against Iraqi workers and British and American troops fill our screens and make us despair. The still sketchy events in Basra fuel this mood. This leads some to argue for troops out now although this will not make Iraqis or ourselves safer – quite the opposite.

The Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ) group seeks to unite those who took opposing views on the invasion of Iraq. We encourage solidarity with the free unions and other parts of the new pluralist civil society which have emerged from the long nightmare of Saddam Hussein's one-party dictatorship.

Rasem Alawady, the President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), was a guest at the recent TUC conference. He epitomises the history and bravery of Iraq's labour leaders. He was jailed for his union activities in 1959, purged by Saddam in 1979 and escaped into exile after another jail sentence. He is also an MP who helped draft the new constitution.

A LFIQ team of union leaders and MPs met him at the TUC and asked him about the foreign troops in his country. His "open, frank and clear answer" was "We want to see the fast removal of (UK and US) coalition forces from Iraq. Regardless of whether their presence is right or wrong, what we are concerned with now is that the Iraqi security forces – army, police, intelligence - are not yet capable of standing on their own feet and facing up to the extremists and upholding the integrity of Iraq. We shall campaign for the removal of foreign forces once Iraqi security forces are in good shape."

He said fascistic and blood-drenched extremists in Iraq receive logistical support from Iran and Syria. It is also said that none of the suicide bombers is Iraqi.

We should listen carefully to Iraqi leaders like Rasem. The British Government should constantly make clear that our troops will go when requested and will not remain without permission. And the same applies to the American forces.

The UN mandate that legitimises the presence of foreign troops expires in December. It is most probable, however, that the UN will extend the mission if asked by the elected and sovereign Iraqi Government.

But foreign troops should remain under pressure to respect human rights and learn from criticisms by bodies such as Amnesty International which detail heavy-handedness and abuses by US troops, in particular.

But the troops out now approach ignores the grave dangers it would mean for the fledgling Iraqi democracy. Whether one supported or opposed the original invasion, we are where we are and a new situation in Iraq has been created.

According to the UN, Iraq's occupation ended in June 2004. Iraqis then elected a government with nearly 9 million people defying the bombers to vote to build a new society after decades of repression, war and isolation.

MPs have drafted a new constitution which has worrying aspects on the status of religion and women's rights, for example, but which may yet be amended and unite Kurds, Shia, Sunnis and other minorities.

Iraqis go to the polls next month to accept or reject the draft. Acceptance will lead to a general election in December. Rejection would mean renegotiating the constitution. Either outcome could see more Sunnis dropping their boycotts and engaging politically to defend their interests. The political process needs protection from those who would drown it in Iraqi civilian blood.

The Iraqi labour movement would lose most from abandoning Iraq to the tender mercies of the so-called resistance. Rasem Alawady says: "When we go to our offices in the morning, we don't know whether we will be coming home again."

Free unions have long suffered in Iraq. Saddam Hussein saw them as a threat. Union leaders were tortured, murdered, jailed and exiled. State-run unions became part of his repressive apparatus. Rasem and his comrades have revived the movement. The IFTU has recruited over 200,000 members since April 2003 in difficult circumstances. It has recently been strengthened by a fusion with two other smaller centres and is clearly the Iraqi equivalent of the TUC. The unions are a non-sectarian bulwark of Iraq’s democratisation.

Iraqi democratisation is also being watched keenly by Arab peoples and tyrants. The west long used the Middle East as a petrol pump. The oil riches of tyrannical one party states allowed them to build huge military machines to repress the masses. Those days are ending though it won’t be a quick process. A democratic Iraq could encourage democratic values throughout the region. Abandoning Iraq could destroy such hopes.

Troops out now also nourishes the illusion that we can somehow isolate ourselves from the troubles of the Middle East. Withdrawing our troops would take them out of the frontline but UK citizens would remain in the firing line for that small but murderous fraction of Islam that wants to kill civilians in industrial quantities. The security threat would be boosted if Iraq were Talibanised or Saddam-like rule restored.

We should assist Iraqi democrats and its Government to isolate and defeat the extremist insurgency which is not popular in Iraq.

There has been a steady trickle of visitors from the Iraqi labour movement to the UK. It is clear from talking to many of them that they desperately need solidarity in rebuilding their country, overcoming their isolation from the modern world through the provision of textbooks and non-ideological education, union training and much more. British unions such as Unison undertake significant solidarity work with Iraq’s free unions.

Iraqis want to use their human and natural wealth to build social justice. We should help them as the most urgent priority and in the interests of our own long-term security.

Gary Kent

The author writes in a personal capacity and is Director of the Labour Friends of Iraq group which is holding a fringe meeting with Iraqi speakers and British trade union leaders and MPs at the Labour Party Conference next week in Brighton. Its website is www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk

Tim Collins in the Mirror

The Mirror today carries an article from Colonel Tim Colins whom it describes as the inspirational former Iraq War commander and headlines pull our boys out of Iraq but a closer read of the article reveals that it is much more nuanced. He writes the following - it's now a conflict that, having become involved in, we must stay with. We can't just cut and run. It would be nice to have our troops out tomorrow but if we leave too quickly it would stay with us for generations and create another Lebanon….The only way that can be done is by giving the Iraqis the ability to defend themselves - which is very important. And we need to give the middle-class, middle-of-the-road educated Iraqis the incentive to get involved in their own politics. The danger is, as in Northern Ireland, that the politics is left to the extremists.So we need to make sure there is security for normal Iraqis to become involved in politics without being murdered.

Judge for yourself

See Seixon for a full transcript of the Galloway-Hitchens debate.

Hat Tip: Harry's Place

Hitchens-Galloway – rematch?

Christopher Hitchensdescribes his bout in New York with George Galloway and says that Galloway is a hot, blustering bully - but I am staying on his case until the very end. He also mentions the LFIQ challenge to the two to debate in London and writes that It had taken me some time to bring him onto a fair field with no favour. After his loud and rude refusal to answer direct questions from a Senate sub-committee, and after his personal insults to me when I had asked him some questions of my own, and after the almost uniformly good press that he achieved for these tactics, I challenged him to a public debate.

A challenge was also issued to me and Galloway by the Labour Friends of Iraq, a group which brings together people who are divided on the intervention itself but which offers help to the embattled secular and democratic forces in that stricken country. Despite repeated applications, Galloway declined any formal reply and tersely said "not under your aegis" when approached in the Commons by Gary Kent, the director of the group.

Time for a rematch in London?

Andrew Anthony on the Hitchens-Galloway debate

Andrew Anthony in the Observer has a wonderful review of the Galloway-Hitchens debate in New York and concludes that the two sides of what was once the left – the interventionists and the anti-imperialists – have seldom seemed so far apart, nor Iraq so far away.

In cold blood: abuses by armed groups

This harrowing report from Amnesty International details abuses by human rights by armed groups in Iraq saying amongst other things that Many of these killings by armed groups, in Amnesty Internationals view, constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity. As such, there is an obligation on both the Iraqi government and the international community at large to ensure that the perpetrators of these crimes are identified and brought to justice. There can be no excuse for such abuses; international humanitarian law clearly distinguishes certain acts as crimes irrespective of the causes of a conflict or the grounds on which the contending parties justify their involvement.

ICFTU backs free unions in Iraq

Guy Ryder General Secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, 14 September 2005 told the TUC that Iraqi workers who paid again today a tragic price need our solidarity to build free trade unions in the aftermath of a war opposed unanimously by all ICFTU affiliates and to secure decent labour legislation.

Why troops out now is wrong

The Times leader today concludes that It has been said by some this week that as far as American and British policy toward Iraq is concerned, there are “no easy answers”. The reality is that there is an easy answer — staying the course until democracy has been embedded in Iraq — but it involves difficult consequences. Idle chatter about “exit strategies” and a timetable for a withdrawal is not only a distraction from the task in hand, it is damaging. The issue is not whether one favours war in Iraq, but peace for Iraq. That peace will only be won if democracy takes hold and terrorism is defeated.

No easy answers in Iraq

The Guardian leader examines the arguments over the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and says that It is true that an immediate pullout might please the very many people, in Britain and elsewhere, who so adamantly opposed the war in the first place and would like to be vindicated by a implicit admission of failure. But it is hard to argue with the proposition that a precipitate withdrawal would make a bad situation even worse, in that the Iraqi security forces would find it harder to tackle an increasingly sophisticated and brutal insurgency. It is entirely right to be angry in the face of daily horrors and privations in an Iraq that is now a deadly laboratory for jihadi terror. But that does not help anyone provide easy answers.

Uniting for terror and depravity

The Times today reports on efforts to unify the so-called resistance and carries an awful report from Tal Afar where the “resistance” is said to have done the following - in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child’s body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents.

IFTU report on Unison fringe meeting at TUC

The IFTU web site carries a report of the fringe meeting at the TUC where President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), Raseen Alawadi was well received on the day when extremists slaughtered Iraqi workers desperate for work.

The grapple in the big apple

Over at drinksoakedtrotsforwar there is a reasonable summary of the long-awaited debate between Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway in New York.

Tony Blair on terror

The Prime Minister told the World Summit on Terrorism that - Terrorism will not be defeated until our determination is as complete as theirs, our defence of freedom as absolute as their fanaticism, our passion for the democratic way as great as their passion for tyranny.

Here is the full speech

First of all, on behalf of the United Kingdom, let me thank everyone for supporting this resolution. We should not under-estimate what we face.
This terrorism that today again has claimed the lives of innocent people, this time queuing for jobs in Iraq, that has now disfigured countries in every continent, at every stage of development, with ever conceivable mix of races and religions, this terrorism is a movement, it has an ideology and it has a strategy, and the strategy is not just to kill, it is by terror to cause chaos and instability and to divide and confuse us - the enemy of this terrorism.

It will not be defeated until our determination is as complete as theirs, our defence of freedom as absolute as their fanaticism, until our passion for the democratic way is as great as their passion for tyranny. It won't be defeated until we unite not just in condemning the acts of terrorism, which we all do, but in fighting the poisonous propaganda that the root cause of this terrorism somehow lies with us around this table, and not with them. They want us to believe that somehow it is our fault, that their extremism is somehow our responsibility. They play on our divisions. They exploit our hesitations. This is our weakness, and they know it, and we must unite against this ghastly game with our conscience.

There are real injustices in our world: poverty, that it is our duty to eradicate; conflicts, not least that between Israel and Palestine, it is our duty to help resolve; nation building as in Iraq and Afghanistan that it is our responsibility to help deliver.

But none of this has caused this terrorism. Around this table two years ago we were divided over Iraq, but by June 2003 there was in place a new UN resolution, a new UN-backed political process to give democracy to Iraqis, which they want, as 8.5 million of them showed by voting for it. The obstacle is terrorism, the victims are largely Muslim. How obscene therefore for these terrorists to claim that their terror is in response to our aggression against Muslims in Iraq. They use Iraq to divide us, just as they use Afghanistan where again their terror is the obstacle to Afghan democracy, just as they use Palestine where terrorism does not create progress but destroys it.

And it is not these issues, and never forget September 11 had happened, just a short distance from here, was before Iraq or Afghanistan, and when there was an active attempt to bring peace to the Middle East. If not these, they will use Chechnya, they will use Kashmir or Bosnia, and if none of these it will be the western presence in Arab states. And when all of that fails, those states themselves will be blamed, or any state that is not Talibanised.

The root cause therefore is not a decision on foreign policy, however contentious, it is a doctrine of fanaticism, and we must unite to uproot it by co-operating on security, as people have said, by taking actionagainst those who incite, preach or teach this extremism, wherever they are, in whichever country, and also by eliminating our own ambivalence, by fighting not just the methods of this terrorism but their motivation, their twisted reasoning, their wretched excuse for terror.

At the same time of course, by contrast, we should fulfil our duty to act against injustice. We support, all of us, strongly the resolution for conflict prevention in Africa. We should show our own strength and belief in the values of democracy and tolerance, and above all we should demonstrate that the future, however hard the path to it is, does not, and never will, belong to fanatics but will be with those who believe that we should live in peace with each other, whatever our race, nation, colour or religion.

They do indeed have their strategy, but we have ours, and we should use it to defeat them.

Tony Blair tells UN of power of democracy

The Prime Minister argued the following - Give people the chance and they always vote for freedom; always prefer tolerance to prejudice, will never willingly accept the suppression of human rights and governance by extremism.

Here is the full speech.

The UN must come of age. It must become the visible and credible expression of the globalisation of politics. The modern world insists we are dependent on each other. We work with each other or we suffer in isolation.

The principles of the UN have always had a moral force. Today they receive the sharper impulse of self-interest.

The terrorist attacks in Britain on 7 July have their origins in an ideology born thousands of miles from our shores.

The proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons will never be halted outside of an international consensus to do so.

Failed states, as we know to our cost, fail us all. The protection of the environment, the promotion of international trade: we can do nothing without effective action together.

And when we look with revulsion, as we should, at the misery of the millions who die in Africa and elsewhere through preventable famine, disease and conflict, the urgency to act is driven not just by conscience but by an inner sense that one day, if we refuse to act, we will reap a dire reward from our refusal.

What's more, humanity today is confident of its common values. Give people the chance and they always vote for freedom; always prefer tolerance to prejudice, will never willingly accept the suppression of human rights and governance by extremism.

So the challenge is clear; the values clear; the self-interest in upholding them together also clear.

What must now be clear is that the UN can be the instrument of achieving the global will of the people.

It must give leadership on terrorism. There is not and never can be any justification, any excuse, any cause that accepts the random slaughter of the innocent. Wherever it happens, whoever is responsible, we stand united in condemnation.

The United Nations must strengthen its policy against non-proliferation; in particular, how to allow nations to develop civil nuclear power but not nuclear weapons.

The new Human Rights Council must earn the world's respect not its contempt.
The United Nations Peace-building Commission must become the means of renewing nations, where war and the collapse of proper systems of government have left them ravaged and their people desolate.

For the first lime at this Summit we are agreed that states do not have the right to do what they will within their own borders, but that we, in the name of humanity, have a common duty to protect people where their own governments will not.

Stalking this summit, like a spectre, are the Millennium Development goals.
The struggle against global poverty will define our moral standing in the eyes of the future.

The G8 in Scotland shows how we redeem it. I have heard people describe the outcomes of this Summit as modest, No summit requiring unanimity from 190 nations can be more than modest.

But if we did what we have agreed on doubling aid, on opening up trade, on debt relief, on HI V/AIDS and malaria, on conflict prevention so that never again would the world stand by, helpless when genocide struck, our modesty would surprise.

There would be more democracy, less oppression. More freedom, less terrorism. More growth, less poverty. The effect would be measured in the lives of millions of people who will never hear these speeches or read our statements.
But it would be the proper vocation of political leadership; and the United Nations would live up to its name. So let us do it.

Interview with IFTU President

Eric Lee interviews the IFTU President.

Questions to Mr Galloway

Greg Palast questions George Galloway.

Voter registration increases

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting carries a report on increased electoral registration. the manager of the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq, announced that a total of 1,129,146 voters visited elections registration centers during the updating process that started August 1 and ended Sept. 7. The IECI finished voter registration on August 31, but extended it in Anbar governorate for another week for security reasons. (Al-Taakhi is issued daily by the Kurdistan Democratic Party.)

The dangers of false equivalence

Dave Aaronovitch in the Times examines the moral arguments around killing in wars and concludes that It’s important, it seems to me, that we don’t confuse ourselves with false equivalence. The result of that would be an incapacity to take any action that carried even the risk of harm. But it’s just as important to understand that this doesn’t let us off the hook. If we became careless of whether or not people suffer because of our choices, we could still become the thing we hate.

Listen to the Hitchens Galloway debate in New York on Wednesday 14th September

The debate can be accessed here and Christopher Hitchens says he is looking forward to it.

Hat Tip Harry’s Place

Symbol of non-sectarianism

The Guardian reports on a Sunni Arab teenager who died saving Shias during last week's stampede disaster in Baghdad and who has been hailed as a hero whose sacrifice should unify Iraq.

Young defy terror

Times Correspondent Richard Beeston in Baghdad says young defy terror to pursue a dream in a profile of wannabe pop star Marwa Ahmed.

Ambassador appeals over Baghdad stampede

The Iraqi Ambassador to the UK, Dr Salah Al-Shaikhly has a letter in the Times in which he says of the stampede in Baghdad that conflicting stories are attempting to point the finger of blame at sectarian agendas. This stokes the fire of terror and plays directly into the hands of al-Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates in Iraq. He concludes that Our communities have co- existed without recourse to the civil war or sectarian strife that was predicted by the scaremongers. Our two communities never had a reason to quarrel. We lived in peace for over one thousand years. Our leaders and our people have shown remarkable maturity and restraint and we denounce all attacks aimed at our unity.