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Archbishop attacks war on Iraq
By Ben Leapman, Political Reporter, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 05.11.02An attack on Iraq by the West would amount to little more than "colonialism", driven by a desire to secure oil supplies, the next Archbishop of Canterbury claimed today.
In his most outspoken statement yet, Dr Rowan Williams warned that such a conflict could spread across the Middle East and trigger nuclear retaliation by Israel, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
The intervention threatened to bring a new low to relations between the Church of England and No 10.
It came as President Bush's aides put the finishing touches on a new draft United Nations resolution against Iraq, and as a poll showed the British public increasingly sceptical about the need for war.
In his first public comments since his predecessor Dr George Carey retired last week, Dr Williams set out to counter claims that anti-war campaigners were similar to the politicians who appeased Hitler in the Thirties. In an article in the Daily Telegraph, he dismissed the comparison used by ministers including Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as "facile point-scoring".
He claimed that Arab nations were in a state of "panic" at the prospect of a US-led strike on Iraq.
He continued: "The moral issue is whether we can properly say that our account of what the region needs takes precedence of what its inhabitants overall seem to say.
"If the answer is that it does, there is the classic moral challenge to colonialism of various kinds - we are not the best arbiters of the interests of others when we have interests of our own at stake. (We are keenly aware of the matter of oil.)"
He warned that a war could "risk the lives of hundreds of thousands in a region that could rapidly spiral down into chaos". And he said: "The exact calculation of what weaponry might be employed by a cornered Saddam Hussein is uncertain; and so is the retaliation that might then be provoked in the region from its sole nuclear power, Israel."
An ICM poll for The Guardian showed that 32 per cent of people approved of strikes on Baghdad, six points lower than a week ago. Opposition to war lifted by one point to 41 per cent, while "don't knows" also increased.
Bush officials hope to circulate to the UN Security Council by the end of this week a draft resolution to send weapons inspectors back into Iraq. But French and Russian diplomats said last night that there were still differences over whether the resolution should trigger the automatic use of force if Iraq fails to comply.
Saddam said yesterday that he would consider any new UN resolution provided that it was not simply an excuse for a US military strike.
