Peace & Progress - A Party for Human Rights

The first Peace and Progress symposium, entitled Liberation or War Crime: A symposium to assess the damage done to international law and co-operation by the war and occupation of Iraq, was held on June 1st 2003 at the Young Vic in London. Audio clips (in mp3 format) of the panelists initial inputs are available below - click on the Listen links to hear each segment of the symposium.

Professor Burns Weston, Professor of International Law and human Rights at Iowa University
That is was illegal for, primarily two reasons: firstly because none of the facts that were cited to justify the claims made, appear to me at least, to be plausible. ..the other reason is because I believe that the important Security Council Resolution, number 1441 has been given a twisted interpretation by both the US and British Governments, in such a way as also to be implausible.

Professor Christine Chinkin, Professor of International Law at the LSE
Not to see Iraq and the war in Iraq as a single event, but look back over the past decade and see how in fact the laws of war, and the compliance with the international regulation against the use of force, had been gradually whittled away through a whole series of incidents, going right back through, Somalia, obviously, Kosovo, East Timor and so on.

Professor Phillipe Sands, QC, Professor of International Law at University College, London
The Prime Minister's view that the use of force was lawful was premised on the existence of weapons of mass destruction. If there were no weapons, or if he had no reasonable basis for concluding that there were weapons, then his government's claim to legality falls away. We therefore are entitled to be informed of the full basis upon which he formed the view that such weapons could be used within 45 minutes.

Listen (5 minutes 5 seconds)

Doctor Karma Nabulsi, Research Fellow in politics at Nuffield College Oxford
But there is also another very important set of laws, which is how you fight that war, and what is permitted and not permitted under the Geneva Convention. And that is something, if people talk about raising our primary concerns that would be one of my primary concerns. What is happening now on the ground?

Listen (2 minutes 35 seconds)

Jan Kavan, President of the United Nations General Assembly
Although most visible about the question of Iraq, the rift [in the UN] is not only about the question of Iraq. It is also about, and I would say foremost about the functioning international system where one single nation, in this case the United States, possesses an unprecedented military and economic power. A nation today which is so powerful that it can almost afford to ignore the entire international order.

Listen (11 minutes 36 seconds)

Susan Marks, Lecturer in International Law at Emmanuel College, Cambridge
But the reason I am worried that we on the left might be tempted into either of those two positions, is not just that they are descriptively inaccurate, in terms of the relationship between international law and global affairs, it is also that they are normatively troubling in the sense that they carry the danger of blocking efforts to strengthen international law, as a tool of justice and peace.

Listen (3 minutes 42 seconds)

Jonathan Steele, journalist at the Guardian
But I think that the most important thing is the point I'm coming on to now. And that is the issue of pre-emption. As you know some months before the United States decided to make an issue out of Iraq, Bush made a big speech to the West Point Military College graduating class, saying that from now on the United States policy would be one of pre-emption. They would hit people long before they were in a possible position to do anything against the United States.

Listen (5 minutes 24 seconds)

Mark Seddon, Editor of the Tribune
We have been lied to I believe, and we have quite clearly broken the United Nations Charter, very seriously, because where I come from in the Labour Party, the United Nations Charter forms part of our Constitution. Tony Blair has not only broken a Conference decision, he has refused to take votes on the National Executive Committee, he has taken us into a war.

Listen (4 minutes 52 seconds)

Professor John Mason, Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of New Jersey
What we see is an attempt by the sovereignty wing, I guess, of the American conservative movement, to try and emancipate the United States and its power, from what it sees as the chains and obstacles created by the international institutions that were set up in the wake of World War II. Set up by us, but that now we seek to free ourselves from.

Listen (6 minutes 27 seconds)