Anglo-American responsibility

I blush to be British. Page one of The Jakarta Post on Saturday, April 12, showed two completely distraught Iraqi children, newly orphaned by the Anglo-American aggression on their country. Page 12 of the previous day's issue had a picture of a horribly maimed Iraqi boy. These are the orphans and the maimed for whom the attacking U.S. and British forces have a direct moral responsibility.

Page three of April 12's paper meanwhile has my country's official representative in Indonesia, Ambassador Richard Gozney, airing his government's amoral point of view.

I read the ambassador's interview hoping to find some reference to the UN Charter to which Britain and the United States are signatories, but could find none. And why? Because as Mr. Gozney very well knows what the two countries have done has been a major violation. Not only was the U.S.-UK attack on Iraq an aggression in the terms of the Charter, it was an undeclared act of war. Undeclared war is a crime for which the perpetrators are responsible under the 1949 Geneva Convention and, this being so, the British Labour MP Tam Dalyell is quite right in calling Tony Blair a war criminal who should be sent to The Hague for trial.

What is now happening on the streets of Iraqi cities is the direct responsibility of the Americans and the British. How can it be any other way? Ambassador Gozney skips round this in the typically evasive way of the seasoned Foreign Office mandarin. If the occupying force will not take responsibility for the breakdown in law and order that is a direct consequence of their actions then who will? What is happening is that the Americans are simply abdicating their responsibility and no amount of spin can alter that fact.

Lastly, as with Prime Minister Blair Ambassador Gozney's view is simply ahistorical. Making no reference at all to the fact that Britain was the past colonial power simply does not wash. If he and Blair choose to forget, the Arabs have not and why should they? Britain has committed itself to a new colonialism, no less.

DAVID JARDINE, Jakarta