Small sign (very small you might think but not in terms of the perceptions of mainstream opinion in the UK): a bishop is giving an Easter Sunday sermon calling for caution about intervention in Iraq. He will have decided and the Archbiship of Canterbury will have decided whether that is going outside the consensus, and presumably they have decided it does not.
The religious lobby in the UK has been important in world development politics, and if a section of the Anglican church is against a future war with Iraq, then most of the more radical churches will be. Might even contribute to a new peace movement.
Chris Burford
London
At 30/03/02 23:33 -0800, you wrote:
>Increasingly, it is now evident that the U.S. will have to wage the next
>phase of its war on terror
>with only Israel by its side. The Labour government in the U.K. has
>recently been riven with open
>dissension over the unquestioning support that has been extended so far to
>the U.S. Clare Short,
>Secretary of State for International Development, hinted that she would
>consider resigning if the
>U.K. were to join in a campaign against Iraq. Home Secretary David
>Blunkett has warned of the
>possibility of large-scale civil disturbances if the U.K. were to go along
>with the U.S. And former
>Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who is currently the leader of the House of
>Commons, has also added
>his voice to the chorus of dissent. Six months on from September 11, even
>as the Afghan frontier
>remains unpacified, the U.S. is perhaps facing its moment of most acute
>isolation. Few, however,
>seem to imagine that the country that today imagines that it can function
>as a matchlessly powerful
>imperial arbiter accountable to none, will derive the appropriate lessons
>from its isolation. The
>war on terrorism is perhaps on the verge of unveiling new horrors that the
>world could take long to
>recover from.
>
>Full piece:
>< http://www.hinduonnnet.com/fline >