Stop the aggression against Iraq! Imperialist troops out of the Gulf!

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rallies were banned in Lebanon-but not in Jordan The following is an appeal adopted by the XIII World Congress of the Fourth International, held in mid-February.

In the name of justice, a new massacre is being carried out. In the name of liberty, they are murdering once again. In the name of democracy, a country is being crushingly bombed. After so many others, it is now the turn of Iraq. Who will be next?

The assault being led in the Persian Gulf by the army of the United States, its imperialist allies and its Arab and other supporters, fundamentalist monarchies or dictatorships, has a goal that goes well beyond the so-called "liberation of Kuwait" and the alleged defense of "international law." The actions of this coalition of oppressors of peoples, as always, are quite opposite to the "values" they claim to hold.

In reality, for the imperialist powers, it is a question of decisively establishing a "new world order," where every attack on their vital interests will produce the same treatment as is being received by Iraq today. This "new order" is more than ever subjected to the political-military hegemony of the United States, whose terrorizing arrogance now knows no bounds. The policy of collusion with imperialism followed by the Soviet leadership, far from opening up a new era of peace, has greatly encouraged the governments of London, Washington and Paris to carry out their most criminal plans.

The aggression against Iraq is the biggest aerial operation in history. It is the first major electronic war, with Iraq being used as a vast testing ground for the latest murderous gadgets from the imperialist military array. The immediate aim of this attack is no longer in doubt: it is the total destruction of Irag's military-industrial potential. American imperialism wants to remove from the scene a regional power liable to challenge its oil interests and capable of counter-balancing the power of the Zionist state, the USA's main ally in the region. In order to achieve this, the Pentagon is prepared to consider anything, including the use of nuclear weapons.

Nothing can justify this barbaric attack on the people Ali Yurtsever/GAMMA LIAISON Survivors of bombing raid on Baghdad.

of Iraq. Neither the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait nor the nature of the Baghdad regime make it justified for the U.S. and its allies to set themselves up as police and arbiters We know all too well how much respect for the rights of peoples motivates these "dispensers of justice" who only yesterday supported the Iraqi dictatorship in its war against Iran and closed their eyes to the massacre of the Kurdish people, these "liberators" who have equipped and financed the Israeli army of occupation in Palestine, and who are even now multiplying this support, as the Zionist government is openly planning to expel a large proportion of the Palestinian people once more from their own land.

Faced with this offensive, whose real motives are eminently reactionary, anti-imperialist movements are not neutral. They are on the side of the people of Iraq, subjected to bombing by the coalition forces. They are for an immediate and unilateral end to the aggression, for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of imperialist forces from the Gulf region, for the right of the Arab peoples to freely decide their own fate without interference from the big powers.

In particular, they must defend the Kurdish and Palestinian peoples' rights to self-determination against all their oppressors.

To be anti-imperialist today means being unconditionally for the defeat of imperialism, as are the peoples of the Arab region and the Middle East who have massively expressed their solidarity with the people of Iraq against the governments of the coalition and those who take refuge in an embarrassed neutrality and join the blockade of Iraq, rather than supporting its people who are under threat of death.

We will step up our effort to strengthen the world movement against the aggression, creating the broadest possible unity so as to impose a halt to the bombing and the withdrawal of the imperialist troops.

We refuse to pay for the costs of this criminal war, undertaken in the interests of the oil and financial magnates. We denounce those who do not hesitate to waste billions in order to crush Iraq, while they refuse to cancel the debt everywhere.

Together with the workers of the world, we shall unite to block the imperialist war machine. We will support tne youth, the soldiers, the reservists who, in the countries of the aggressive coaliton, refuse to take part in this massacre.

Against the oppressors' "new world order' , we stand for a new world solidarity of all struggles against oppression! •