BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — The Unions Tasmania Council, the peak union body in the state, issued a statement from its meeting on February 13 opposing a unilateral US war on Iraq.
However, the statement supports UN calls on Iraq to "surrender all its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and their delivery systems", implying that Iraq still has such weapons and that the aim of a UN-endorsed war would be to "disarm Saddam".
"UN inspections and deliberations must be allowed enough time and resources and Security Council members must not be pressured by US bullying into premature decisions", the statement says. "In the event that Iraq fails to comply with the terms of the UN resolution, the issue must be referred to the UN for further deliberation."
The statement is silent about whether or not Unions Tasmania would support a war against Iraq if it was authorised by the United Nations Security Council. The statement also makes no comment on the discussion that is beginning in the union movement about the role of industrial action to stop the threatened war.
Unions Tasmania secretary Lynne Fitzgerald told Green Left Weekly that industrial action was a matter for individual unions to decide and that the Unions Tasmania Council had not made any recommendations on the issue.
Unions Tasmania initiated the Hobart Peace Coalition last September which significantly broadened the active forces in the anti-war movement (compared with the campaign against the war on Afghanistan). Organising meetings of the Peace Coalition have had the participation of the widest spectrum of political views of any activist campaign in Hobart for many years.
The Unions Tasmania statement pledges continued support to the Peace Coalition, but makes clear that it views its role in the Peace Coalition as simply opposing "unilateral action against Iraq". The Peace Coalition founding statement opposes a "pre-emptive strike" and pledges support to "efforts by the UN to maintain the peace" — clauses most Peace Coalition activists view as expressing opposition to any US-led war on Iraq, even one that has UN backing.
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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