Sunday, February 02, 2003

Mandela Rebukes Bush Over Crisis With Iraq
Former President Nelson Mandela sharply assailed President Bush this week for pushing the United States to the brink of war with Iraq, calling him "a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly."

Mr. Mandela, South Africa's first black president, has publicly and repeatedly opposed the prospect of an American-led war against Iraq. He has spent his recent years in retirement trying to bring an end to bloody conflicts in Burundi and the Middle East. His comments on Thursday reflected the deep-seated opposition here to any decision by the United States and Britain to attack Iraq without United Nations approval.

Speaking to the International Women's Forum in Johannesburg, Mr. Mandela, 84, accused Mr. Bush of warmongering with the goal of controlling Iraq's oil. He also accused Mr. Bush of disregarding the United Nations because its secretary general, Kofi Annan, is black.

"It is a tragedy what is happening, what Bush is doing in Iraq," he said. "What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

"Why does the United States behave so arrogantly?" Mr. Mandela asked. "Their friend Israel has got weapons of mass destruction, but because it's their ally they won't ask the U.N. to get rid of it. They just want the oil."

Mr. Mandela said Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain were undermining the United Nations by threatening to attack without its consensus. "Is this because the secretary general of the United Nations is now a black man?" he asked. "They never did that when secretary generals were white."

Today, the governing African National Congress reiterated its strong opposition to war and called on its supporters to take part in antiwar marches scheduled in February.

"A people who pose no threat to the world or the security of the United States should not be subjected to the kind of suffering an attack would bring," the party said in its weekly newsletter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/01/international/middleeast/01MAND.html

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