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The urgent questions triggered by the Iraqi War, launched by the US and Britain without UN authorization, have leapt into public attention. It would definitely do good to world peace, scholars pointed out, if the war starters could listen more to voices from the "peoples of the United Nations" on immediate stop of the war.
The UN Charter, which came into effect in 1945, opened by declaring that "we the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small; and for these ends, to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed forces shall not be used, save in the common interest."
An international organization composed of governments of sovereign states after the WWII, the United States take one of its important missions as maintain peace and stop war. It is a long-term good will of human kind that to set up an international organization to maintain world peace, but before founding of the UN we can only found "parties to a treaty" in charters and documents of international organizations.
The term of "we the peoples of the United Nations", firstly proposed by US representatives and agreed by other countries when drafting the UN Charter, is to display that the UN and UN Charter are representing the common will of world peace-loving countries. Therefore "we the peoples of the United Nations" stands for a basic principle that when one or several UN members taken a certain action, they should not only consider the interests of their own countries or part of people, but should also take into account the claims of all UN members.
Since the break out of the Iraqi war on March 20, peoples of UN members expressed their will and request through various ways active or passive.
In Iraq, families of innocent victims are crying tears of anger and sadness, in the US and Britain, relatives of dead soldiers are weeping sorrowfully, more and more raised doubt to the justness of the war!-
More and more people from all over the world cried out their grief and indignation against the war, pressing governments following the US and Britain to restrain.
If the US and British governments do have courage to face honestly the calls of "the peoples of the United Nations", the right decision will not be far - stop the war immediately and bring the Iraqi issue back within UN framework and solve the question peacefully in accordance with norms of international law.
If the UN general assembly to open special sessions on Iraq issue, we demand that, please listen earnestly to the calls of "the peoples of the United Nations"!
(People's Daily March 31, 2003)
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