Pakistan's Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman condemns French war threat to Iran

ISLAMABAD: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Mushahid Hussain Sayed on Wednesday condemned the French government’s threat of a new war with Iran over its nuclear programme.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had said that the world should brace for a possible war over Iran’s nuclear programme. “We’ve to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war,” he had said in a television interview.

Mushahid, in a statement, said it was the height of irresponsibility on the part of the French leader to talk of another war in the Muslim world when the Iraq adventure had abysmally failed, and the war in Afghanistan was not succeeding either.

He said that one of the major lessons, post 9/11, was that military might was not an answer to political problems, whether it be the Israeli aggression against Lebanon, US invasion of Iraq or the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation intervention in Afghanistan.

He said the recent revelation by former US Federal Reserve head Alan Greenspan in his book, that the motivation in the US war on Iraq was oil, had exposed the true nature of the war that has already incurred costs of over $500 billion.

He said issues pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programme should be resolved on the pattern of North Korea through dialogue, discussions and incentives and not through sanctions, threat of war or the use of force.

He said all political forces in Pakistan would strongly oppose any attack on Iran since a new war in the Muslim world would destabilise the region including Pakistan, and do irreparable damage to relations between the West and the Muslim world. Mushahid said the international community, including the Muslim ummah, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency had rejected any notion of sanctions or war against Iran. He said that dialogue was the only way out, or else the region would face serious crises with uncontrollable consequences.