The Hindu : Sonia expresses solidarity with Iraq

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 22, 2003

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Sonia expresses solidarity with Iraq

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 21. The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, today said that the U.S. war against Iraq might have caused serious and irreversible damage to the United Nations, to the rule of international law and fraternity of nations. Expressing solidarity with the people of Iraq she said they would be the worst sufferers of this catastrophe for no fault of theirs.

Speaking at the fourth Rajiv Gandhi Environment Lecture, organised by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation here, Ms. Gandhi said a fateful choice of war had been made without U.N. sanction. ``Such a war, flying in the face of world public opinion and against the wishes of a majority of governments, will affect not just our physical environment but has gravely damaged the foundations of orderly international life,'' she said.

Environmental devastations would be catastrophic if the full power of military destruction was unleashed, Ms. Gandhi said.

What was of greater concern to all should be the blatant violation of international laws.

Referring to Rajiv Gandhi's ``passion'' for development combined with environmental responsibility, Ms. Gandhi said that sustainable development would require far-reaching changes in production and consumption patterns everywhere, based on greater equity between and within nations.

Delivering the lecture on `Sustainable Development: Time of Breakdown or Breakthrough?', the environmental expert, Norman Myers, drew the attention towards the group of rural people driven into marginal environments. These are the rural people who have been by-passed by development processes. For reasons political, economic, social, legal and institutional, they have been marginalised.

``Of the 1.3 billion people in absolute poverty, they comprise 900 million and of these, people living in agricultural areas of low potential are 650 million,'' Prof. Myers said.

Talking about the global nutrition scenario, he explained that to counter under-nutrition in the developing countries through upgraded agriculture would cost $40 billion a year.

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