Former president Nelson Mandela launched a scathing attack on United States leader George Bush on Thursday, saying the American leader wanted to plunge the world into a ”holocaust” with his planned attack on Iraq.
Speaking at the International Women’s Forum in Johannesburg, Mandela also said that Tony Blair’s support for Bush had made the British leader the US ”foreign minister”.
”He (Blair) is no longer prime minister of Britain.”
Criticism of Bush, much of it personal, dominated the former president’s address as he encouraged women of the world to be ”bold with its leadership and condemn the looming war America is preparing for”.
”The women’s forum must make sure that all irregularities in the world are rectified. A war on Iraq is something we must condemn without reservation.”
Mandela said Bush was acting outside the United Nations — an organisation which the American president’s predecessors had sponsored.
He also questioned whether the US was ignoring the UN because its secretary-general, Ghanaian Kofi Annan, is black.
”They never did that when secretary-generals were white. All Bush wants is Iraqi oil, because Iraq produces 64% of oil and he wants to get hold of it.”
America was itself guilty of atrocities, having dropped the atom bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War.
”Because they are so arrogant, they (America) killed innocent people in Japan during Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein was not carrying out the UN instructions and resolutions… I will support them (the UN) without resignation, but what I condemn is one power with a president who can’t think properly and wants to plant the world into holocaust.”
Mandela added he was pleased that people worldwide, including Americans, were rallying in opposition to the US government.
”He (Bush) is making the greatest mistake of his life by trying to cause carnage. Why does the United States behave so arrogantly? Their friend Israel has got weapons of mass destruction, but because it’s their ally they won’t ask the UN to get rid of it. They just want the (Iraqi) oil…We must expose this as much as possible.
Mandela’s scathing attack comes only days after the UN weapons inspection team, which has been tasked to uncover Iraq’s purported arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, released its findings to the world body.
The UN weapon’s inspection head Hans Blix told the UN that inspectors needed more time to verify allegations that the Arab nation possessed such an arsenal.
”The UN’s Hans Blix said he has not been given proper assistance by Iraq but there is only a cloud around certain aspects…but the UN has not come out and said we have found something…”
Mandela added that if Iraq had not co-operated fully, it was the UN’s prerogative to take action. – Sapa