LONDON'S Green Euro-MP Jean Lambert will demand a full public inquiry into the war in Iraq at a candle-lit vigil to mourn the 20,000 estimated to have been killed since hostilities began six months ago.
Some 8,000 Iraqi civilians, 13,500 Iraqi troops, 350 'coalition' soldiers and hundreds of international aid workers and UN staff have been killed since war began in March.
Mrs Lambert said: "Six months on, it is clear that those who argued against this tragic war have been proved right - with Iraq in chaos it has proved counterproductive, with thousands of innocents dead it has proved to be immoral and, as an increasing number of lawyers and tribunals are coming to accept, it was illegal under international law.
"Lord Hutton's inquiry into the tragic death of weapons expert
David Kelly
is, slowly, exposing some of the divisions between the Government's
justification
for war and the reality on the ground in Iraq, but it
remains an inquiry into
the death of a single British civil servant.
"A public inquiry must be held into the responsibility for the decisions that have left thousands dead - civilians, journalists, soldiers and aid workers, from Iraq, the US, the UK and many other nations."
Tomorrow's vigil has been organised by Voices UK, a group that has sent 11 delegations to Iraq and organised anti-war demonstrations around the country since it was formed in 1998 to raise awareness of the human suffering caused by UN sanctions against Iraq.
Twenty-three placards, each bearing the name and picture of just one of the dead, will be displayed at the ceremony, which will include 23 short readings about the individuals pictured.
A spokesperson for Voices UK said: "We are gathering to remember all those who have been killed - and to tell the stories of a tiny fraction of them. Unlike the far smaller number killed in the 9/11 atrocities, these deaths appear to have been all-but forgotten here in the UK.
"Even when they are mentioned they usually feature as a mere statistic, not as real flesh-and-blood human beings."
He added: "We demand that the US and UK governments are held responsible for this criminal invasion and its terrible consequences."
Mrs Lambert added: "Justice will only be served by a swift withdrawal of the occupying US and UK forces with the arrival of a UN-led multilateral peacekeeping and reconstruction force and a swift transition to full democracy in Iraq, with an Iraqi authority, elected by the peoples of Iraqi, making decisions for the benefit of the peoples themselves."
ENDS
Notes to Editors
For details on Iraqi
civilian casualties see www.iraqbodycount.org , for estimates of Iraqi military
casualties see
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,965089,00.html
, for UK-US military casualties see
www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/index.html
For further information on vigil organisers 'Voices UK' see www.voicesuk.org
For
more information please contact Ben Duncan on 020 7407 6280, 07973
823358 or
at press@greenmeps.org.uk