Athens Meeting 19-20 June 2003, Contribution by CP of
Bohemia and Moravia
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From: SolidNet
http://www.kscm.cz , mailto:leftnews@kscm.cz
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by Doc. Ing. H. Charfo, DrSc.

COMMUNISTS' REGIONAL COOPERATION
THE ATTACK TO USA AND EU BELLIGERENCY

Dear comrades,

We find ourselves today in a very difficult international
situation. The aggressiveness of the USA is growing.
Efforts to colonise strategic regions of our world are
taking on an open and in no way hidden form. The USA
ignores international organisations, international law and
public opinion.

The war in Iraq represented a dangerous blow to the
legitimacy of the international institutions which emerged
after World War II and a dangerous precedent which can be
repeated at any time and in any place. Leaders of the US
administration have made threats against Syria and Iran,
and it is only a question of time before they act on these
threats. Syria is blamed by the USA for having tried to
help the victims of aggression. According to the USA's "New
World Order", this is a crime because the USA must have a
free hand and be able to do what it likes and no one must
try to stop them. The war against Iraq showed that the
different attitudes of certain imperialist big powers
before the war began reflected differences in the interests
of these big powers in both Iraq and throughout the Middle
East. When the war became a fact, the attitudes of the big
powers not only changed, but they legitimised the
occupation in a form of Security Council Resolution No.
1483. In other words, they want to maintain their
friendship with the US administration in order to protect
as many of their interests as they can. The war showed the
great gap between the Arab nation and the Arab regimes. The
massive demonstrations in Arabic countries and the
thousands of volunteers who went to Iraq from many of those
countries show that big political changes can take place
in this region.

The war was started in the name of humanity, democracy and
freedom. The bombardment of waterworks, electricity power
stations, markets, residential quarters, the use of cluster
bombs against the civilian population, the information
embargo imposed, the deliberate murders of journalists and
the de facto occupation of Iraq show the US
administration's hypocrisy. With this war the USA opened a
new phase of its geopolitical strategy of safeguarding not
only US interests but especially Israeli interests in the
Arab world. The USA can occupy or divide Iraq, unleash
civil war and appoint a collaborationist government, but
its presence and its collaborationist government will never
be acceptable to the Iraqi people and the world's
democratic and progressive public.

The threat of aggression against other states in the region
is very acute. The lying campaign which the USA conducted
before the attack on Iraq, especially regarding weapons of
mass destruction, will now be used against Iraq's
neighbours or they may even think up another pretext. The
USA's strategic aim remains to impose its hegemony, secure
strategic raw material resources and defeat its economic
rivals from other world business centres. If during the
period of the bipolar world the USA used the whip and sugar
to pursue its interests, today it has begun to use the whip
more than the sugar.

The dangers of war have their roots in US doctrine and
NATO's adoption of this doctrine. NATO has taken upon
itself the right to intervene militarily against anyone
anywhere in the world. By so doing, it has violated not
only its own statutes, but is openly challenging
international law and usurping the authority of the United
Nations Organisation and its Security Council. The war in
Iraq showed that the principle of consensus does not exist
within NATO. A member which has a different opinion on the
supremacy of the USA and its practices can be punished. And
it must in the end give its blessing to US aggressive and
hegemonistic practices. The struggle to abolish NATO or
halt the European states' membership of this aggressive
pact's military structures is more urgent than ever before.
It is worth noting that NATO coordinates its activities
with the European Army as part of the Agreement on
Partnership between the EU and NATO. This is why the
European Army's operations and aims cannot be evaluated in
isolation from the agreement with NATO. In other words, the
European Army plays the role of an extended arm of NATO.

It has to be said that commercial disputes between the
world's main capitalist trading centres, which are the USA,
the EU and Japan, existed even in the period when the world
was divided into two different social systems. These
commercial disputes will continue in the future. By its
domination of oil resources, the US has gained a great
advantage over the other centres, and it wants also to
force the Middle East region into a Free Trade Area by the
year 2010 in the same way that it is trying today to impose
such an area on Latin America. But the question of military
adventures and the USA's expansionist policy and the EU's
participation in this policy is linked to US domination of
the NATO military pact. The USA is using its dominant
position in this pact to dictate its ideas about "the world
order" to EU states which are also NATO members. It was
also for these reasons, that our Party rejected the Czech
Republic's membership of the EU in last week's referendum.

We think that, in a situation in which world peace and
humanity's security are threatened, the communists will
have a major role to play a role which cannot be
performed without the desirable level of coordination. Very
good results were achieved recently by coordinating the
activities of the communist and left parties of western and
eastern Europe. These activities gained additional
significance and were more effective as a result of this
coordination. That is was the reason why we initiated
creation a Working Group consisted of representatives of
the fraternal parties of Communist Party of Greece, the
Communist Party of Russian Federation, United Left of Spain
and our party. Its main aim will be to coordinate our
activities in the field of security questions.

I think that cooperation between communists on a regional
basis and in certain areas for example, in the area of
security and in the social area, etc. is a realistic
ambition. Cooperation between communists in concrete areas
does not logically conflict with their other bilateral and
multilateral relations or commitments. Cooperation between
communists in specific areas will lead to unity of action.
The skipping of stages of action unity in particular
regions, can damage the idea of communist unity in the
future.

In our country, I cannot imagine a people's movement
without the communists, and such a movement could not be
realistic. Movements without an organised political force
can end very quickly, either as a result of repression or
disillusionment. It is very necessary for communists to be
part of this people's movement, but their place and role in
this movement is indispensable. We have to aim at gaining a
decisive position in this movement and not be content with
a marginal role, especially if we don't want the movement
to run out of breath or lose sight of its goal or the
correct ways of achieving it.