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Ирак/Iraq
LONDON, England -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the prominent anti-apartheid campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has condemned the United States over its policy in the crisis over Iraq.
And he told a British TV programme on Sunday that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's support for the U.S. over Iraq was "mind-boggling." "When does compassion, when does morality, when does caring come in?" Tutu told ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme.
"I just hope that one day that people will realise that peace is a far better path to follow," said Tutu, who always rejected violence during his long years of opposition to apartheid in South Africa.
Tutu said he was "deeply saddened" to see the U.S. and Britain preparing for war with Iraq, and accused the U.S. government of maintaining a double standard over weapons of mass destruction.
The Nobel Peace laureate said Washington was failing to heed the rest of the world as it tried to disarm Iraq.
"Many, many of us are deeply saddened to see a great country such as the United States aided and abetted extraordinarily by Britain," Tutu said.
"I have a great deal of time for your prime minister, but I'm shocked... to see a powerful country use its power frequently unilaterally," he added. "I mean the United States says, 'you do this' to the world -- 'If you don't do it we will do it.' That's sad."
The U.S. -- backed by Britain -- has threatened to use force to disarm Iraq if President Saddam Hussein does not scrap all chemical and biological weapons, as required by United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Tutu said the United States had not used the same threat of force on other countries with weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
"If we are going to say that weapons of mass destruction, that's one of your criteria now, what you do with weapons of mass destruction in Europe, what do you do with them in India, what do you do with them in Pakistan? Where do you stop?" Tutu said.
"Let's hear what these U.N. weapons inspectors get to see," he added. "But if you are going to apply as strictly as you want U.N. resolutions there, you ask why there and not in other places. Why not in Palestine?"
A former Archbishop of Cape Town, Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his efforts to bring a nonviolent end to South Africa's apartheid regime and later headed the country's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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