Brussels, 19/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - Several EU member states, and especially France and Germany, have protested against the American and British bombing last Friday against Iraq (German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer did so in Washington), and the issue will be raised at the General Affairs Council in Brussels on 26 February. In addition, the European Parliament should be debating the question at its plenary session in Brussels on 26 February. This weekend the Secretary to the Foreign Office, Robin Cook, justified the raid, recalling in particular that "our British pilots" are patrolling the southern no-fly zone of Iraq.
The Parliamentary Association of Euro-Arab Cooperation launched an appeal to the EU asking it to convince Washington to put an end to such actions, that can only "increase the tension and push the peoples of the region into a spiral of violence without end and without winners". As the no-fly zones in Iraq have never been sanctioned by a UN resolution, actions undertaken to enforce them are therefore illegal in terns of international law, says the PAEAC.