arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

http://www.unfoundation.org/unwire/current.asp#32753

Former Head Of U.N. Panel Calls Invasion A "War Of Aggression"

Alain Pellet, a former head of the U.N. International Law Commission, said in a Le Monde commentary published Saturday that the U.S.-British attack on Iraq is a "war of aggression" as defined in U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3314.

In the resolution, passed in 1974, the world body's members said the use by a state of unprovoked armed force in violation of the U.N. Charter "constitutes sufficient proof" of "an act of aggression." Citing that text and others, Pellet called "aggression" the "only juridically correct term" for U.S. actions.

Pellet said self-defense and Security Council decisions are the only justifications for war under the charter and that neither applies to the current situation in Iraq. He said Security Council Resolution 1441, which is among those the United States has invoked in justifying its campaign, "does not say and does not imply that any state whatsoever, even the most powerful, can claim for itself the right to determine unilaterally that Iraq has once again failed to fulfill its obligations and set off as it wishes the 'serious consequences' with which that country was rightly threatened if it continued to defy the international community."

Pellet also criticized France for allowing U.S. planes to fly over its territory. "One does not cooperate, even passively, with an aggressor," he wrote (Alain Pellet, Le Monde, March 22, UN Wire translation).