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25 May 2004

US, European, Canadian church leaders meet Annan, urge UN Iraq role

Chris Herlinger
New York (ENI). US, European and Canadian church leaders have met with United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan to highlight their support for a stronger role for the UN in Iraq.

"The future of Iraq is tied to the UN," said the Rev. Robert Edgar, general secretary of the US National Council of Churches (NCC), which has long opposed US policies on Iraq and which coordinated the meeting with Annan.

The 24 May meeting came on the day that the United States and Britain presented plans to the UN Security Council in New York for transferring political authority in Iraq to a new interim government at the end of June. It was also the same day that President George W. Bush addressed the question of Iraq in a major policy speech.

The meeting also came a week after Annan met World Council of Churches general secretary Sam Kobia.

The church leaders represented prominent US denominations as well as the Canadian Council of Churches and the Conference of European Churches. They told journalists after the meeting they wanted to play a constructive role as "moral leaders" as the UN becomes increasingly involved in a transitional role in Iraq.

The NCC's Edgar noted that the assembled church leaders opposed the Iraq war but said it was time for both opponents and proponents of the conflict to "come together to find an alternative way out of the current violence".

Still, Edgar and the 10 others in the delegation made no secret of their continued opposition to the policies of the Bush administration in Iraq. "The increasing chaos in Iraq makes clear that the US government needs to change course," said Edgar, a former US congressman from the state of Pennsylvania.

The Rev. Mark Hanson, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and president of the Lutheran World Federation, said that by meeting Annan, the church leaders were hoping to play a practical role. He asserted "that only through the UN can there be lasting peace". Hanson added: "The UN is the crucial link [in Iraq]."

Dr Keith Clements, general secretary of the Conference of European Churches, said while churches in Europe "have been close to despair" over the issue of Iraq, it was important for churches to "avoid the temptation to say, 'See, I told you so'." Clements noted, "It would be very easy for us to get self-righteous and say this is the mess you got yourself into, now you get yourself out of it."

Asked by Ecumenical News International if church leaders had been as visible as they could be on the Iraq issue, the church leaders defended their response to the war. Clements said no single issue since the opposition to apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s had so united the international ecumenical community as the war in Iraq.

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