ANASTASIA BATTLE: Welcome, everyone. This is the International Peace Coalition, this is the 45th week in a row that we’ve been meeting. We haven’t stopped, and we’re not going to stop until we get true peace in the world. My name is Anastasia Battle; I’ll be moderating today with Dennis Small and Dennis Speed. We have a line-up of a number of speakers and various reports. If you have any reports to give, please let me know, and we’ll make sure to add you in the agenda as we go along today; especially organizing reports. If you’re new, I’d like to encourage all new people to introduce themselves, and let us know what organization you’re from and what kind of organizing you’ve been doing. It’s always good to hear from new people and new ideas of what people are doing around the world.
The main purpose of what we’re doing here today is to coordinate the international peace movement, because there is such a divide amongst many different organizations and groups that we’re never actually going to accomplish true peace unless we start coordinating together. That’s really the top-down perspective we have.
With that, I’d like to open it up to the founder of the Schiller Institute and the co-founder of the International Peace Coalition, Helga Zepp-LaRouche to start us off today. Please go ahead, Helga.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Hello to all of you. Unfortunately, the strategic situation is getting more tense by the day, and there are about three major crisis spots I want to touch upon briefly. One—maybe the most acute and urgent—is naturally the one in Southwest Asia, because following the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1st, there is now a massive motion in the direction of a pending possible counterattack from Iran on someplace in Israel. There are different activities around that. One is that, according to reports, the IDF and the Mossad have agreed, they have prepared strikes, counterstrikes against Iran if such an attack occurs. Western mainstream media are filled with reports like the Wall Street Journal saying that an attack by Iran on some Israeli target could occur within 24-48 hours. That’s naturally immediately. Then, there are reports that the Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian will attend a special UN Security Council meeting on April 18th, next Thursday. Then, the U.S. CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla arrived in Israel yesterday. He met with the Chief of Staff of the IDF Herzi Halevi. He visited an Air Force command; he’s meeting today with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Obviously, there is an extremely close coordination between the U.S. and Israel on this matter.
In Iran, there are reports that they also have prepared optional plans for such a strike, which have been presented to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Supposedly a decision has not yet been made on that, but videos are circulating in the social media about simulations of attacks either against a nuclear plant in Negev, or Haifa airport, or water desalination installations, power plants, inside Israel. If that would happen, then we are obviously immediately in an escalation. There were statements coming from the U.S. side that if there is any attack from the Iranians, the United States will be ironclad on the side of Israel, whatever that means.
But I think we should be absolutely aware of the fact that if it comes to a direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran, that has the immediate potential to become not only a regional war, but given the fact that Iran is so tied with Russia and China, it does have the potential of going way beyond it. What I mean by “way beyond it,” is the potential all the way even to global war.
In the meantime, the IDF has attacked yet another aid convoy, this time of UNICEF, which was supposed to bring in medical supplies. They had to discontinue that mission; fortunately no one was killed. Obviously, the conference we have tomorrow, the Oasis Plan conference could not come at a more important point. Because we absolutely need to inject a completely different approach; namely the approach of peace through development. So, I would ask all of you who are participating in this call that you help to the best of your abilities to make this conference as big as possible. We have to really produce an excellent conference tomorrow. If you look at the speakers, it is very high-level participation, both in the political panel and also the more technical panel. We will use the proceedings from tomorrow to show what is our approach, and then go into high gear of organizing after the conference. It’s not an end point, but it’s a starting point of a real organizing explosion until we have a different perspective, which is the Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia.
Now, only to mention the other two major escalation points: On Ukraine today there is a special UN Security Council session which had been requested by Russia. I don’t have yet any reports on how that is going, but that will obviously be extremely important. And in follow-up of the meeting we had two weeks ago on Macron’s proposal to send in French troops into Ukraine, that is actually an interesting development, because reports I got from France today are that Macron is in complete disarray. Not only did many European countries not back him up, but the population in France is against sending French troops. There was a poll showing that 60% of the population are against it, because they realize that it would not have NATO Article V backing it up, but that French troops would be there alone, and therefore be a big target of Russian attacks. That is very good. But I think the one thing we should really include in our organizing package is that you remember that already in February 2023 China had made a 12-point proposal for a peace conference and a peace solution for Ukraine. Recently, the Chinese Special Envoy Li Hui was again on a tour going through Moscow, Kyiv, Brussels, Berlin, and Paris. That is a very important conception, because the good thing is that China has maintained extremely good relations not only to Russia, but also to Ukraine. So, the Ukrainians have expressed repeatedly that they do trust the Chinese, and that therefore China is in a unique position to mediate and come up with a diplomatic solution. Naturally, there will be a big conference in Switzerland as well, but that has been characterized by many people as just an effort to confuse the countries of the Global South by pretending that the Europeans are for a peace solution. But Russia has not been invited, and therefore that conference does not look very promising. I think we should really put our whole support behind the Chinese 12-point proposal.
Now, I think that leaves with the last point, which unfortunately is heating up as well. As Global NATO is trying to establish itself in the Asia-Pacific. The recent visits of Kishida and Marcos from the Philippines to the United States have escalated this situation. The United States and Japan put out a leadership statement after the meeting between Biden and Kishida. It naturally attacked China for causing trouble in the South China Sea, Taiwan. The language was so vile that the Chinese Foreign Ministry put out an official démarche, an official protest to both the United States and Japan, saying that this was a complete slander of China, and absolutely smearing China, which they had to refuse. But it’s very clear that unless we get to what we have been discussing from the very beginning—a New Paradigm where we overcome geopolitics with a new international security and development architecture which includes all countries of the planet, the scenarios or the theaters of potential war will just shift from one crisis spot to the next until we have a really different approach on world politics. As long as that is not given the danger that things could go out of control very quickly. According to the judgment of a highly-placed person we talked with recently, who said, “Yes, you are absolutely right. In the best case, we are weeks away from an explosion and a disaster.” I think that should fuel our efforts to really fight for a peace solution which has to be just to all sides, because the lesson from the Peace of Westphalia is that unless it is just and unless it takes into account the interests of all, it cannot work.
So, I just want to leave it at that, and motivate you to do whatever you can for the conference tomorrow.
