NEW DELHI: That Iraq had accepted Resolution 660 of the

Security Council was flashed within minutes tn a friend's phone call from Hong Kong: the world's radio networks were still reviewing soccer, boxing and golf. Quite simply it means that the world's politics has reached a watershed. Will John Wayne prevail or Mother Teresa ? America's New World Order to carve up the map and the resources of the Middle East to its imperial hectoring and advantage must be restated to the last breath by the same world.

Who should be the ones to resist ? The permanent members of the Security Council like the Soviet Union (on which much rests though, alas, it has given many hostages to the United States and is sorely embroiled in its Internal trou bles) and China. And France, if It has any pretensions to preserve its independent stance in world affairs. Britain will be the craven campfollower of Rambo — a United States which has pulverised one of the oldest regions of the world

and.the cradle of civilisations to rubble, whose President and Secretary of State have put it about that they would like Saddam Hussein to be liquidated — as an English King once said about Thomas Becket. The others who must resist the United States tooth and nail are those not so obvl ously beholden to that wealthy power. Spain, maybe, and Italy, the non-permanent members of the Security Council Including India. Yemen. Cuba and other compassionate nations.

We are at a nodal point in our planet's affairs. The world has chance to claw, as of old. for oil power and hypocritical democracy spiced with electronic war or go for peace by negotiation. The United States has a President who has conducted an illegal and unequal war and reduced the United Nations and tts Secretary Gen era! (oh. for a Dag Ham marskjold from the Castle of Uppsala) to a puppet and a puppy. Either the non-Ameri-can world must square up th Bush or the Middle East, divided and bribed, will feel Texan Jackboots on Its neck for the foreseeable future and oil will again become the prl vate property of a few funda men tails t and autocratic chief tains who will bank the profits in the West and pay Western contractors for "rebuilding" Kuwait and Iraq I

The other malign force that must be resisted by the world with its last ounce of strength is the escalating arrogance and cruelty of the adopted child and heir of the United States — Israel, the hero of the West Bank and so many other detention camps of the Palestinians. The Arabs have never been able to Join forces to meet the death-dealing power of Israel which has donned the mantle of the holocaust which once descended on It and which has become the staunchest ally of South Africa. What a fall ! America s Security Council vetoes In favour of Israel, followed faithfully by Britain, are legion. Once again the US will scream against linkage but

the world knows that the link age exists and has done so for years. The American disapproval of the monstrosities of the recent months in the West Bank and of the so-called "outrageous behaviour" of the Israeli Ambassador tn Washing ton. are carefully contrived playacting. The world expects no change of heart from the United States over Israel and so it must unite to force Amer ica into a corner where Its moral duplicity and double standards are exposed.

And what of India ? It now has a chance to prove what its great figures have pronounced throughout history long before the present prophets. L. K Ad vanf and MurU Manohar Joshi. Chandra Shekhar before the TV cameras, stumbling and mumbling over a statement obviously drafted for him about Iraq and Resolution 660. was no great credit to this country s diplomacy. V. C. Shukla's toothy smile is no substitute for brawled* of fora* affair* and of the forces that mould and threaten the Middle Raat The civilised world must jostle the United States to a warieas ctvlBsatton. Iraq.-the Invader has at last stepped down from its self erected pedestal; must Its face be ground into the dust as was that of the Germans in that fateful railway coach at Compiegne in 1918 ? Winston Churchill was as far as one could be from a weakling and he said: "In war defiance. In victory magnanimity.'' The Americans have won no vic tory. but will they be as cussed now as they were with the Vietnamese to whom they lost?

With so much to do Bush s time must be very limited but he might just take time off to read what was said by a United States Congressman some years ago It went:

"Allow the President to Invade a neighbouring country whenever he shall deem It necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him

to make war at pleamire Study to see If you can tx any hmM to hl. power to th*. reapm after you have given him so much

The provteton of the Con »tltutton giving the rrxrnialrliig power to Congress waa die tated. a* J understand it. by

K»*U always been involving and tan poverlshlng their people in wan. pretending generally tf not always. that the *od of the people was the object This our Convention understood to be the moat oppressive of all kingly oppressions '

That Congressman vu hl of Abraham Lincoln Chandra Shekhar too might take a little time off from hia TV appear ance to read a paragraph or two from Narendra Dev and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The world wants peace, not superpower bulh Ing. And the world want the United Nation, to rouae Itself from tts invertebrate supine ncss Javier Feres de Cueffar la fond of saying that he is from the Third World Lef him prove 11.

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