By Hamdy Al-Husseini, Sobhy Mujahid, IOL Staff

CAIRO, January 30 (IslamOnline) – The American massive military build-up in the Gulf and the flooding reinforcements lack any basis in international law, said participants in a Cairo-hosted seminar on “Striking Iraq & International Legitimacy” held Wednesday, January 30.

The build-up coincides with mounting American threats of brazen aggression against an Arab and Islamic country and a sovereign member of the UN, they stressed.

The current international resolutions enforced on Iraq also lack legitimacy according to international laws because they should have been revoked after the liberation of Kuwait, said the participants.

They appealed to the world community to exert utmost efforts to head off the looming American-led aggression which will be a flagrant violation of divine religions and international laws.

Speaking to IslamOnline on the sidelines of the seminar, Ahmed Omar Hashim, President of Al-Azhar University, stressed that the peoples and rulers of the Arab and Islamic countries must stand united to oppose this American attitude towards Iraq and Palestine.

If you accept striking Iraq today, tomorrow other Arab and Islamic countries, which are not appealing to the United States, would meet the same fate.

The would-be aggression on Iraq is categorically rejected from both a religious and a legal point of view, he said.

Hashim exhorted the world community to should its responsibility vis-à-vis the Iraqi people, asserting that the future of Iraq is an issue to be decided by the Iraqis themselves.

“The United States if gearing up for assaulting Iraq under claims of combating terrorism which Washington itself practices. Spare this region more war and pains,” he stressed.

Gaafar Abd el-Salam, Secretary General of the Islamic Universities Society, told IslamOnline that “any American military aggression against Iraq is prohibited by the fourth article of the UN Charter.”

'UN Article 51'

“Article 51 of the UN Charter entitles countries coming under attack from an aggressor to fight back,” he underlined.

Abd el-Salam made it clear that the international community only authorizes war in two events, namely, in self-defense or through a UN Security Council mandate, which should never be a unilateral act.

Therefore, he stressed, every act adopted by the United States against Iraq since 1991 is a violation of international law.

Every thing should have come to an end after the end of the 1991 war and the liberation of Kuwait but Washington maintained an all-out embargo on Iraq, continued to starve its people and enforced the self-styled no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq in breach of all international conventions, he said.

Abd el-Salam accused Washington of exploiting the U.N. Security Council authorities and turning U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan into an employee who gets his orders from the U.S. State Department, putting world security at stake.

'Oil…oil'

“Oil was the reason for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and it is the first and foremost purpose behind the American scheme to ignite war under claims of combating terrorism,” he said.

Mohammad Kamal Imam, Professor of Islamic law at Alexandria University, said the foreign military build up will plague the Arab and Islamic nation to decades to come.

Islam opposes any attempts to destabilize the nation and terrorize its peoples, he underlined.

All peoples of the world must stand firmly against the American scheme of unleashing war on Iraq, Imam said.

“What the United States is doing lacks any legitimacy especially that there are more than 15 countries that possess nuclear and biological capabilities including Israel.

Israel nuclear arsenal first

“If Washington wants, as it claims, to preserve world stability it should first strip Israel of its nuclear powers and stop backing the Jewish state it its slaughtering of innocent people using U.S.-made weapons,” Imam averred.

Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Abdullah al-Ash’al stressed that amassing troops in the Gulf to wage war on Iraq contradicts with international legitimacy.

There must be an international coalition to prevent the United States from waging war on Iraq, said the Egyptian diplomat, asserting that the American tendency to impose military solutions has become a threat to humanity.

The American policies will push more countries to seek possession of nuclear weapons because world countries have come to the conviction that possession of such weapons would deter the U.S. from attacking them.

The Egyptian diplomat said that most UN Security Council resolutions are illegitimate and contradict with UN Charter.

If a new Security Council resolution mandating the use of force against Iraq is passed it would not be to please some Arab and European countries that requested a UN war authorization to join the war on Iraq.

He warned that striking Iraq would not bring security or stability to the Gulf region but on the contrary Iraq would be sliced and this would spark ethnic and sectarian disputes across the region, including in Kuwait.

The Egyptian diplomat linked the situation in Iraq with the latest developments in the occupied Palestinian territories, stressing that all countries would be harmed by the war on Iraq expect for the Zionist entity.

Mohamad Abd el-Halim Omar, Professor of Economic Al-Azhar University, highlighted the impact of the would-be war on the Egyptian economy.

Egypt’s national economy is already impacted by the war before a bullet is even fired, he stressed, citing the devaluation of the Egyptian pound.

He also asserted that the tourism sector would loose around 73 percent of its 3 billion dollar annual income in the event of war.

The economics professor added that the looming-war would affect Suez Canal revenues, investment prospects, aggravate the unemployment crisis and double defense and security costs.