Over 160 lawyers from Indian Supreme Court on Tuesday condemned the American-led war against Iraq as an "external aggression," saying that the coalition forces have no legal authority for the invasion.
The United States and Britain were making external aggression against an independent and sovereign country without any sanction of the United Nations, 164 lawyers of the Supreme Court said in a signed statement.
We feel that no nation has any legal and moral authority to replace ... any regime of any other country howsoever illegal it may be," said the lawyers.
They demanded that Supreme Court Bar Association should convene a general body meeting to condemn the action of the United States and its allies, saying that the time had come to restructure the United Nations on the basis of "equality and adult franchise."
The statement said the invasion against Iraq had posed a serious challenge to the very existence of the UN.
"We fell that this act of aggression is for the economic enslavement of the people of Iraq by capturing their oil fields by force," it added.
Earlier, the Indian parliament, after two days of hectic discussions over wording, unanimously adopted a resolution "deploring" the US-led war on Iraq.
The resolution in Hindi asked the international community to put pressure on the coalition forces to immediately halt hostilities and withdraw from Iraq.
(Xinhua News Agency April 9, 2003)
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