20 March 2002

Kia ora,

the message below is forwarded on behalf of the Coalition for Peace Whangarei. It is a request for you to urgently send a letter or fax to Helen Clark for her to consider before she meets with George Bush in Washington next week. All the details, including ideas for what you can say, are in their message.

If you require additional information to add to your version of the letter, there are articles about the US government's new plans re nuclear weapons available online at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/alert.htm#nwe ; the 'war on terrorism' at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/usatrep.htm ; and the US government's plans to extend their war to Iraq at http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/iraqa.htm

If you do send a letter or fax to Helen Clark re her visit, can you please send a message to PMA letting us know that you have - we're trying to get an idea of the number of letters/faxes which have been sent to her. Thanks. _________________________

18 March 2002

Urgent action!

Greetings, Friends. Tena Koutou.

Below is the text of a letter to the Prime Minister Helen Clark which we of the Whangarei Coalition for Peace ask you to consider forwarding to Ms Clark in your own name or the name of your organisation as soon as possible this week. A collective letter in the name of the Coalition with a similar text has already been sent to Ms Clark.

We ask that you act on this urgently in order to give the Prime Minister time to consider our collective thoughts before she leaves on Monday 25 March to meet President George Bush in the USA. At this time, when USA is about to extend its permanent 'state of war' to include attacks on Iraq and other countries, and to reinstate a 'first-strike' capacity for their nuclear weapons, it seems important to us that a strong Aotearoa New Zealand voice be heard by Bush at the highest level. It is also important that our own Government take more responsibility for positively influencing the USA than they have done so far.

We ask you to act immediately on this request. Please sign yourself ­ with or without your address and a few other signatures - and send the enclosed letter (or any altered version of it that you would prefer) to PM Helen Clark. Our suggestion would be to do so by fax to 04 473 3579, as that is most likely to be received in time and read. Alternatively you could send it by fastpost (with stamps, freepost to parliament only covers slowpost).

You may also wish to email this message and letter on to your friends and networks asking them to respond urgently too.

Thank you for taking the moment to do this today or tomorrow. Pressure needs to be kept on the NZ and USA Governments to be accountable to a justice-based future for the world.

Tim Howard, for the Coalition for Peace Whangarei. _________________________________

18 March 2002

Prime Minister Helen Clark Parliament Buildings WELLINGTON

Fax : 04 473 3579

Dear Prime Minister,

Meeting President Bush

We wish to endorse the letter you have just received from the Coalition for Peace, Whangarei, urging you to take action when you meet President Bush next week. We ask you to raise the following issues in the strongest possible terms.

1. As the Bush Administration is planning to ease the use nuclear weapons of mass destruction against nonnuclear powers and the first-use of these nuclear weapons, we urge you as Prime Minister to invite President Bush to re-assure the New Zealand people that the United States will not use nuclear weapons or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, and that the United States will join Russia and China in promising not to resort to the first-strike use of nuclear weapons.

2. As the Bush Administration is preparing for a military attack against Iraq, we urge you to remind President Bush of the price that the children and the people of Iraq have paid due to the sanctions and the continued bombing imposed on their country; and to convey our advice that the sanctions should be lifted, the bombing cease, and that a further military attack cannot be condoned by the people of New Zealand.

3. As many hundreds of US citizens have been detained and imprisoned for no other reason than their physical appearance and their skin colour, we invite you to convey to the President that New Zealanders abhor this racist 'profiling'.

4. We ask you to remind the President that detainees / prisoners are required to be treated by long-established International Law and Conventions.

5. We ask you to propose to the President the need for the international inspection of United States laboratories and plants engaged in storing and manufacturing bacteriological weapons such as anthrax.

6. We invite you to ask the President that the establishment formerly known as 'The School of the Americas' at Fort Benning, USA, used to train death squads and torturers, be closed.

We ask you to take the opportunity to raise these issues courageously with the President in order to stop the escalation of this war and the use of nuclear weapons.

Yours sincerely

Peace Movement Aotearoa
the national networking peace organisation
PO Box 9314, Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand
Tel +64 4 382 8129, fax 382 8173 email pma@xtra.co.nz
PMA website - http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/
Internet Peace Gateway - http://www.peace.org.nz

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