October 2010.

Apeal of Portugese Council for Peace and Cooperation and the World Peace Council...

1. It was announced that a summit of the heads of state and government of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation will be held in Portugal, in November this year. The agenda will include, besides the intensification of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a review of the Alliance’s strategic concept to include a widening of its field of action.
2. NATO is an aggressive military alliance. Formed by 28 countries from Europe and North America, it represents the extension of US military power and acts according to its interests. Its creation, in 1949, soon after the end of World War II and six years before the Warsaw Pact, marked the beginning of the Cold War and the submission of Western European countries to North American strategic interests.
3. NATO keeps the world hostage to the arms race, the threat of war and nuclear terror. Its doctrine was first announced as “defensive”. After 1991, following the extinction of the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact, justified its continuation and strengthening under the excuse of safeguarding “global security”. It became an openly offensive organization, bent on crushing the
rights of the peoples, violating the national sovereignties, subverting international law and superseding the United Nations Organization.
4. During the last decade of the 20th. century, NATO developed into a global super structure. It wrote in its charter the ambition to be the world’s cop in the name of “combat against terrorism” and “humanitarian intervention”.
When the peoples ardently desired its extinction, NATO invented new targets, increased the number of its members and forces, approached the borders of Russia and China. Its presence on the planet extended through a network of military bases, new commands and partnerships stretching from the South Atlantic to Africa and the Indian Ocean.
5. NATO’s first wars were launched against Yugoslavia, in 1999, against Afghanistan, in 2001, and recently, in Pakistan’s territory. Moving from threats to action, NATO was responsible for the destruction of countries and resources, and the liquidation of uncountable human lives.
6. Based upon the so-called “Atlantic cooperation”, NATO has promoted the growing militarization of Europe. Germany, after the 1990 reunification, strengthened its offensive capacity and began participating in armed interventions outside its borders, twelve countries from Eastern Europe were integrated in the Alliance and armed by it.
7. The European Union became the European pillar of NATO. With the excuse of reinforcing its “capacity of defense and security”, the Lisbon Treaty emphasized the commitment of the European countries into NATO’s political and military structures. In concert with the US, the European Union has given increasing support to the Alliance’s actions.
8. Countries led by governments submitted to the interests of the US and its allied European powers are compelled to participate in NATO’s actions, giving political, propagandistic,
diplomatic and logistic support. They are forced to spend large sums of money in troops and equipment, undermining security and the living conditions of their peoples. And, at the same time, become accomplices of violation of international law.
9. The Portuguese governments do not escape this rule. A founding member of NATO through the hand of the fascist regime, for more than 60 years Portugal has remained subject to the Alliance and the interests of the US and big European powers. The commitments have meant political and practical support to NATO’s activities throughout its existence and, in recent years, to the aggressions it has committed. They include the surrender of military bases and installations in national territory and the opening of the Portuguese air
space to the Alliance’s missions. All this took place without the Portuguese population having a say.
10.Following the lines of the previous governments, the present Portuguese government – which invokes the crisis to make deep cuts in social expenses – spends more and more millions of Euros to adapt the armed forces to NATO’s demands and the contingents it places at the service of its military adventures.
11.Violations of international law and war crimes are obscured by propaganda campaigns and lies. Public opinion is systematically and deliberately confounded by reproducing arguments that are dear to the interests of the big powers and assumed as if they were “national interests”.
12.The commitment of the Portuguese authorities to the Atlantic Alliance clashes with the fundamental rights laid down in the United Nations Charter (of which Portugal is a signatory) and the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic: sovereignty, independence, noninterference, non-aggression, peaceful resolution of conflicts, equality between states; abolition of imperialism, colonialism and any other type of aggression, domination and exploitation;
disarmament, dissolution of political and military blocs.
13.And so, we consider that the NATO summit is not welcome. Its holding in Portugal signifies the involvement of the country in the militarist aims of the Alliance, which constitute a threat to peace and to international security.
Against this, we launch an appeal to all different organizations in Portuguese society and to the men and women defenders of peace to get together in a national campaign to:
• express the opposition of the Portuguese population to the NATO summit and its bellicist objectives
• demand that the government withdraw the Portuguese forces involved in NATO’s military missions
• claim the end of foreign military bases and NATO installations in national territory
• demand the dissolution of NATO
• demand a disarmament and the end of nuclear and mass destruction weapons
• demand from the Portuguese authorities the compliance with the United Nations Charter and the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, respect international law, and the sovereignty and equality of peoples