When is the right time to go to war?

Sturart Bell, MP for Middlesbrough, argues that the United Nations has left enough tools to allow them to do the job, while Vera Baird, MP for Redcar, maintains the use of force now would lead to lawlessness.

"TONY Blair and George W Bush do not need a further United Nations resolution before they embark upon any action against Iraq because they are already covered by international law.

The UN itself has failed the international community because the permanent members of the Security Council have never quite been able to rise above themselves when it comes to looking beyond their national interests. They have often looked upon UN resolutions as propaganda points rather than as stepping stones towards conflict resolution.

This is why the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was brought to a forcible end not by Security Council resolution but by Nato forces: Russia threatened to veto any UN resolution, so Nato had to act.

Even over Iraq, the UN hasn't been able to bring itself to unanimity: China abstained from Resolution 678 in November 1990 which ordered Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.

Twelve years after the ending of the Gulf War, Iraq is still not fulfilling Security Council resolutions, most notably those referring to Kuwaiti property confiscated during the war and to Kuwaiti prisoners not released nor accounted for.

Iraq does not respect the Allied aircraft patrolling the no-fly zones created to protect Kurds in the north of Iraq and Shi'ite Muslims in the south. In fact, British and American pilots are regularly shot at from the ground - a clear breach of resolutions.

These blatant breaches would, in themselves, be sufficient for the international community to take action against Iraq without further resolutions.

The authorisation runs as a thread from Resolution 678 through Resolution 687 that declared Iraq should unconditionally accept the destruction, removal or rendering harmless under international supervision of its weapons of mass destruction programmes, should return all Kuwaiti property appropriated during its invasion and occupation, and should repatriate all Kuwaiti and third party nationals taken as prisoners of war.

The thread continues through some 15 other resolutions leading to Resolution 1441, which has seen the current return of weapons inspectors to Iraq.

Even before the end of the Gulf War, Iraq breached several resolutions by declaring war on Iran and Kuwait, and by raining down missiles on Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

If this isn't enough to justify international action, Iraq has also been in breach of the UN charter which calls upon member states to "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state".

Indeed, the members of the Security Council will themselves be in breach of the charter if they do not to act to uphold the resolutions that Iraq has broken.

Then there is international law, which accepts the inherent right of states to act in their own self-defence. The assessment as to what is required in self-defence is subjective rather than objective; it is for the state to decide whether it feels sufficiently threatened that it must launch pre-emptive action. This is part of the rights of a sovereign state. The threat may be perceived or real.

John Foster Dulles, United States Secretary of State under President Dwight Eisenhower, once told the UN General Assembly: "Peace is a coin which has two sides - one is the avoidance of the use of force and the other is the creation of conditions of justice. In the long run you cannot expect one without the other."

Stuart Bell

"SIXTY eight per cent of the British public are opposed to military action against Iraq without United Nations authorisation. International law is against it too. Undoubtedly Saddam Hussein is in breach of UN resolutions, left over from the settlement after his invasion of Kuwait, but he is far from the only national leader to be in that kind of breach; Israel is too.

Breach of UN resolutions does not entitle a member of the UN, including Britain and the United States, unilaterally to declare war on another state, irrespective of the views of the UN. Of course it does not. That would be a recipe for lawlessness and chaos, not international order. The legal arguments are straightforward.

There are two ways in which military force can be lawful. The first is in self defence against an attack or a likely attack. The second is if the UN Security Council, representing the international community, mandates it.

The evidence - at least that in the public domain - that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction comes from the Government's dossier, published on September 24, 2002. If one assumes that this dossier misses out a great deal, to protect intelligence sources, it probably demonstrates that Saddam has the capacity to assemble weapons of mass destruction, though it is not clear whether he has been able to do so.

Scary as that notion is, since Saddam is undoubtedly a wicked and aggressive leader, it is no evidence of any intention to use those weapons against the UK.

To justify the use of self-defence, there must be either an attack or the threat of an attack. It is not necessary for either a person or a state to wait until they are attacked. They can pre-empt it. However, the essence of that entitlement is that the threat must be immediate. If someone is aiming a blow, the threat is clear. If someone is just standing there, armed, there has to be evidence of an intention to attack. There is none that Saddam intends to damage us or any of our allies.

True, Saddam has used chemical weapons against his own people. There may be a danger that he would supply WMD to al Qaida for attack on the west. But, neither of those is a threat of immediate attack. Both are susceptible to control without invading Baghdad. Weapons inspectors contained Saddam for many years before their withdrawal in 1998. Al Qaida is our proper target, not its potential, one day maybe, possibly sometime, armourer.

The UN Security Council may authorise the use of force. It did so in Resolution 678 in 1990, telling the Coalition to use "all necessary measures" to oust Saddam from invaded Kuwait. The Security Council is a group of states delegated, by the UN Treaty, to use this awesome decision-making role.

The UN has served us satisfactorily for the past 60 years. Britain and the US, influential permanent members of the Security Council, are in poll position to persuade it to act if there is really a risk to world peace. The Security Council does not need the justification of self-defence. It can mandate military action in the broader interests of the world community. If it thinks it appropriate, it can authorise action to stop Saddam from treating the weapons inspectors to an elaborate game of hide and seek, to enforce his broken promises to disarm and to remove him if he will not do so.

The only lawful exercise of force in this situation will be one authorised by the Security Council. Any other way lies lawlessness and chaos, the antitheses of the world peace we are trying to protect.

Vera Baird