Irish News | 2 August 2014

NOBEL Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire has criticsed the EU and called for the abolition of Nato following three weeks of war in Gaza.

The Northern Ireland peace activist and co-founder of the Women for Peace movement called for the end of world militarism which she says is now as “outdated as flogging and hanging”.

Speaking at the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) in Germany.

Congratulating the movement on its centenary, Ms Maguire pointed an admonishing finger at the EU, describing the European Union as a “threat to the survival of neutrality”. She said: “We are witnessing the growing militarism of Europe and its role as a driving force of armaments

and its dangerous path under the leadership of the USA/Nato towards a new ‘cold’ war and military aggression.

“The EU is a threat to the survival of neutrality as countries are being asked to join Nato and forced to end their neutrality and choose – unnecessarily – between West and East.”

The 1976 Nobel Peace winner went on to say that nations were being “drawn into” breaking international law through US, UK and Nato wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. “Germany, being the third largest exporter of military hardware in the world, continues to increase its military budget and is complicit with Nato, facilitating USA bases, from which drones leave carry out illegal killings on the order of the

US president in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan,” she said. “Germany has also provided Israel with its nuclear submarine and continues to be complicit, under the Geneva Convention, in Israeli war crimes against Gaza and illegal occupation of Palestine.”

She said there was now a need to “abolish” Nato while “increasing our task of dismantling the ‘military-industrial complex’ through non-violent and civil resistance.