Child Victims of War - meeting in manchester.

I went there because I was ignorant about the issue of Depleted Uranium and wished to learn more from people who supposedly worked in this field.

I came away shocked and disgusted by the speech of the gentleman speaker Abdul Haq Al-Ani from Child Victims of War, who after his partner Ms. Joanne Baker, spoke of DU in Iraq, Abdul Haq Al-Ani, spoke on a completely different issue - such as the war being motivated by racism alone and we in the UK were the cause of the war because we voted in Tony Blair and he said that every body in the United Kingdom was a "racist".

He informed us, the audience that under Saddam Hussains regime every person, who had been detained by the Iraqi Police, was entitled to representation by a lawyer and was treated fiarly by the courts. This was after he told us, the audience, that all the laws in the UK were silly, and were the laws of terrorism, what about the years of terror brought to the UK by the IRA and the Iraqi's by Saddam!

He also said that he is so disgusted by the United Kingdom, the country where he has got his law degree from (from the way he went on that was debatable) and he intends to go "home" to Iraq "and die with his people" in the relatively rich area of Monsoor.

A question to ask Child Victims of War, if this is how you feel, then why have you lived outside of Iraq, for over twenty years, when Iraqi's were being persecuted by Saddam, being killed in the Iraq/Iran war, people were dying under sanctions, war and the current invasion - and you wait till now to make your choice to die in Iraq, after all, is'nt your organisation about IRAQI CHILDREN?

He also made the point, that all the work people in the UK were doing, to have DU banned was pointless and stupid because apparently secret laws exist that have prevented any evidence being brought to the courts and according to him, he has tried but failed in taking a court case against the British government due to these secret laws. A vallid point was made by another Iraqi chap and that was, why not take it to another country? Al-Ani went absolutely ballistic, calling this man names and the chair person had to calm the situation down - this behaviour was coming from a barrister.

I was saddened and disgusted that children were used this way because his comments also gave an opening for peoples to talk about their opinions of Fidel Castro, Land mines, anti-semitism in the USA, RESPECT and the presentation of the meeting and not about the effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq.

This meeting was supposed to be about the effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq, and how it has affected men, women and espeacially children, the first two speaker, Cammile Warren frm CADU and Joanne Baker were good but the the gentleman from child Victims of War was an absolute TUBE!

I would not recommend Child Victims of War as the organisation for the Iraqi people or anybody associated with Abdul Haq Al-Ani, founding member of this charity, sorry, I mean Limited Company.