Lucas demands: Troops out of Iraq and halt Trident replacement

24th Feb 2007

THE Government must abandon plans to replace its Trident nuclear missiles and immediately withdraw all UK troops from Iraq, Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas today told a central London rally today

THE Government must abandon plans to replace its Trident nuclear missiles and immediately withdraw all UK troops from Iraq, Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas today told a central London rally today

Speaking at the 'No Trident/Troops out of Iraq' rally,where it is estimated some 60 000 people had gaterhered, Dr Lucas said:

"Replacing Trident would be illegal, immoral, counter-productive - and utterly irrelevant to the real security threats we face today.

"It would cost the British taxpayer an estimated £76bn over the next few decades - money that could be used to fund practical solutions to climate change, the far greater security threat we face, as the recent UN International Panel on Climate Change has again made clear.

"It will put the UK in direct breach of the UN's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and would increase the global supply of nuclear materials by launching a new nuclear arms race."

Veteran peace campaigner Dr Lucas is also a member of the decision-making National Council of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which has called the demonstration alongside the British Muslim initiative and the Stop the War Coalition, and is a co-founder and Co-President of the European Parliament's cross-party Peace Initiatives group.

She is currently awaiting trial for allegedly breaching the peace by taking part in a peaceful blockade of the Trident nuclear submarine base at Faslane, Scotland, alongside MPs and elected representatives from around the world.

"It is hypocritical in the extreme for us to be censuring Iran for apparently pursuing nuclear weapons whilst we in the UK are ignoring our legal and moral obligations to disarm ours, and are in fact doing precisely the opposite, as International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammed ElBaradei said earlier this week," she added.