2008-06-09
We, participants from ten countries, met at the international Afghanistan-Congress in Hannover to discuss 60th NATO anniversary in May 2009, which will be celebrated with an official summit in May 2009 in Strasbourg and Kehl.
We made the following commitment regarding common protests:
60 Years of NATO is enough. NATO ist the main driving force behind global war. NATO stands for the missiles defence system, Military Bases around the world, Nuclear weapons and military expeditions and expenditure. NATO is in Rivalaty to UN and international law
NATO and is more and more intertwined with European security and defence system
But NATO is not all powerful at it is under extreme pressure in Afghanistan.
We call national and international peace movements to discuss activities for 60th anniversary, to build huge common action. We should spread our information to engage more initiatives in a broad coalition for 60th anniversary of NATO. We encourage especially movements from the East, Balkan and other regions to participate. Under common umbrella imaginative actions like counter summits, manifestations, camps, festival and others should be worked out. We need a democratic process of preparation
We will build broad international coalition including different social movements, environmental movements from all over the world to show our (different) reasons to be against NATO.
We continue discussion on several events, beginning with the meeting in Belgian on June 21st, a later on a meeting in Paris and also a our big meeting at ESF in Malmoe to get more people and organisations engaged in this action.
We ask the peace movements in the different countries for conferences in their countries to preparing the summit. We bring this information to those, whom are not here.
We start a discussion for an international action-conference in autumn 2008. We ask the different movements, if they are willing to participate in such a conference, which should be in France or Germany in October 2008.
For the preparation of this conference and the next steps we set up a small, open preparation committee including Arielle Denis, (Movement de la Paix, France) Reiner Braun (IALANA and speaker of cooperation for peace Germany), Chris Nineham (Stop the War Coalition, UK), Tobias Pflüger (MEP, IMI, Germany), Thomas Magnusson (International Peace Bureau, Sweden), Sotiris Kontogiannis (Stop the War Coalition, Greece), Elaheh Rostami Povey (Stop the War Coalition, UK/Iran), Peter Strutynski (Bundesausschuß Friedensratschlag,Germany)
Hannover/Berlin 09.06.2008