Fisk speaks out on Iraq

RENOWNED war correspondent Robert Fisk will give a major warning tonight against a full-scale war between the United States and Iraq.

The warning will be the main plank of a public lecture Mr Fisk will deliver at University College Cork tonight as part of the President's Lecture Series.

Mr Fisk believes the US is not going to war against Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction which it claims Saddam Hussein controls. "This war is just about oil," he says. "If America wins, their new puppet Government will have the lucrative picking of Iraq's large oil reserves."

France and Russia are afraid of this because they know the US will then control Iraq's oil supply, he says.

Mr Fisk believes the US has the same disregard for the United Nations as other major powers had for its predecessor, the League of Nations.

The US has warned the UN Security Council that it will be made redundant if it does not back its tough motion sanctioning an attack on Iraq.

"But this is exactly what the super powers did with the League of Nations they supported it until the League decided not to back something they wanted badly and then walked away."

Eamon de Valera, as President of the League of Nations Council in the '30s, was highly critical of countries like Italy and Germany who ignored the League, he adds.

Mr Fisk has been the Middle East correspondent for British papers The Times and more recently The Independent for over two decades.