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Pinter to continue anti-war campaign

Hasan Suroor

Acceptance speech to deal with the "state of the world'' in the light of Iraq and Afghanistan

LONDON: Ignoring concerns about his health and making light of the bruises he suffered on his forehead in a fall earlier this week, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter on Friday vowed to continue his campaign against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Speaking hours after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the British playwright, his head still bandaged, called the invasion a "symbol of the attitude of Western democracies to the rest of the world'', and warned that the world would "go down the drain'' if policy-makers in Britain and America were allowed to get away with it.

Mr Pinter, who has been an outspoken critic of the British and U.S. foreign policies, especially in relation to Latin America, Afghanistan and Iraq, announced that he would use his acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm in December to speak out on the issue.

In his 45-minute speech, which he said would be the "longest'' he has ever made, Mr Pinter proposed to deal with the "state of the world'' as he saw it in the light of recent events in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I intend to say whatever it is I think. I may well address the state of the world,'' he said.

Critics hailed the Nobel Academy's choice of Mr Pinter as a tribute to the global anti-war campaign of which he has been so much a part in recent years. He was in the forefront of the million-strong anti-war "march'' held in London in February 2003 and has written several poems, articles and delivered lectures denouncing the invasion as a "bandit'' act.

He has consistently attacked what he has described as the "free world's'' contempt for freedoms of other peoples.

In a speech earlier this year after winning a prestigious literary award, Mr Pinter called the military attack on Iraq as "an act of blatant terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.

"We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it `bringing freedom and democracy to Middle East'. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos,'' Mr Pinter said after winning the Wilfred Owen award.

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