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This statement is not necessarily the latest issued by the Church of Scotland. Please refer to their website for up to date information.

The Church and Nation Committee of the Church of Scotland has, for many months, been pressing in public and in private for the international situation surrounding Iraq to be debated and decided by the United Nations. It is therefore with the most profound sorrow that we view what has come to pass - a decision for war which has not even been put to the vote at the Security Council because its proponents had been unable to convince that Council's members of their case.

In this situation, we call on all church members to pray for the peace of the world. We must all remember in our prayers the ordinary children, women and men of Iraq, who will be the first and worst casualties of the onslaught to come. We must remember the ordinary men and women of the armed forces, on whose loyalty and professionalism and bravery the politicians depend when they launch a war. And we must remember their families and their chaplains as they offer their own prayers for safe return.

We ask that congregations will open their church buildings wherever and whenever possible, and trust that in those houses of prayer hopes of a peaceful future can be sustained and encouraged. Such a future will only be possible if those who would see the current conflict in terms of a war between faiths are confounded - and so we urge joint witness to goodwill and unity involving people of all faiths.

On the battlefield and in its wake the care for the victims of war must be of paramount importance - and humanitarian aid must receive the priority and the funding it requires. And, though we must all now hope for a short war, we must not accept that the conduct of the war can be a scrutiny-free zone. If the weapons used are such as to leave large amounts of unexploded ordinance or a legacy of environmental degradation, there will surely be answers required and a price to pay.

In the corridors of power the question of peace must already be top of the agenda. It is a question which requires joined-up thinking, which holds together the problems of Iraq and those of Palestine, and which takes account of the legitimate aspirations of the people of the Middle East. If a brutal dictator is only to be replaced by an imperial viceroy or a puppet government little of value will have been achieved.

It is, we believe, on the reassertion of the importance of the United Nations that peace depends. The building of the future is its reason for being. Those who have found it convenient to ignore the UN in going to war will yet require that same organisation to construct what follows. Support for international institutions and international law will be needed from all of us, most of all from our political leaders. That support is the best guarantee in today's world of life and dignity for the weak and the vulnerable, the poor and the dispossessed. When might has had its way, right must find a way.

Ends

Convener of Church & Nation Committee The Reverend Alan McDonald