War cannot be means to promote national interests, Vatican tells U.N.

Published: 2007-10-02

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- War and armed conflict are no longer sustainable means for promoting or protecting national interests, the Vatican's top foreign affairs official told the U.N. General Assembly. U.N. agreements concerning disarmament and the nonproliferation of weapons and plans to create "a standing team of expert mediators" to prevent conflict should receive increased support, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti said Oct. 1 at U.N. headquarters in New York. Speaking during the general debate marking the opening of the 62nd session of the U.N. General Assembly, the archbishop said the values upon which the United Nations were founded should be reaffirmed so as to "deliver a forceful 'no' to war and an equally forceful 'yes' to human dignity." He said respect for human dignity "is the deepest ethical foundation" upon which peace and fraternal relations between nations are built. "Forgetting, or partially and selectively accepting" this principle of respect "is what lies at the origin of conflicts, of environmental degradation and of social and economic injustice," he told the assembly.

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