We thank all the Parties that already endorsed the Joint Position on the "20 years after the Gulf War, the importance of the struggle for peace, against imperialist exploitation and oppression" proposed by our Party, as well as to those Parties who contributed to enrich the text with their amendments. We now send you the final text of the Joint Position with the list of the 33 first subscriber Parties.
Manuela Bernardino
On Behalf of the International Department of Portuguese Communist Party, Member of the Secretariat of Central Committee
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The importance of the struggle for peace, against imperialist exploitation and oppression
Twenty years have elapsed since the beginning of the Gulf War. On January 17, 1991, the armed forces of the USA, NATO and its allies unleashed -with the ratification of the Security Council of the United Nations -their first large-scale war in the Middle East, despite widespread anti war opposition in several countries Being inseparable from the profound and negative changes associated with the liquidation of Socialism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe, that war was a prelude to 20 years of large-scale aggressions, invasions and imperialist interferences.
From the Gulf to Yugoslavia, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, imperialism has tried to impose its domination in each country and over the globe, seeking to impose the direct control of the world’s main energy resources, to annihilate the peoples’ sovereign rights and to submit the entire planet to the exploitation and interests of the big capital. This militarist and war-mongering offensive has been developed hand in hand with the attacks against the workers’ and peoples’ social, economic and political rights  even in the centers of imperialism -and contributed to sharpen the contradictions among imperialist powers.
Thanks to the peoples’ resistance and struggle  first and foremost, that of the peoples who were the victims of aggression  imperialism’s offensive has faced obstacles and suffered important setbacks. But the dangers for peace and the peoples have not disappeared. On the contrary, capitalism’s profound economic crisis, and the ruling classes’ powerlessness to overcome it, is leading  as in the past  to an attempt to ensure their power through violence, authoritarianism, war and brutal offensives against the workers’ and peoples’ rights and living standards.
The threats of war and aggression are evident in the attacks against workers’ and peoples’ movements that struggle against imperialism, labeling it as an "internal enemy"; in the recent NATO Summit and the new strategic concept of this militaristic and aggressive imperialist organization  which the Lisbon Treaty considers its armed wing thus deepening the process of affirming the European Union as an imperialist economic, political and military block — in the constant imperialist threats of war, provocations and interferences in numerous parts of the globe; in the increasing expenditure on military and security apparatuses.
The signatory Parties call upon the workers and peoples of the world to strengthen the struggle for peace and against imperialism’s plans of war and aggression, to strengthen the struggle against capitalist exploitation and in defense of sovereignty and of the rights of all peoples of the world. They stress that the struggle for peace, cooperation and progress is an inseparable element of the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism.
They express their solidarity with the peoples and to the national-liberation, revolutionary and progressive anti-imperialist forces who are struggling against the imperialism’s aggressions, interferences and threats. In particular, they express their solidarity with the communists and other anti-imperialist forces of the Middle East and especially with the Palestinian people in their struggle for the right to establish an independent State of Palestine in the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital
January 21, 2011
