Archbishop Haddad calls for an awakeniag of conscience to change 'egoistic interests'

The West accused of sham over Lebanon
LEBANON is torn by war because "the great powers don't yet want peace in Lebanon because their interests have not yet been sufficiently attained," said Melkite Catholic Archbishop Gregoire Haddad, who resides in Beirut.
The United States wants to insure its control of oil supplies from the Middle East, said Archbishop Haddad in an interview in. Washington.
"The destabilisation of Lebanon leads to destabilisation of other Arab states because of their involvement in Lebanon," he said. "On the day when the conditions for a Pax Americana (American peace) will be realised, I think peace will return to the Middle East." But he added that a Pax Americana should not be established "to the detriment of the peace of conscience of Americans."
The Soviet Union "does not have the same power in our country" as the United States because the dominant Arab groups in Lebanon "are more pro-American than pro-Soviet", the archbishop said.
Archbishop Haddad said that Israel also doesn't want peace in Lebanon because "it has not achieved what it wants in the Middle East in terms of territorial expansion and definitive security."
"What we, Lebanese Moslems and Christians, ask of Americans and of all Westerners," the archbishop said, "is to no longer have an easy conscience. The permanent injustice that the Palestinian and Lebanese people experience can continue to exist only because of the ignorance of Westerners of the real situation, of the sufferings and injustice, and because of the silence of those who know about it."
Archbishop Haddad continued: "If democracy has a meaning ,we hope that the awakening of the conscience of the people can change the policy of the state based on egoistic interests."
He said that a new international economic order in which developed countries no longer control most of the world's resources "should be the goal of all people."
What Americans should do, the archbishop said, is "to be informed, and to prevent the Zionists from carrying out daily brainwashing in the mass media.
The 53-year-old Archbishop Haddad was in Washington for a conference sponsored by the American Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee.
From 1968 to 1975, he was Melkite archbishop of Beirut but he was replaced by the Melkite synod of bishops, he said, because of a controversy over a review, "Horizons," begun by a team of priests and laity, "in which we sought to express in new terms our Christian faith and our involvement in an underdeveloped Arab society."
The review "aroused reactions of misunderstanding and rejection," the archbishop said, and the controversy came to the attention of the Vatican.
"Although there was nothing to becondemned from the point of view of Catholic doctrine, the Melkite synod decided there should be another in charge of the archdiocese," he said.
A year ago, he continued, the synod asked him to be the secretary general of the 11 synodal commissions.