The Communist Party in Wales echoes the sentiment of the Morning Star's editorial on Thursday September 13 2001, printed in full below:

'No political cause or sense of grievance can justify or excuse the wave of terrorist outrages inflicted on US civilians on Tuesday.

In common with the rest of Britain's labour movement, the Morning Star extends its deepest sympathy to the families of those who perished in the concerted assaults.

It is difficult to come to terms with the mentality of those who took part in an action that was bound to lead not only to their own deaths but to the indiscriminate slaughter of thousands.

US president George W Bush has already threatened to react against those that he deems guilty of these atrocities.

And Prime Minister Tony Blair, as on so many other occassions, has echoed the words of the US president.

There will certainly be strident calls for decisive US military action against whoever is seen as the perpetrators of these crimes.

But there should be caution about embarking on any acts of war that are likely to add to the already horrifying loss of innocent life.

The ability of the imperialist states to strike other countries, with apparent impunity, using long-range rockets and high-altitude bombing raids is one of the contributory factors to the growth of indiscriminate slaghter of civilians as a political weapon.

It is an example of state terrorism inciting individual and group terrorism.

Launching bombing raids on, say, Afghanistan would merely add to the growing list of countries where cicilians have been massacred to force their governments to bend the knees.

The heartache experienced by US citizens who have lost their loved ones in these latest atrocities has already been felt by Yugoslavs, Iraqis, Palestinians and many more nationalities, as they have seen their relatives wiped out.

Mr Blair did not appreciate the irony of his own words when he described those behind the destruction of the World Trade Centre as utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life.

Over one million Iraqis have died since the end of the Gulf war as a result of US air raids, backed up by Britain, and sanctions which kill Iraqi children while leaving the Saddam Hussein dictatorship unscathed.

This example is not given to trade one atrocity against another. It is to emphasise the need for a new approach to global relations and an ethical foreign policy, as the Labour government once briefly pledged before plumping for Washington's might-is-right approach.

Equality and justice have to be the watchwords of such a policy, rather than domination and exploitation.

It is illusory to imagine that the rich and powerful states can be isolated in their fortresses from the problems and injustices that their policies inflict on the rest of the world.

And while Arab leaders such as Muammar Gadaffi and Yasser Arafat have condemned these terrorist acts and expressed sympathy to the US people , it is no secret that many of the most desperate, dispossessed and downtrodden people in the region have welcomed the carnage as a blow against the state that they see as the author of their problems.

A bloody US miliatry response that wrecks mayhem among civilians will confirm them in that view. On the other hand, a new approach that recognises the rights and needs of the Palestinians, Iraqis and other suffering peoples would create a new international climate that would undermine and isolate those committed to terrorism.'