UK: Atheist David Miliband to work closely with Pope for Arms Trade Treaty

[Synnical]

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/11/david-miliband-to-work-closely-with-pope-for-arms-trade-treaty.html

November 11, 2009
Atheist David Miliband to work closely with Pope for Arms Trade Treaty

Foreign Secretary David Miliband, on course perhaps to become Britain's first http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-504229/While-Blair-converts-Catholicism-8-Ministers-say-believe-God.html"> openly atheist Prime Minister, has today, Armistice Day, published an article in the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano pledging to work with the Roman Catholic Church to secure an Arms Trade Treaty.

The British Embassy to the Holy See has the full text in English on its website.

Writing jointly with French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, Miliband says that it is vital to those who care about the moral issue to make sure the process towards an Arms Trade Treaty is successful.

'We will be working with a broad range of NGOs, faith groups and independent activists - all of which have indicated their support for a treaty - to make sure their voices are properly heard. Such groups have global grassroots networks, which speak uniquely across cultures, languages, nations.'

Faith groups were closely involved in the campaign to ban cluster munitions which more than 100 countries have now signed up to.

'The Holy See played a vital role in helping to build the consensus to secure the Cluster Munitions Convention, and was among the very first states to sign. We now hope to work closely with the Holy See on this new treaty.'

Interesting that after the devout Tony Blair and the contradiction of his 'we don't do God' regime, Britain could in the not too distant future be led by an atheist who is not only willing to 'do' God but who understands the power that religion and religious bodies still hold in today's increasingly secular world.