Iraq debate: A United States-led bombing campaign on Iraq would be "cold-blooded murder" and no better than the atrocities carried out by Saddam Hussein, the Green Party leader, Mr Trevor Sargent, has claimed.
Urging the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, to defend the United Nations, Mr Sargent said a second UN resolution authorising an attack on Iraq would not comply with the UN's own rules.
The UN Charter did not permit "enforced regime change" or the threat of war in international relations, he told delegates, who condemned the current drift to war.
Despite the US's willingness to spend billions on a war, the UN's environment programme is struggling to maintain its $100 million annual budget.
International arms spending now exceeded $2 billion a day. "Against this obscene backdrop, the debts of the poorest countries have climbed 34 per cent since the Rio earth summit and recently reached $2.5 trillion."
During a break in the convention, Mr Sargent planted a tree in the grounds of the Woodstock Hotel to honour all those who had already died in Iraq and those who would die in the weeks ahead.
Meanwhile, the Greens Leinster MEP, Ms Nuala Ahern, urged European Union governments "to stand together" against the Bush administration's attempt to pursue war on "its own terms".
The US wanted to remove "a Frankenstein dictator" which it created and left in power after the Gulf War, "perhaps because they feared an Islamic revolution in southern Iraq more than they feared Hussein".
Ms Ahern continued: "The current US proposal to remove Saddam and leave the Ba'ath apparatus intact is horrible in its cynicism and disregard for those who really have opposed Saddam for more than 20 years.
"Moralising by the Bush administration about Iraq using chemical weapons against its own citizens sticks in the throat when it is 15 years too late," the Leinster MEP added.
Following her own conference speech, Dublin MEP Ms Patricia McKenna travelled to New York to brief the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, on her recent visit to Iraq.
"I hope to make it quite clear that a large percentage of people believe a second resolution will not make a war on Iraq more justified," she told delegates.
"It will not give it moral legitimacy nor will it make it any less dangerous or catastrophic for the population of Iraq, 46 per cent of whom are under the age of 15. A second resolution will not make a war right or just. All it will do it provide a false cloak for the warmongers and their supporters to hide behind," she said.
The European Parliament delegation which went to Iraq saw the appalling effects of depleted uranium weapons used during the Gulf War, which, she claimed, had caused illness to hundreds of thousands of people.
Leukaemia and cancer rates had multiplied since the Gulf War, particularly in the southern region around Basra where depleted uranium shells were most used.
Ms McKenna said that UNICEF had warned that 18 million people could go hungry if there was a war, while there was "immediate concern" about the fate of 240,000 malnourished children.
She rejected charge by the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, that anti- war supporters had said very little about what was happening inside Iraq now. "Perhaps it is time she opened her ears and her mind and listened."
