Editor:

We appreciate the front page coverage the April 21 Chronicle article “Middle East Peace Panels Held at U,” gave to three of the nine panels which were part of the “Working for Peace in the Middle East” conference.

Chronicle readers will probably get a mistaken impression of the overall content of the conference, however, because those articles focused on the most controversial comments made by the speakers during the conference. Actually, there was a spectrum of opinions among the 30 organizations which were involved in the conference, and none of those organizations necessarily endorsed the comments made by any particular speaker on any of the nine panels.

Chronicle readers would probably be interested to know that most of the organizations involved in the conference have created the Wasatch Coalition for Peace and Justice with agreement on these five points (the exact wording of point No. 5 is still being discussed):

1. Support the troops, bring them home safely now! End U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.

2. End the Israeli occupation; self-determination for the Palestinian people.

3. Money for public needs-health care, education, environmental protection, food, shelter and economic security for all-not war.

4. Defend Constitutional and workers’ rights for everyone living in the United States.

5. We affirm the inherent value and equality of all people and hold that racist views, including anti-Arab and anti-Jewish views, are antithetical and unacceptable to the movement for peace and social justice.

Dayne Goodwin

Staff