JCP sends message to Spain's United Left

The Japanese Communist Party Central Committee sent a message to the 7th Federal Assembly of Spain's United Left (Izquierda Unida) held in Madrid from December 19-21. The text of the message is as follows:

The Japanese Communist Party brings you cordial greetings of solidarity with the United Left on the occasion of its 7th Federal Assembly.

In the municipal and autonomous elections in May, the IU succeeded in maintaining the position it had obtained four years before, indicating a recovery from its setback in the 2000 general elections.

We hope that the IU Federal Assembly will be successful in further contributing to the development of the struggle to safeguard the people's living conditions, including an increase in the budget for social services, and the effort to build an independent and democratic Europe. We also wish that the IU will achieve a major advance in the next year's general election.

The JCP will hold its 23rd Congress in January and adopt a JCP Program with revision based on the political and theoretical development the JCP has achieved in the last 42 years since establishing the present JCP Program and the characteristics of the new political situation. It will also draw lessons from the setbacks we suffered in the recent parliamentary election and present the way for a new JCP advance. We are doing all we can to organize pre-congress discussions and increase the JCP membership and Akahata readership in preparation for the coming JCP congress.

The present situation in Iraq, the focus of international attention, is increasingly desperate. Dispatching troops to Iraq in support of the U.S.-British occupation forces has no just cause in that it only means militarily assisting in the lawless war of aggression and the illegal occupation, which are the source of the disaster.

We are certain that our struggle in Japan in opposition to the SDF dispatch and your struggle calling for the withdraw of Spanish forces accord with the international community's call for a U.N.-led solution to the present problem toward Iraq's reconstruction that respects the Iraqi people's wishes.

We hope that our exchanges and cooperation between the JCP and the IU will be further strengthened in the effort to achieve world peace and social progress. (end)