More than anything else, the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which have shocked the entire world, are signs of the state of crisis in which the world finds itself, no matter what the world leaders may say at the high masses of the rich countries, the G8.

Since the collapse of the Berlin wall, the biggest imperialist power has boasted to be the unchallenged policeman of this planet. For the first time, it is now confronted with attacks on its own territory, claiming thousands of victims. Until now, this had been the fate of the Vietnamese, Iraqi, Yougoslav and so many other peoples at the hands of the US armed forces, and on a much larger scale.

We share the grief of the relatives and friends of the victims and we convey them our condolences. The American civilian victims, like the great majority of the American people, cannot be held responsable for the barbarous policies of their government and of the transnational corporations it represents. At the same time, we are deeply shocked by the hypocrisy of the US government, which bears an enormous responsibility for what has happened today.

For more than 50 years, the US governement and the US transnational corporations have been imposing their will on the entire world, destroying local economies, expropriating peasants, overthrowing popular governments and putting Pinochets, Marcoses and Mobutušs in power ­ people subordinate to the US, who would not hesitate to massacre their own people, away from the camerašs. By doing so, they have aroused the hatred and the revolt of all the peoples that had become victims. Moreover, the economic crisis that is hitting the United States is sharpening all internal contraditions in the US.

In a world full of economic, political and military contradictions, all hypotheses regarding the origin of these attacks may be valid.

But the superior technological level and the high degree of risk involved in a country that is so much under intelligence coverage as is the United States, would make one think that such an enterprise, which started off from US soil, could never have been realized without a certain complicity from within the secret services of the US or from other parallel organizations.

For 50 years, the secret services of the United States have been supporting all fascist, integrist and nationalist currents to divide the people, in order to protect the interests of the US transnational corporations and to fight communism and the national liberation movements. They have been recruiting, arming and training the most fascist and integrist elements of several countries to become high level terrorists. This ranges from old Nazišs recruited into the US secret services after World War II to the death squads in El Salvador and the integrist mercenaries in Afghanistan.

With changing political alliances, these terrorists may turn against their previous masters. This has been the case with the Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, who, just a few years back, was still a Ģ freedom fighter ģ, a helping hand of the US in their fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

We cannot exclude either the hypothesis of complicity of forces of the American extreme Right, as in Oklahoma, inspired by forces decided to push Bush towards even harsher economic and military policies.

These attacks could also render a false legitimacy to the US governement, at a moment when a wave of anti-imperialist protest is expanding in the whole world, targeting precisely this government as the spearhead of capitalist globalization, environmental destruction and a new arms race.

They may also be used to conceal the economic and social concerns of the American people themselves, who are experiencing a rise of unemployment and a rapid expansion of poverty in their own country.

We join the appeals aimed at preventing the US government and their allied governments to use these attacks as a pretext for attacking countries that have nothing to do with this terrorism, but that have been at odds with the US government because of their independent policies ; or to use these attacks to strengthen antidemocratic measures in the United States and elsewhere. Such a reaction would only increase the dangers of war and of fascism.

The people of the entire world are right to be concerned about the deeper meaning of these attacks. They are the consequence of the sharpening of all fundamental contradictions in society, which are rightly denounced by the workers and the youth in the framework of the movement against imperialist globalization. In order to resolve these contradictions, there is no other way than to work for the unity of the struggles of the workers and the peoples of the entire world, and to carry the demands for social justice, genuine democracy and peace ever further. Terrorist action does not allow to realize these objectives ; but measures of military reprisal and repression, and the increasing racism of the imperialist governments do so even less. To continue on the road taken by the movements of Seattle and Genua, and of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America against all consequences of colonialism and neocolonialism, is the only way to work seriously for the future of humankind.

Above is the Statement of the Political Bureau of the Workers' Party of Belgium regarding the attacks in the United States of America.