MR STEWART
It's my submission Mr Chairperson that no, that those conventions don't offer assistance in this particular case, or indeed in the case of amnesty applications under this Act.  And they don't offer assistance because this Act is not seeking to, it's not seeking to question the morality of the tactic that were employed, which, in my understanding, the international conventions seek to do.  They seek to set an international standard of morality, which says there will be warfare in our world, unfortunate as it is, now let's all agree that we'll conduct warfare within certain moral boundaries, and that isn't something which this Act requires to be done.  There are very specific requirements that need to be met and if those are met then amnesty, in my submission, has to be granted.  If they're not met, then it has to be refused.
	By just way of example, and I, this will be my last reference, I hope not to bore the Committee with references to the second world war, but by way of example, before the second world war the United Kingdom participating in the discussions which led to the Geneva Convention, originally had the position that there should be no bombing at all, not even of, this is air bombing, not even of oil installations or military factories or whatever.  That position was then abandoned in recognition that there will be bombing, but at the beginning of the war the bombing that was embarked upon was only on so called military targets.  By the end of the war the position had shifted and it was bombing for military objectives on civilian targets.  And I raise that only because the circumstances there determined for the people involved the particular tactics that they would employ, and indeed there's severe debate about the morality of some of those tactics, and in this case there may be less debate about the morality only because some of these attacks are so clearly immoral or morally unjustifiable.  The point is, were they acts associated with a political objective, and in my submission the answer to that in each case ultimately is yes, regardless of whether they're within or without the norms set in the Geneva or other international conventions on warfare.