Gregory III Laham:

Good morning dear friends and thank you for allowing us to appear before the committee today. Today, I feel we are part of the committee. Our concerns are your concerns and having us here today means we belong to one family. Dear friends, I have not come here to tell you about Syria. We are here as ambassadors for peace who are asking for peace in Syria. A short time ago, in mid-September, we gathered 1.04 million signatures of children in 6,000 schools throughout Syria and we brought these to the European Union to tell them that the children are ambassadors for Syria.

King Solomon said there is a time for peace and a time for war. We have had enough war. We can have war forever but now is the time for peace. Enough speaking about the cross of Syria. The committee knows about that. We are not seeking to find out who is guilty because in war, everybody is guilty in one way or another. War is war. It is not human and not the call of God. The Holy Bible speaks of the mystery of evil - mysterium iniquitatis. We are now living this mystery of evil in this world. This is what we have to fight, not just in Syria, Iraq or wherever.

We are here to work for peace and to ask the committee to create a lobby for peace. The Holy Father Franciscus will visit Ireland next year and we are happy for Ireland. He has made two pleas for peace in the Middle East. One of his pleas is for a consensual alliance among all powers of the world to fight something which is not part of the world or Islamic. Not one Muslim state will accept to be under the title, Islamic State. While it was in power in Raqqa, it is nothing today. The spirit of Islam is felt today. It is not the time to speak about Islamic or this or that. We must now change minds and the key to doing this is to have an alliance. We can overcome ISIS in a very short time if the two superpowers, Russia and the United States, come together. What is ISIS? It is nothing. The Holy Father says one can speak about peace and deliver money, valuable weapons and warriors to Syria. It is shameful that the superpowers are not able to deliver peace in Syria. Every little boy says, "Look, they are fighting each other, not ISIS". It is clear that there is a very shameful policy today. We can make peace by coming together.

The second plea made by the Holy Father was for justice for Palestine. If we, as Jews, Christians and Muslims, sort out the conflict in the Holy Land, we can do a great deal for peace in the Middle East and the world. Therefore, we are appealing to Ireland, the land of peace, to start an initiative among states that pursue independent policies and are outside the system of alliances. This lobby for peace could include non-governmental organisations and states to make a worldwide lobby for peace. As Patriarch, I ask that the bishops conferences of Europe gather together to raise their voices for peace. Why not have a common paper of all patients because we know Islam better than others. We are like an ambassador for Islam to European Christians who are telling Europe and Christians worldwide to come together and produce a paper to show that we are peacemakers.

Our appeal is to act on the basis of justice, love, forgiveness and dialogue, which are preferable to the concept of war. We are living with the ideology of "war, war, war". Let us have something else. As the Assyrian Patriarch, I am making this call with my colleague, his beatitude, and the Grand Mufti who is also our Mufti. It is absolute imperative that we change our outlook and ways of dealing with disputes. This cannot be done by means of arms and weapons. We must change the world today. Our message is that we must change the outlook of the world. The real power of our faith - Christians, Muslims and Jews alike - is that faith is part of the solution to problems. We are seeking something else and faith can help us to make peace in the world.

Dear brothers and sisters, Christians and Muslims have a shared history going back 1,435 years. My slogan is that we should stay together to build a new world, we can stay together to build a new world and we want to stay together to build a new world. That is our mission. I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to appear before it and hear the view of some Christians.