MANY of us hoped and prayed that the war against Iraq would never happen.

Now it has, we must pray for many things. One thing we must pray for is that casualties will be kept to a minimum on both sides. But, however many casualties there are, one of the most grave is the casualty of truth.

On the one side there is President Bush and Tony Blair saying that this war is a moral crusade to liberate Iraq. On the other side there is Saddam's regime, and many of the Iraqi people themselves, saying that their country is an innocent victim of military aggression. They claim that morality is on their side and that Bush and Blair should be hauled before the international courts as war criminals.

This is the trouble with morality! Everyone claims that morality is on their side. They even use morality as a verbal weapon of war.

When the physical fighting stops, the verbal fighting over morality will continue. Even with a quick military victory, there will be many people in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East who see this as an evil crusade against them. A nation can recover from the physical trauma of war, but moral trauma can go deep into a nation's psyche and last forever. And this moral war can spill over far beyond the border of the original conflict.

One of the things that worries me for Bolton is that the peace of our many communities here might be disturbed by this conflict thousands of miles away. With many people being deeply suspicious of the motives of Tony Blair and George Bush, community relations could be set back in a very bad way.

So we need to pray for the people of Iraq and all those caught up in the conflict, including our armed forces. But we also need to pray for ourselves here in Bolton that the moral conflict of the rights and wrongs of this war may not spill over in our own streets.

To this end, the Bolton Interfaith Council has been working hard to show that the faith communities in Bolton can come together in solidarity at this difficult time. We are planning to hold a special service of prayers and readings on the Town Hall steps on Saturday, March 29, at 2pm to show our solidarity.

Everyone is invited to come and join us. It is not a political meeting. It is a religious meeting to demonstrate that, even when we differ in faith and opinion, we can work together for the common good.

Michael Williams, Vicar of Bolton Parish Church