The word 'belligerents' is correct and can be used in written English.
It is generally used to refer to countries or groups involved in a war or conflict. Example: The United Nations called for a ceasefire between the two belligerents in the ongoing civil war.
Indeed, Iran's leaders, reluctant belligerents, have shown that they want to be dissuaded from direct action by others putting pressure on the Taliban, possibly via Pakistan.
Under a deal supervised by Dominique de Villepin, France's then foreign minister, a line was drawn across the country to separate the belligerents, with French soldiers stationed along it to keep them apart.Have the French now overreacted?
By staying in the heart of besieged Homs, during a takeover by rebels who included militant Islamists and then during a government siege, he was offering succour to all victims of the conflict and a kind of reproach to all the belligerents.
AMONG the many innocent victims of Colombia's violent struggles with guerrillas and paramilitaries over the last few decades were rural peasants, whose land was often forcibly seized by belligerents.
TODAY'S recommended economics writing: Top economists of 2011 (Joseph Ward) Trade between belligerents (Marginal Revolution) How to save the global economy (Foreign Policy) Rethinking the growth imperative (Project Syndicate).
One of the arguments in favour of war-crimes trials, in Nuremburg or The Hague, is that by focusing on the guilt of certain key individuals, they can help to lift the stain of collective responsibility from entire peoples and make reconciliation between former belligerents easier.
This was almost certainly designed to mislead; but on March 16th the Security Council was persuaded to endorse a decision by Mr Perez de Cuellar to invite the foreign ministers of both belligerents to New York for "intensive consultations", code, on past experience, for further international ditherings.The Russians may in the end decide that an attempt to befriend both Iran and Iraq cannot work.
This is still not being remedied by any of the belligerents—or the foreign donors whose millions enable the local leaders to maintain the state of war.Throughout this region the basis of the exclusion is the division between Hutu and Tutsi.
Thousands of fighters have deserted.Even Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's leftist president, who recently called for the world to recognise the FARC as "legitimate belligerents", has changed his tune.
