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| Sunday, 19 January 2003 |
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Protesters against Iraq war girding for action across the world PARIS, Saturday (AFP) Groups opposed to a looming US-led war on Iraq were calling for protests in a string of cities worldwide at the weekend, with marches expected in the United States and Latin America, western Europe, Russia, Japan and Egypt, among other venues. In the United States, anti-war protests were due in Washington and San Francisco on Saturday, with organizers expressing hopes for a big turn-out. The rally in the US capital was to go from the Congress building to a nearby military installation, according to one of the organisers, a group calling itself Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER). "We believe that the vast majority of people in the United States don't want a war, they want money spent on education and human needs and not weapons of mass destruction," said Tony Murphy, spokesman for ANSWER. Europe will also see demonstrations, notably in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain on the weekend. "A battle has been joined between public opinion and the forces that want the war," Arielle Denis, of the group Movement for Peace, told a news conference in Paris that announced rallies Saturday in the French capital and 40 other cities. Russia's Communist Party has organised a rally in front of the US embassy in Moscow on Saturday, and ultranationalist deputy Vladimir Zhirinovsky is to lead another similar protest a day later in the city's central Pushkin Square. In Japan, some 10,000 people were expected to march through central Tokyo on Saturday at the urging of a coalition of 30 groups called Peace Boat. In a statement, Peace Boat said that while Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime was dictatorial, "it does not justify the American government staging a military attack on the country and its people." Other protests are due to take place in Mexico, Argentina and Egypt, following on from previous rallies seen in the United States, Australia and Britain. Baghdad itself has been the scene of several demonstrations this week, with several thousand Arab protesters burning US, British and Israeli flags during a march along a main city road Thursday. In the Egyptian capital Cairo, several dozen women protestors held a sit-in outside the US embassy on Friday to voice their opposition to any war against Iraq. The demonstrators all wore black and held candles. "Women are opposed to a war on Iraq," a banner said. Meanwhile around 1,000 people held an anti-war march after the main weekly Muslim prayers at Cairo's historic Al-Azhar mosque, the official MENA news agency reported. A bigger rally was planned in central Cairo Saturday, to coincide with anti-war demonstrations around the world. And some 3,000 anti-war protesters rallied in Manama, capital of the Gulf state of Bahrain -- and home to the US Fifth Fleet -- after the weekly Muslim prayers on Friday. Demonstrations are planned in other countries in the coming weeks, including one on February 15 in Britain and another on February 23 in Malaysia. The weekend rallies were being held just over a week before chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix is due to give his much-anticipated update to the UN Security Council about progress made in tracking down Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. That report, on January 27, is seen as a key decision point for US plans for Iraq, which many news reports suggest are based on plans for an invasion sometime next month. US President George W. Bush is to give his national State of the Union address the next day. Apparently unfazed by the protests, Bush was to spend the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. His chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer said: "I think the president welcomes the fact that we are a democracy and people in the United States, unlike Iraq, are free to protest and to make their case known." "And that's a time-honoured part of American tradition and the president fully understands it. It's the strength of our democracy." Organisers claim the magnitude of the worldwide protests rival those held against the Vietnam war in the late 1960s and early 1970's. Some observers agree. Stephen Zunes of the University of San Francisco said this week that the broad-based anti-war activities in US communities and university campuses were "greater than after two or three years of heavy fighting in Vietnam," when US forces were already engaged in combat. Another US professor specialising in anti-war groups, Peter Kuznik, said: "It's a very diverse movement... in many ways, it's a pure anti-war movement, with no ideological baggage attached to it." |
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