Human Shield to Protect Iraq

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday September 14, 2002 16:09 by reuters

Anti-war British lawmaker George Galloway will call for international volunteers to form a human shield in Baghdad to try to thwart any attack after he flies to Iraq on Saturday.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/world/4069422.htm
Reuters. 13 September 2002. British Lawmaker Wants Human Shield to Protect Iraq.

LONDON -- Anti-war British lawmaker George Galloway will call for
international volunteers to form a human shield in Baghdad to try to
thwart any attack after he flies to
Iraq on Saturday.

"One of the ideas will be an international peace brigade of volunteers
from around the world. People who will go to Iraq and offer themselves
to be witnesses to what may well be about to happen," parliamentarian
George Galloway told Reuters on Friday.

He expected significant numbers of Britons to come forward.

Asked if it would in effect constitute a human shield of people trying
to prevent any bombing raids, he said: "A voluntary one, yes."

He said: "There are many, many millions of British people who are
determined that the Iraqi people will not be bombed in their name."

Galloway, who met President Saddam Hussein last month and has tirelessly
campaigned against war with Iraq, is going to Iraq for the Baghdad peace
conference -- an international group that meets every six months.

"It would normally have met in November, but it has been brought forward
to Monday because of the emergency," said Galloway, a member of Prime
Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party.

Galloway said President Bush was intent on war and had used his speech
to the United Nations in New York on Thursday as a smokescreen tryingto
hide his true intentions.

"It is clear that yesterday's performance in New York was simply a ruse
to pretend that some sort of recourse to the U.N. and diplomacy was
going to be sought," he said.

"I suspect that while war is never inevitable... it is looking
increasingly more likely," Galloway added.

Galloway urged the U.N. Security Council to stand up to what he called
the bullying tactics of the Bush administration.

"If it wants to avoid global turmoil it will stand up and insist upon
taking charge of this matter itself," he said.

Galloway said he did not intend staying in Baghdad with any volunteer
human peace shield. His place was in the corridors of power and on the
streets of London trying to persuade Britain to back out of a coalition
with the United States.

"It is the coalition of the mad dog and the Englishman. If we can stop
the Englishman then we can keep the whole world out of the blinding
midday sun."