Anti-war activists call for end to occupation of Iraq

Anti-war activists call for end to occupation of Iraq
Agence France Press, 21 September 2004

Anti-globalisation and anti-war activists closed ranks with Islamic movements at a forum here Monday to call for an end to the occupation of Iraq and the Palestinian territories. "We call for the unconditional withdrawal of US and coalition forces from Iraq. We demand an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine," they said in a final statement after the three-day forum in Beirut.

"We support the right of the people of Iraq and Palestine to resist the occupations," said the declaration read at a press conference by a leading activist, Filipino university professor Walden Bello, who is executive director of Focus on the Global South organisation.

It denounced Israel's "racist" Zionist ideology and demanded the destruction of the "apartheid wall" being built by Israel in the West Bank, the dismantling of Jewish settlements and the release of all Palestinian and Iraqi political prisoners.

The "Beirut International Strategy Meeting of the Anti-War and Anti-Globalisation Movements" was attended by 260 delegates from 54 countries, including British MP George Galloway. Bello hailed the participation of Islamic movements for the first time in anti-globalisation forums, including the Lebanese Shiite Muslim fundamentalist Hezbollah. "The biggest achievement of this conference is the way that it was able to bring together the global peace and solidarity movements into a closer dialogue and association with its counterparts in the Arab and Muslim worlds," he told AFP. "We really wanted a closer and more organic dialogue between Muslim Arab groups and non-Arab and non-Muslim NGOs and organisations especially at a time when the United States is using attacks on Islam in order to push foreign policy objectives," he said.

The Beirut forum comes ahead of a planned October 1-3 Islamic conference in Berlin which organizers billed as supporting "the struggle against the American-Zionist hegemony and occupation" in Iraq and the Palestinian territories. German authorities have vowed to block the conference and have deported a Lebanese organizer of the event, which Jewish groups denounced as an effort to recruit terror operatives in Europe.