US/IRAQ: Four relatives of US victims of the September 11th attacks ended a peace mission to Baghdad yesterday with a call on world leaders to use some imagination to find ways to avoid war in the Iraq crisis.
"The Iraqi people have used great imagination to make do with what very little they have these days," Ms Colleen Kelly, a New York nurse who lost a brother on September 11th, 2001, told reporters at the end of a six-day trip to a country crippled by 12 years of UN sanctions.
"We'd like to call upon governments around the world to also use their imagination," Ms Kelly said. Her group visited hospitals, universities and schools in Baghdad and the city of Basra in the far south.
The sanctions, imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, have impoverished the oil-rich country, which says hundreds of thousands of children have died because of lack of medicines.
The Bush administration has said it seeks "regime change" in Iraq, under 23 years of rule by President Saddam Hussein, who Washington thinks could put doomsday weapons in the hands of anti-US Islamic groups.
"You can make changes without war and that's what we're challenging our leaders to do," said Ms Kathleen Tinley, a student whose uncle died in the Twin Towers attacks.
Baghdad has seen a stream of solidarity groups visit in recent weeks and has said some activists will act as "human shields" against a US attack.
"Personally, I will stay," said Mr Bret Eartheart, a construction worker from Indiana. "There are a lot of options and for me war is not the best of them," he said. - (Reuters)