AUC community raises Palestinian and Iraqi flags protesting U.S.-led war on Iraq and Israeli occupation of Palestine

CAIRO, December 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Around 150 students and professors of the American University in Cairo (AUC) staged a peaceful demonstration Wednesday, December 18, protesting a possible U.S.-led war on Iraq and showing support of the Palestinian people.

"We're having a petition signed in support of the Palestinians and against (U.S.) intervention in Iraq," Samia Mehrez, a professor of Arab literature at AUC, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The protestors were echoing widespread opposition in Egypt to U.S. plans to invade Iraq, if it fails to come clean on its alleged weapons of mass destruction, as well as longstanding criticism here over perceived U.S. bias toward Israel.

AUC professors who have formed "Faculty4Pal" helped organize the protest and plan to invite next year a children's theater group from Aida refugee camp near the Palestinian West Bank town of Bethlehem, Mehrez said.

Around 5,000 Egyptian and foreign students attend AUC, which was founded in 1919 by American scholars and is incorporated in the U.S. State of Delaware, where it is licensed to confer degrees.

Although an American institution, AUC's students staged several anti-U.S. rallies in the past years to protest American bias toward Israel.

The anti-U.S. demonstration came on the same day Cairo marked the beginning of a two-day conference entitled the International Campaign Against U.S. Aggression on Iraq (ICAA).

Conference organizer Mohamed Sami said that history's most right wing U.S. administration and Israel's most criminal government had forged an alliance to tear apart the Arab world and put their hands on the area's immense oil reserves.

Fadia al-Rafidi, a young Palestinian who was invited to represent the new generation, called for establishing an anti-globalization front to challenge American policy which is seeking to divide the Arab world.

The conference was scheduled to issue a "Cairo proclamation" on Thursday, December 19, and set out a program of protest actions against the looming U.S.-led war on Iraq.