BAGHDAD, February 21 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Religious figures, beauty queens, Japanese dancers and other peace advocates from around the world are converging on Iraq, refuting Anglo-American accusations they are being manipulated by the Iraqi regime.

As U.S. tanks rumble in the Gulf, a "tower of Babylon" melting pot of people and languages is resonating calls for peace across the Iraqi capital, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Friday, February 21.

They shout on the streets, sing on boulevards, pray in churches and mosques and even propagate their messages on internet sites.

On a much more puritan tone, Bishop Pierre Whalon, in charge of American Anglican churches in Europe, made a passionate plea for peace on Friday morning at a Protestant church in central Baghdad.

Churches across Iraq have announced special prayers for peace on Sunday and mosque minarets were echoing Friday sermons denouncing plans for a U.S.-led war.

But the most vibrant appeals were coming from a group of foreigners who have flocked from the four corners of the world to express their solidarity with the Iraqi population and reject war.

Some are doctors, farmers, translators and writers, others are students, teachers, lawyers, and some are just unemployed or way past retirement age, but all have transformed themselves into full-time peace warriors.

There is also a group of Japanese from the city of Okinawa, home to a large U.S. army base, who continue to draw crowds of Baghdadis by dancing and beating drums in theater houses and street demonstrations.

Curious onlookers also stop to peek at al-Andalus furnished apartments just off central Abu Nawas street, a thoroughfare along the Tigris river shaded by eucalyptus trees.

In the lobby, a young man stands on a table filming his colleagues in a plunging shot.

"This is an artsy shot of my colleagues preparing for the human shields actions. I want to show our actions in an alternative way on an internet site, not in the usual journalistic way," he said, giving his name as Peter.

Miss Germany arrives on a peace mission in Iraq

Joining the flow of pacifists, Miss Germany, 19-year-old Alexandra Vodjanikova arrived in Baghdad late Thursday, February 20, with the ambitious hope of meeting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"I want to meet Saddam Hussein about peace," said Vodjanikova.

A large group of these peace activists arrived in Baghdad from London earlier this month in a convoy of two red double-decker buses and a white cab after a 4,800-kilometer (3,000-mile) overland journey.

They are the battalion of volunteers who have pledged to act as human shields to protect civilian sites in Iraq by merely being there and forcing their governments to kill their own citizens if a war is unleashed on Iraq.

The first human shields will move to an electricity installation south of Baghdad late Friday.

The founder of the movement is also here.

"We are choosing where we go, not Saddam Hussein, and we are here to stand with the Iraqi people, not the Iraqi government" averred O'Keefe

Ken O'Keefe is a former U.S. marine who fought in the 1991 Gulf War and has renounced his U.S. citizenship in protest at U.S. foreign policy.

"The governments of our world are worried because they know that if they blow up Arab people and Muslim people they can get away with it, but if they blow up their own citizens, if their families back home lose their loved ones, there are going to be a lot of upset people," he said.

O'Keefe denied reports that Iraq was "using us in a negative sense."

"We are choosing where we go, not Saddam Hussein, and we are here to stand with the Iraqi people, not the Iraqi government, and we will stay here as long as it is required for us to stay to avoid this criminal war," he stressed.

Asked about accusations that Iraq's alleged "use" of human shields was a war crime, British citizen Joe Letts retorts: "No, it is not a war crime for Iraq. The war crime would be lobbing bombs on people."