Thousands of Australian students left their classrooms to protest war on Iraq

SYDNEY, March 5 (News Agencies) – Joining the line of anti-war protesters, thousands of high school and university students across Australia marched out of their classrooms Wednesday, March 5, to oppose any Australian involvement in a war in Iraq.

In Sydney, Australia's biggest city, several thousand high school students marched through the central business district at midday as part of a worldwide "Books not Bombs" protest, bringing traffic to a standstill, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Carrying placards reading "Stop This Bloody War", "Inspect U.S. Weapons Now", and "Don't Attack Iraq", the demonstrators gathered outside the Town Hall before taking their message through the streets to a city park.

Similar protests drew large numbers of mostly high school students in the state capitals of Melbourne, Adelaide, Darwin, Perth and Hobart, police said.

"Every single person here knows exactly what's right, exactly what's wrong, and you all know war is wrong," Claudia Quinnell, 18, told the rally in Melbourne, where many participants wore their school uniforms.

Students had been asked to get permission from their parents to leave classes and had found them supportive, said Suncan Meerding an organizer for the protest in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart.

"I haven't actually come across many people objecting to us going - a lot of parents are for it," he told public radio.

"My mum and dad said, yeah, go for it," Jasmine Whitcher, 16, said at the Sydney march when asked if she had sought her parents' permission to protest.

Opinion polls indicate a large majority of Australians oppose joining a war on Iraq unless it is formally authorized by the United Nations.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose conservative government has been one of the staunchest backers of U.S. President George W Bush's tough stance on Iraq, said Wednesday that his government could decide to go to war as early as next week despite the public opposition.

"We're certainly coming to the end of the process and there has to be a resolution on the (U.N.) resolution pretty soon and maybe the end of next week is a possible date, but I can't be certain of that," Howard said in a radio interview.

While Howard said the "difficult decision" on whether to go to war would be made by his government alone, without a vote in parliament where opposition parties are deeply critical of his stance.

"It is a difficult issue and I understand why people will disagree with me on this.

"We cannot walk away from the threat that the continuation of the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Iraq constitutes.

“I want them to understand that I respect their views but I believe that it is in Australia's interest that we do everything we can to secure the disarmament of Iraq and it's a very big responsibility now on the shoulders of the (U.N.) Security Council," he added.

Australia and Britain are the only two governments to have sent troops to the U.S.-led military build-up in the Middle East in preparation for a looming war on Iraq.

Washington is believed to have set a deadline of late next week for the United Nations to adopt a new resolution authorizing war and has indicated it will launch an invasion to disarm the regime in Baghdad with or without a green light from the world body.