Garner,
64, who is awaiting confirmation of the Iraqi regime downfall to make
his move to Baghdad, is a retired three-star general who has come
under fire for his links to defense industry and his ardent pro-Israel
stance.
He
is also a former assistant deputy chief of staff during the 1991 Gulf
War, has directed several major Defense Department programs including
the Patriot anti-missile system, and is a personal friend of U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
But
peace activists said none of those credentials qualify him to set up a
peaceful Iraqi interim government.
"As
a former Army General who until recently was building weapons systems
now being used in the Iraq war, Jay Garner is no man of peace. In
fact, he's just the man to inflame Iraq and the region,"
according activist’s site.
Worldwide
Protest
 |
|
Riot
police protect a Barcelona stock market from students opposing the
U.S.-led war on Iraq
|
Protests
against the U.S.-led war on Iraq flared worldwide Thursday, a day
after American tanks rolled into Baghdad.
In
Spain, tens of thousands of people, mainly students, took to the
streets to reinforce a nationwide trade union strike in protest at the
war.
In
the Mediterranean city of Barcelona alone, at least 30,000 people
flooded the streets, chanting "Not a soldier, not a euro, not a
bullet for this war."
The
streets of Madrid were also jammed, with demonstrators waving banners
that read "Against the imperialist war."
The
Prado museum in the capital closed for two hours, with a reproduction
of "Guernica," Picasso's famed anti-war painting, placed at
its doors.
In
Greece, nearly 600 journalists stopped work for two hours and marched
to the U.S. embassy to protest the war and the casualties it has
caused among their colleagues in the media.
"Americans,
murderers of peoples", "Americans, murderers of
reporters," chanted the demonstrators.
Eleven
journalists and a Kurdish translator working for the BBC have been
killed since the U.S.-led war began on March 20, and another two are
missing.
In
Athens, organizers have barred Britain from participating at a book
fair where it was due to be the honored country, because of its
participation in the "illegal U.S. invasion" of Iraq.
Instead,
the fair, a popular annual event to be held on May 9-25, would be
dedicated to anti-war books, the Athens Publishers' and Booksellers'
Association said.
In
Paris, a hundred demonstrators snuck into the building housing the
American Express offices and hung an anti-war banner on the first
floor, organizers said.
In
Germany, a McDonald's party bus and an advertisement for the food
chain on a motorway were set alight in apparent anti-war protests.
In
Indonesia, some 150 protestors gathered outside the compound of the
U.S. firm Caltex on Sumatra island, demanding the firm's U.S.
employees condemn the war within 24 hours or face expulsion from the
country.
In
Britain, organizers vowed to go ahead with a weekend anti-war protest
in London.
"We
are organizing meeting in many parts of the country which are bigger
than those which took place before the war started," said Andrew
Murray, chairman of the Stop the War Coalition.
The
group has called a march through London on Saturday, April 11, during
which participants are to lay flowers outside Downing Street in memory
of those who have died in the conflict.
On
March 22, two days after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, between
200,000 and 700,000 people marched in the British capital against the
war.
