- WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD
(Reuters) - Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters took to streets around
the world on Saturday as top U.N. arms experts headed to Baghdad to demand
that Iraq provide more cooperation or face a possible U.S.-led attack.
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- Washington made clear, however, it believed a case for
war was already developing as U.N. inspectors voiced fresh frustration
after raiding an Iraqi scientist's home and finding 3,000 pages of material
apparently related to enrichment of uranium that could be used for nuclear
weapons.
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- "Iraq should be proactive. We shouldn't have to
find these on our own," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear
watchdog, told CNN on the eve of showdown talks in Baghdad over whether
Iraq has any weapons of mass destruction.
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- In one of the biggest waves of anti-war protests since
the United States and Britain began a huge military build-up in the Gulf
region, protesters poured onto streets in Europe, the Middle East, Asia
and the Americas banging drums and chanting slogans.
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- Protesters in Washington brandished placards declaring
"Regime Change Starts at Home" and "Would Jesus Bomb Them?."
In Beirut, demonstrators shouted: "Sign your name on a suicide attack
on U.S. interests." Thousands of Japanese peace activists in Tokyo
carried plastic guns stuffed with flowers.
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- Actress Jessica Lange and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson
joined speakers at the U.S. protests, which organizers said would be the
biggest in the United States since the Iraq crisis began. Up to 100,000
protesters were expected in Washington and San Francisco.
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- "I think if we want to talk about threats right
now, the biggest threat to world peace is coming from Washington,"
said lawyer Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a protest organizer.
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- BUSH STICKS TO WAR THREAT
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- President Bush has branded Iraq a threat to world security
and said he would lead a "coalition of the willing" to force
Baghdad to give up any weapons of mass destruction if it did not cooperate
with U.N. inspectors.
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- Secretary of State Colin Powell told a German newspaper
this week Washington believed there would be "a persuasive case"
by the end of January that Iraq was not cooperating.
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- The White House has seized on the discovery of empty
chemical warheads in Iraq as evidence of non-compliance, calling the weapons
cache "serious and troubling," though U.N. weapons chief Hans
Blix played down the significance of the find.
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- Syria urged Iraq's neighbors on Saturday to work together
to press for a peaceful solution, while Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tareq
Aziz went to Libya to drum up support.
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- Damascus said it had offered to host a meeting of foreign
ministers from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey to
prepare for a planned summit called by Turkey.
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- Egypt said the summit would not discuss the possibility
of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein going into exile.
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- The United States has asked several of these countries
for assistance to launch any attack on Iraq, but most of Baghdad's neighbors
strongly oppose military action.
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- U.S. Military Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General
Richard Myers told a briefing in Rome on Saturday the build-up toward war
with Iraq was "totally reversible."
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- "The key to that is the Iraqi regime itself,"
he said.
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- U.N. arms experts pushed ahead with their searches on
Saturday, returning to the Iraqi arms depot where they found the empty
warheads, while other teams investigated mobile laboratories, state companies
and colleges.
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- BAGHDAD SHOWDOWN
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- Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, International Atomic Energy
Agency head, will begin two days of talks in Baghdad on Sunday that will
be key to a major report they present to the U.N. Security Council on January
27 on Iraqi compliance.
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- The United States, which has been pouring warplanes,
ships and tens of thousands of troops into the Gulf region, has called
January 27 "an important date."
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- ElBaradei said the discovery of the documents in the
Iraqi scientist's house on Thursday underlined the need for Iraq to provide
clear evidence to back up its stance that it has no chemical, biological
or nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.
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- "Why should these documents be in a private home?
Why are they not giving them to us?" he told CNN.
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- The scientist, Faleh Hassan, accused the inspectors of
"Mafia-like" behavior and said they had tried to use his wife's
illness to persuade him to leave Iraq to be questioned.
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- Iraq says it has no banned weapons, having destroyed
anything that would have breached U.N. resolutions before inspectors returned
last November after a four-year break.
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- In Britain, Washington's staunchest ally on Iraq, police
said about 2,000 anti-war protesters held peaceful demonstrations in the
northern English city of Bradford.
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- Tens of thousands of Syrians marched through the streets
of Damascus, blocking traffic for hours to protest against what they saw
as a pre-set U.S. plan to attack a fellow Arab state.
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- About 1,000 people gathered in central Cairo to urge
the Egyptian government to stop U.S. and British warships from using the
Suez Canal for a possible war. In Pakistan's city of Rawalpindi, several
thousand people formed a human chain.
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- In France, thousands protested in Paris and other cities
to demand their country use its U.N. Security Council veto against any
war on Iraq. President Jacques Chirac has said a unilateral attack by Washington
would violate international law.
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