Human shields take up positions

A banner glorifying Saddam Hussain's "Mother of all Battles" against Kuwait adorned the entrance of the makeshift dormitory where British peace activists bedded down beside an Iraqi power station on Sunday.

Inside the spacious room, above 15 beds arranged in two rows, the walls sported various portraits of the beaming Iraqi leader as the 15 "human shields" - including four Britons - unpacked their belongings a stone's throw from Baghdad South power station.

They claim independence from the regime. They are equally at pains to blame the West for Saddam's excesses. When this argument was questioned, one peace activist became aggressive.

"Use this and I'll have you," spat Ube Evans, a British human shield from Hay-on-Wye, when asked which American president he blamed for getting Saddam to invade Iran in 1980. He stalked off in a temper.

The British human shields say Tony Blair's government is responsible for more deaths than the Iraqi regime. They believe that Saddam's invasion of Iran, which sparked an eight-year war and cost a million lives, was a Western plot.

They think the same about Iraq's attack on Kuwait in 1990. One activist believes that Saddam's well-documented destruction of Iraq's southern marshes was partially the fault of Turkey.

The first group of human shields to camp at a possible target in Baghdad had travelled from London on two double-decker buses.

Joe Letts, from Shaftesbury, Dorset, owns both vehicles and drove one here himself. He called Blair a warmonger, adding: "There were more crimes against humanity that we have committed than have been committed by Saddam."

Letts, 51, who wore a CND badge, said Saddam was "misled" into invading Kuwait. "As far as an Arab is concerned, all the borders here are things that we Westerners created and are entirely artificial," he said. "The same families live on both sides of the Iraq-Kuwait border."

Another human shield, Dave Howarth, 36, from Lincoln, acknowledged that the occupation of Kuwait had been "clear aggression". But he added: "Our governments are killing more people around the world than the Iraqis have ever done."

Godfrey Meynell, 68, said he had never joined a peace campaign before. A supporter of foxhunting, he described himself as a "Church and Queen Tory squire". He won an MBE for gallantry during his time as a civil servant in the British Protectorate of Western Aden in the 1960s.

"It was a great mistake to give them their independence," he said. "I think that was a just war."

However, he described Donald Rumsfeld, the United States Defence Secretary, as a "horrible man".

He believes that the destruction of 90 per cent of the marshes in southern Iraq, where Shiites rose up against Saddam's regime in 1991, was "partially down to Turkey."

Meynell added: "No dictator, however bloody, could do the harm to the world that America is doing by failing to take global warming seriously."

The human shields will inform the Ministry of Defence and the Pentagon of their locations. They hope this will influence British and U.S. targeting plans.

Bemused Iraqis watched them move into their new abode. Asked where he would go if war began, Sabah Hassan, a power station worker, said he would go home, adding: "These people are like volunteers. Nobody asked them to come here."