Posted on 02/01/2003 6:08:42 AM PST by kattracks
LONDON (Reuters) - Greenpeace activists protesting against the threat of an attack on Iraq moored their flagship across the bows of a British freighter loading military supplies for the Gulf on Saturday and vowed to stay put.
"We are currently having a peaceful blockade of the Dart 8 cargo vessel," Melanie Hill, spokeswoman for the environmental and anti-war group, told Reuters by telephone from the Rainbow Warrior in Marchwood military port in southern England.
"We are going to stay here for as long as we can. We are determined to stop this headlong rush into a war with Iraq that will only make the world a more dangerous place," she added.
She said the group had inflatable motorboats in the water around the freighter, watched by waterborne police who had so far kept their distance.
Dart 8 is loading equipment including helicopters, tanks and jeeps at Marchwood, the military section of Southampton port, to supply British troops who will join the thousands of U.S. soldiers already in the Gulf region.
The protest is Greenpeace's second action in the port in a week.
The Ministry of Defense failed on Friday to get an injunction stopping Greenpeace from blocking the port but did obtain a limited ruling preventing the activists from boarding or touching ships chartered to carry military supplies.
A ministry spokesman said Saturday's blockade was making it difficult but not impossible to load the ship. "They are creating difficulties but we have a range of contingency plans," he told Reuters. He declined to say when the Dart 8 was due to sail.
Prime Minister Tony Blair met President Bush at the White House on Friday for what many saw as a council of war. Both insist Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction from U.N. weapons inspectors and must disarm voluntarily or be disarmed by force. Iraq insists it has no such weapons.
Bush said time was running out for a peaceful end to the crisis, while Blair said on his way home that he believed the U.N. Security Council would pass a second resolution condemning Iraq if it continued to stall the inspectors.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is due to present to the Security Council on Wednesday what he says is compelling evidence that Iraq is concealing weapons programmes from the U.N. inspectors.
Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who said on Monday that Iraq was hampering investigations and listed a range of weapons still unaccounted for, is due to present a further report on his team's findings on February 14.
Regards, Ivan
Yep. About the only thing courageous the French have done in half a century. Technically, this ship should be called Rainbow Warrior II, since Warrior I is now a reef.
I'm sure there's room for them at our country club in Cuba.
And then:
She said the group had inflatable motorboats in the water around the freighter,
The solution to the problem is so screamingly obvious, it's almost painful.
Whaaaat? A court would not agree that it's actually a bad thing to let civilians, most of whom are foreigners, blockade a port?
Shoot, it's even contrary to international law to blockade a port, unless one is at war with the nation the port is located in. Is the court saying that Greenpeace is at war with Britain?
Hmm, well they actually are at war with Britain, so they may legally blockade the port--and the British may legally shoot them, of course.
I like your style. Only one thing I could add,
After blowing them out of the water...put them back in, then blow them out again.
THIS morning I am NOT in the mood!!
Great idea. Kind of like biting the hand that feeds them.
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