SPACE WIRE
Students bury UN "coffin" as anti-war rallies continue in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD (AFP) Apr 07, 2003
Anti-war protesters Monday buried the "coffin" of the United Nations at a university campus in the northwestern city of Peshawar Monday to express disappointment over the world body's inability to stop war in Iraq.

The UN has become "ineffective," a "dead body" and a "subsidiary" of the United States, speakers told a rally of some 200 students from the Agriculture University.

They chanted slogans against US president George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair and torched effigies of the key coalition leaders.

Protesters carried the wooden coffin on their shoulders as they paraded across the lawns of the campus before burying the casket.

Masoom Hussain, leader of the Shiite Muslim community's Imamia Students Organisation, accused the United States of waging the war to promote its economic interests.

"America wants to subjugate the entire world. It considers Islamic countries a major hurdle, that's why it is targetting Muslim states one after the other," Hussain said.

"The UN has totally failed to protect smaller states or safeguard the rights of Muslims. It failed to discharge its responsibility of preventing US tyrannies in Iraq."

Protest rallies and demonsrtations have been staged daily in Muslim-dominated Pakistan, a key US ally in its 18-month war on terrorism, since the March 20 invasion of Iraq.

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