Anti-war protesters flock to Bush-Blair summit in Belfast

BELFAST (AFP) Apr 07, 2003
More than 1,000 opponents of the US-British war on Iraq protested Monday near Hillsborough Castle, where US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were due to hold a summit.

Barred from approaching the 17th century Georgian manor house, the demonstrators made their feelings known in the parking lot of a shopping center, where journalists covering the summit had converged.

"We're here to express our opposition to the war in Iraq," Bairbre de Brun, the Sinn Fein education minister in the now-suspended Northern Ireland Assembly, told AFP.

The demonstrators came from all over Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, converging on Hillsborough in a procession of cars and chartered buses some three kilometers (two miles) long.

Bush and Blair arrived Monday in Belfast to take stock of the war and discuss the future of Iraq. They were to be joined Tuesday by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern to discuss the Northern Ireland peace process.

Hillsborough Castle, the official residence of Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, is about 10 kilometers (six miles) south of Belfast.

SPACE.WIRE