Hundreds of anti-war protesters, including American Cindy Sheehan, attended an international peace conference in London on Saturday to condemn the Iraq conflict. Tony Benn, a veteran leftist politician in the governing Labour Party, opened the one-day meeting by calling the war "illegal, immoral and unwinnable." He said the peace movement wants to see coalition troops withdrawn from Iraq, justice for Palestinians and a ban on any Western military attacks on Iran or Syria. Benn said anti-war sentiment was growing in the United States and Britain, whose armed forces dominate the coalition's military presence in Iraq.Up to 1,500 anti-war protesters and activists gathered for the 10-hour conference, which was organized by the Stop the War Coalition. The scheduled speakers included Sheehan, who has become a focus of anti-war sentiment in the United States by camping outside the Texas ranch of President George W. Bush; Hasan Zergani Hashim, a spokesperson for Iraq's radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr; and leftist British legislator George Galloway.
In an interview with Sky TV, Galloway urged British forces to leave Iraq. "The only thing the Iraqis want from the British government is to see the backs of their heads as they leave the country," he said. "If occupation is ugly, then resistance will hardly be pretty," he said, in an apparent reference to the deadly attacks that are being conducted by insurgent groups in Iraq.