NZ human shield's sympathy with Iraqi people not Saddam

1.15pm

A former Napier man who is travelling to Iraq this weekend to act as a human shield in the event of a US-led attack says claims human shields will help Saddam Hussein are laughable.

Christiaan Briggs, a Green Party list candidate in the last election who lives in London, said today he and his companions were acting in support of the Iraqi people.

Mr Briggs, 26, is travelling to Iraq with 50 others as the first group of human shields affiliated with former US marine and Gulf war veteran Ken Nichols' We the People organisation. The group, which leaves London on Saturday, hopes to arrive in Iraq on February 8.

Mr Briggs said he was the only New Zealander on the first busload of 50 people, but the organisation was hoping to have a large convoy depart in mid-February "and there's been quite a few Kiwis in contact with us".

He said he hoped to "meet Iraqi people and get to know them and tell them that we're not all for this (war) and western people haven't forgotten about them".

"If the bombs start dropping then I hope to stay in hospitals and water treatment facilities -- things like that, anything that's going to affect innocent people."

He said he was going to be based in Baghdad and would stay "as long as it takes".

Mr Briggs said he believed the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, given by the US as a reason for its threatened attack on the country, was "bullshit".

" It's got nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and it's got everything to do with power and oil," he said.

" Everyone knows (North Korea) has got weapons of mass destruction and are willing to use them, therefore they're treating them diplomatically. But with Iraq, the Americans know they're no threat, that's why they're treating them like this. They just want their oil basically."

The human shields have attracted criticism that they are playing into the hands of Saddam Hussein and helping him, but Mr Briggs denied this.

"I can't control what Saddam Hussein does or thinks but I know one thing, it was western governments that were supporting Saddam Hussein when he was committing his worst atrocities against the Kurds and the USA carried on trading with Saddam Hussein even after that.

"To suggest that we're going down there to support Saddam Hussein is just laughable really, we're going there to help the Iraqi people."

Also planning to travel to Iraq to act as a human shield is Mahia kaumatua (tribal elder) and grandmother Pauline Tangiora.

Mrs Tangiora is going under the umbrellas of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom - of which she is vice-president of the Aotearoa section - and the Rigerberta-menchu-tum Indigenous Initiative for Peace, named after a 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

- NZPA

Herald feature: Iraq