A handful of Jamaica peace activists yesterday joined millions of people around in the world in public protests against the US-led war on Iraq.

Up to 50 demonstrators, including University of the West Indies lecturers angered by American pressure on Caribbean governments to stay away from a proposed special UN general assembly to discuss the war, rallied outside the US Embassy in Kingston.

They carried placards denouncing US President George W Bush as a warmonger.

‘Bushfire will spread to Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean’, read one placard. Said another: ‘No Oil for Bush’.

Yesterday’s demonstration was the fourth in a series of protests over the past month organised by the local group, Jamaicans Against War (JAW) headed by anthropologist, Moji Anderson.

Anderson’s group includes people who are totally opposed to war as well as those who insist that the United States and Britain did not make an adequate case for war to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and believe that their action breached the United Nations Charter.

The group will continue its protest next week.

“We will have a march next week Saturday starting at the US Embassy to the British High Commission at 3:00 pm,” Anderson said yesterday.

Protesters insisted that despite their small numbers perhaps the majority of Jamaicans were opposed to the war — a claim that seems to have currency given the response of people on radio phone-in shows and in vox pops.

Beyond the protest against the war, yesterday’s demonstration had the added dimension of academics coming out to express their displeasure at the note the State Department sent to regional governments last week encouraging them not to back a suggestion that came out of last month’s non-aligned summit to attend the special General Assembly.

Although Jamaica says the request it received was verbal, in other countries diplomats insisted that the tone of the note — which suggested to governments to either abstain or vote against any resolution criticising the war — was threatening.

The Americans were “out of order”, said Professor Brian Meeks, who teaches politics and government at the UWI’s Mona campus in Jamaica.

Meeks insisted that the war was illegal.

“I am so outraged for the disregard for international law, the absolute carelessness, it is immoral and illegal,” he said.

“I am not for sale and hope that the Government of Jamaica is not for sale,” said Dr Clinton Hutton, another politics lecturer at Mona. “They (the Jamaican Government) should tell the American Government that Jamaica is a sovereign state and that Jamaica is an equal member of the United Nations.”

There have been suggestions that the US action was a grab for Iraqi oil and Dr Michael Witter, an economics lecturer, said that cheaper oil after the war may or may not be a reality.

But, said he: “The cost of peace and stability is inestimable.”