Sheehan calls for UK coalition with Iraqis

The American anti-war campaigner Cindy Sheehan, who set up a peace camp outside George Bush's ranch after her son was killed in Iraq, has called on the UK to join an international solidarity coalition with Iraqis.

The "Peace Mom", whose son Casey was killed just five days after arriving in Iraq in 2004, was returning to the US from Jordan where she has been meeting Iraqis dealing with the refugee crisis there.

At a press conference in London yesterday, she asked the UK to help with the emergency aid operation and to consider taking more refugees from the area.

She was accompanied by the Rev Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus - a group of pop culture, social, political, community-based and youth organisations.

Ms Sheehan announced the launch of a coalition between the people of Iraq and the Camp Casey Peace Institute and the Hip Hop Caucus, which they hope will have global reach.

She said: "There is a humanitarian crisis in the Middle East that is destabilising the entire region. It started in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's spread to especially Syria and Jordan, who have taken the brunt of the refugees who are displaced outside the country."

The coalition would work to raise awareness about the crisis and to gather emergency aid, said Ms Sheehan.

The coalition's first major event will be co-ordinated mass marches in the US and Iraq on 15 September - the week the commander of the American-led forces, General David Petraeus, gives his report on the situation in Iraq to the Bush administration.