Iran clerics slam US, UK presence near Iraq’s shines

Iran clerics slam US, UK presence near Iraq’s shines
Reuters
April 7, 2003

QOM, Iran, April 7 (Reuters) - About 3,000 Iranian clerics and theological students burned U.S. and British flags on Monday in the holy city of Qom to protest the presence of Western forces close to Shi'ite Muslim shrines in southern Iraq.

Another group of around 70 clerics and students also protested outside the British embassy in Tehran, which has become the focal point for anti-war protests in Iran.

The protests were peaceful, unlike one outside the British embassy 10 days ago when several windows in a building inside the compound were smashed by stones hurled by protesters.

The embassy, struck last Monday by a truck laden with extra fuel, was surrounded by heavy security, including riot police.

In Qom, the centre of Shi'ite Muslim learning in Iran about 80 miles (125 km) south of Tehran, protesters chanted "Death to America," "Death to war-mongers" and burned a coffin covered by U.S. and British flags.

Shi'ite Muslim Iran has given repeated warnings to U.S. and British forces not to damage sites in the southern Iraqi cities of Kerbala and Najaf which are home to some of the most sacred shrines for their branch of Islam.

"The occupation of those cities by infidels is condemned and is an attack against Shi'ites in the world," Ahmad Khatami, a mid-ranking conservative cleric, said in a speech in Qom.

"America and Britain, by ignoring all the international rules, are acting like Hitler," the ISNA students news agency quoted Khatami as saying.

All Iran's religious schools halted classes on Monday to stage protests against the war in neighbouring Iraq, the official IRNA news agency said.

Radical religious students and clerics have called on Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to allow them to go to Iraq to protect its Shi'ite holy sites.

But Iran, eager to avoid U.S. allegations of interfering in the war, has sealed its borders and prevented Iranians and Iraqi opposition members living in the country to cross into Iraq to join the fighting.

Despite the protests, anti-war sentiment remains relatively subdued in Iran which fought a bitter eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s during which chemical weapons were used against Iranian troops.