Opposition official: the demonstrator against war on Iraq are 'naive'

The chairman of the local government in al-Suleimaneyah to the north of Iraq, Barham Saleh, said yesterday that there is a "strong moral case" to launch a war against Saddam Hussein's regime in order to "end decades of total extermination and oppression against the Iraqi people." He described the moves of protests against the American threats as "naive."

In a statement to the BBC from north Iraq, Saleh said he "with great confidence expects that Baghdad's streets will be filled with joyful people celebrating their freedoms and welcoming the UN and the British and American forces as being liberators and heroes." He commented that the scenes in Baghdad will not differ from those which prevailed Paris and Rome in 1944.

Meantime, the British foreign office secretary Jacque Straw yesterday received a group of exiled Iraqis in Britain.

The spokeswoman for the group Aida Oseiran said after the meeting that its aim was to inform Straw that the war "is the only means" to get rid off the regime of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.