ROME - Indian novelist Arundhati Roy urged anti-war campaigners Wednesday to use civil disobedience to oppose military action against Iraq, just as Mahatma Gandhi used it to fight for India's independence from British rule.

Roy, whose 1997 novel "The God of Small Things" won the Booker Prize in Britain and has sold six million copies in 40 languages, has become a prominent activist for human rights and environmental causes.

Indian novelist Arundhati Roy urged anti-war campaigners October 23, 2002 to use civil disobedience to oppose military action against Iraq, just as Mahatma Gandhi used it to fight for India's independence from British rule. Roy is seen leaving Delhi's Tihar prison on March 7 after serving a 'symbolic' one day sentence for contempt of court. (Kamal Kishore/Reuters)

Speaking about actively opposing globalization, Roy told a news conference in Rome "The struggle has hit a dead-end. We need to re-imagine nonviolent resistance. It's not simply about demonstrations on the streets and wearing masks.

"The answer lies in civil disobedience," she said, detailing some of the boycotts and nonviolent protests Gandhi used to weaken Britain's grip on the Indian subcontinent, which gained independence in 1947.

Asked whether she would advocate civil disobedience against a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, Roy said: "Absolutely, of course. That is where it is most urgently needed."

"Those activists who in the past have gone into Palestine, or gone into Iraq and said 'Bomb us, we're here, we're white people and we're here' -- those are fantastic people," she told Reuters.

Roy, 41, was in Italy to speak at a festival featuring films on a campaign of opposition to a hydro-electric dam project in India that has displaced millions of people.

"The idea that America or any other country has the right to organize a pre-emptive strike against Iraq on the suspicion that it might be developing nuclear weapons...it justifies anybody going to war against anybody," she said.

"It justifies India going to war against Pakistan or Pakistan going to war against India based on any suspicion that they have. It's the most outrageous thing you can possibly imagine."

Copyright 2002 Reuters Ltd

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