AMMAN - Relatives of US servicemen killed in Iraq and members of anti-war groups announced plans to hold a candlelit vigil on the Jordan-Iraq border to protest US involvement.

Members of Families for Peace, Code Pink and Global Exchange announce that they have sent 600,000 USD in humanitarian aid to the displaced people of Fallujah.(AFP/Khalil Mazraawi)

Members of Families for Peace, Code Pink and Global Exchange told a news conference in Amman that they had sent 600,000 dollars' worth of humanitarian aid to residents of the Iraqi town of Fallujah displaced by last month's massive US-led assault.

"I don't know of any other case in history in which the parents of fallen soldiers collected medicine ... for the families of the 'other side'," said Medea Benjamin, the founding director of Global Exchange, a human rights group.

"It is a reflection of a growing movement in the United States ... opposed to the unjust nature of this war," she said.

"This is the positive face of the American people which we would like to show ... so that we are not looked at with animosity but with love. Our hearts go out to the people of Fallujah and to all the Iraqi people," she said.

Fernando Suarez del Solar, whose son Lance Corporal Victor Gonzalez, better known as Jesus, was killed in Iraq on October 13, and his wife Rosa, made a passionate appeal to the US government to end its military involvement in Iraq.

"My son died when he stepped on an illegal (US) cluster bomb. The US government told me he died because Iraqi fire killed him, but this was another lie from the Bush administration," Fernando said.

"My wife and I don't speak Arabic but our grief is the same as the Iraqis. We understand their pain and we don't want others to feel the same pain," said the Mexican-born California resident.

The group will hold a candlelit vigil on New Year's eve outside UN headquarters in Amman before travelling to the border on January 1 for a similar gathering.

© Copyright 2004 AFP

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