Criticism
Among the criticisms of the first Conference was that it was building solidarity not with ordinary Iraqis, but rather with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. This perception was fuelled by the reported presence of a number of Iraqi officials at the conference. According to Al-Ahram Weekly, German journalist and author Harald Schuman attracted the ire of Nabil Negm, the chief political adviser to the Iraqi president, after comments he made insisting that claims that all the problems of the Arab world could be laid at the door of the US were only half-true and that the conference was not meant to "defend the Iraqi regime and Saddam Hussein in any shape or form". "I am here," he said, "to defend the Iraqi people."
Read more about this topic: Cairo Anti-war Conference
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