Greek members of the environmental pressure group Greenpeace demonstrated outside the US embassy in Athens on Sunday in protest at controversial US plans for an anti-missile defense shield.
The demonstration was in protest at the US military's 100-million-dollar missile test over the Pacific Ocean late on Saturday, Greenpeace Greece spokesman Nikos Haralambidis told AFP.
The 11 protestors erected a large placard bearing a US flag redesigned with missiles and the nuclear power symbol, with the slogans "Stop Star Wars" and "Star Wars - Start Wars".
One of them paraded on stilts wearing a mask of US President George W. Bush, whose administration is seeking to develop a range of missile defense systems in defiance of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Moscow, that kept the nuclear balance throughout the Cold War.
Using a prototype interceptor missile, the US military succeeded in exploding an intercontinental ballistic missile warhead fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Saturday.
The test was part of "an aggressive" research and development program "that will lead to the defense of the American homeland as soon as possible against the very real threats of the 21st century", the Pentagon said.
Greenpeace said in a statement that members of the group had succeeded in delaying the test by entering the exclusion zone around Vandenberg base. Four were arrested – ATHENS (AFP)
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