IRAQ/BLIX REPORT: People acting as human shields who hope to deter any bombing of Baghdad have begun to arrive in the city.
You might call him the canine shield. Gustavo, a lumbering Saint Bernard, is a four-footed pioneer - if not a volunteer - among this city's human-shield movement.
Accompanied by 15 humans, Gustavo has arrived in Baghdad from Italy as part of what Canadian peace advocate Ms Roberta Taman asserts is a growing grass-roots movement to protest against war.
The self-proclaimed human shields say they expect to be joined by scores more of volunteers and peace activists from around the world in the next few days.
Some of them plan to ask to be put at key installations in an attempt to deter the US and its allies from bombing them.
Others will not go to that extreme. Their purpose is more to demonstrate their commitment to peace, and to try to encourage ordinary people around the world to stand up and speak out, rather than go along passively with a war that she believes few people consider justified.
"What we are saying," said Ms Taman, "is we are focusing on stopping this war. With your help, your mother's help, your brother's help, and your neighbour's help, we believe we can stop this war."
The activists have drawn some scorn from the Bush administration. On Wednesday, a State Department spokeswoman likened them to unthinking moths flying into a flame. When asked about the volunteer human shields, State Department spokeswoman Ms Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said: "While you're at it, you might as well ask me why moths fly into porch lights."
Ms Taman, who lives "in the woods" about 1½ hours from Toronto, said she was an ordinary person who was moved by her opposition to the war to travel to Baghdad.
She flew to France with her son's brother-in-law, and they travelled by car all the way to Iraq, linking up with a group of Italian human shields en route.
Early on Thursday, a group of US and European peace activists, organised as the Iraq Peace Team, locked arms around posts of Martyrs Bridge over the Tigris river and unfurled a banner which read: "Bombing This Bridge Is a War Crime."
At a news conference in Baghdad on Thursday, Ms Taman said her group sent a letter to former South African president Mr Nelson Mandela two days earlier, asking him to join them in Baghdad to dramatise his opposition to the war. A spokesman for Mr Mandela said he would not travel to Iraq without a mandate from the UN secretary-general, Mr Kofi Annan.
Ms Taman encouraged people to show up for peace demonstrations planned in most countries today