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| Home Front: Politix |
| Protests Forces Michelle to Miss Photo Op |
| 2009-04-05 |
| Well, really tho, she and Carla had to cancel an appearance at a cancer center. Thousands of Molotov cocktail-wielding, anti-war protesters clashed with police and set fires along the Franco-German border yesterday, as President Obama gathered with European leaders to celebrate NATO's 60th anniversary. The wild protests -- in which black-masked anarchists set fire to a hotel in Strasbourg, France, and a border post along a bridge connecting the two countries -- forced First Lady Michelle Obama to cancel a visit to a cancer center. The strife came as NATO leaders pledged at the alliance's anniversary summit to send a measly 5,000 soldiers to Afghanistan stopping well-short of the 21,000 extra troops the United States is planning to send to the war-torn nation. Protesters battled police on the French side of a bridge linking the two countries just hours after Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a symbolic gathering at the middle of another bridge nearby. "NATO doesn't stand for peace. NATO stands for war like in Afghanistan, where they're regularly killing civilians," Tobias Pflieger, a European Parliament member from Germany's Left Party, yelled to a crowd of protesters. "No to NATO! No to war!" the protesters chanted. No injuries were reported. Thousands more protesters staged anti-US and anti-NATO rallies in Turkey, where Obama was scheduled to arrive this evening in his first visit to a Muslim country as president. "Obama, don't come! We don't want you!" protesters shouted in the capital of Ankara. |
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