Brussels protesters decry NATO ‘war machine’

About 100 people staged a protest in Brussels on Sunday against the NATO “war machine” as the Alliance was set to kick off a summit in Chicago, the Belga news agency reported.

Carrying the flags of around 100 countries that are not taking part in the summit, they decried “NATO’s warlike policies and the fact that only 28 member states will decide world geostrategic positions,” the report quoted an organiser as saying.

“NATO is a war machine that wants to run the world through military conflict,” said Mario Franssen, spokesman of the Intal activist movement that organised the protest.

“It responds to socio-economic and ecological problems militarily instead of resolving the root causes: the looting of the Third World, unequal trade relations that induce poverty, and so on,” he said.

“Under the fallacious pretext of defending human rights, NATO threatens, destroys and humiliates the most vulnerable,” he added.

More than 50 world leaders including those of the 28 member states were to attend the NATO summit Sunday and Monday in Chicago. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is headquartered in Brussels.