February 18, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 16, 1423

WELLINGTON, Feb 17: A 51-year-old New Zealander who earns a living cleaning motels and sewing has spent 5,000 New Zealand dollars (2,750 US dollars) of her own money on a newspaper advertisement urging US President George W. Bush to pull back from war in Iraq.

Margie Beamsley’s open letter, saying, “Mr Bush, please say ‘Never again’ to war,” was published as a half-page advertisement in Monday’s Wellington Dominion-Post newspaper.

“You need not see the day when you are reviled as the man who brought the world to war,” wrote the odd-jobs lady from the tiny town of Karamea, on the west coast of the South Island.

“You can take a different stand and be honoured as the man who used his power to find a warless way, a way that remembers that every human being is glorious, hidden like you and me, beneath our fears.”—dpa