Peace Activists Fear They Are Pawns of Iraq : Propaganda: Baghdad plays up anti-war sentiment at home and abroad as part of a strategy to avert attack. One protester says it’s all part of ‘a show.’

It was supposed to be an impartial gesture of peace: Two women, one wearing a T-shirt labeled Iraq , another labeled United States , would pour water on an olive sapling newly planted on Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia.

But Iraqi authorities on the site insisted that one of their soldiers stationed nearby do the watering, his rifle on his shoulder, to heighten Iraq’s visibility at the demonstration. “This is not what we had in mind,” said Angelo Gandolfi, one of a group of international peace activists setting up camp on the border. “We don’t want to be controlled.”

Gandolfi, who returned from the border, and about 30 other activists are housed on a Tigris River island that is someday supposed to be turned into an amusement park. They plan to join about 19 of their contemporaries at a camp in the desert between opposing armies of Iraq and an allied force led by the United States. It is a gesture meant to avert war, the activists say.

But even among the most fervent, there is suspicion that they are becoming pawns in a propaganda game.

“We want to stop this war. We are ready to die!” said Gandolfi, a social worker from Italy and one of several activists from the United States, Britain, Australia and other countries gathering in Baghdad and on the border.

“We are afraid Iraq has something else in mind,” Gandolfi said. “A show.”

Show or no, the give-and-take demonstrates the difficulties of taking a neutral stand in a country looking for an edge in hard-nosed diplomatic dealings abroad. Iraq faces a Jan. 15 U.N. deadline to pull out of Kuwait or face attack from about half a million American and allied troops gathering in and near Saudi Arabia.

It is clear that Iraq is putting great stock in nurturing anti-war sentiment abroad as part of its strategy to avert attack from the United States and its allies.

Iraqi officials say they are convinced that, given time, the Bush Administration will wilt in the heat of public opposition to war with Iraq, either before shooting breaks out or, in the event that it does, if the conflict lasts for more than a few days or weeks.

Last week, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein complained to a Mexican television interviewer that the Western press had distorted Iraq’s image abroad but that still “there are tens of thousands of people in France, the United States and Britain who march demanding the withdrawal of troops from the Persian Gulf.”

The Iraqis made much of reports that U.S. and British naval personnel on embargo duty used force to board an intercepted vessel carrying sugar and female passengers. Newspapers and radio called the boarding “piracy.”

For apparent morale boosting purposes, foreign peace demonstrations are given exceptional attention on Iraqi television and in newspapers. Visiting peace activists also receive extensive write-ups that sometimes border on the zany.

The state-run Baghdad Observer newspaper ran a letter purportedly written by British anti-war activists lampooning a recent military call-up of British reservists for duty in the gulf. “You may shortly be given orders to depart for Saudi Arabia, where you will join the 3rd Battalion, Queen’s Own Suicide Conscripts,” the letter said.

In the same issue of the Observer, Masami Uno, identified as a Japanese writer, blamed his country’s support for the anti-Iraq alliance on what he called an international Jewish conspiracy. According to the newspaper, Uno is the author of a book called “If You Comprehend the Jewish Zionist, You Will Have Insight Into the World.”

The border peace camp was the idea of the Gulf Peace Team, a London-based group that professes a neutral goal of wanting to prevent war in the Middle East.

About 19 peace proponents are living in tents on the border near an Iraqi military position and not far, returning activists say, from an allied force on the Saudi side of the frontier.

The group has been given permission to stay at the camp until mid-February, when the Iraqis will consider whether to let them continue. If war breaks out before then, the peace group has vowed to stay in the firing line.

“They will have to go to war over our peace camp,” said Pat Arrowsmith, one of the organizers.

The camp is designed to house 150, but it is not clear when or if that many will ever reach Iraq. The government has been reluctant to grant visas liberally. Iraq is not a country accustomed to free-lance displays of political will.

The campers say they are paying their own keep to remain independent of the Iraqi authorities. They also want to set up a twin camp on the Saudi side of the border, but they say that Riyadh has refused to let them do so.

In a burden not unlike one shouldered by American soldiers stationed over the horizon, the peace group is taking pains not to offend local Muslim sensibilities. According to a peace camp Code of Conduct, consumption of pork, alcohol or “nonprescribed drugs” should be avoided.

Sex is out. “Separate sleeping arrangements will be made for men and women, and culturally appropriate clothing is strongly advised,” the code says.