Activists’ Plea for Cease-Fire Is Renewed : Protest: They say Iraq is all but defeated, and the continued relentless warfare will damage efforts to make peace.

Insisting that the Iraqi army is already badly beaten, several American anti-war activists on Tuesday repeated their calls for a cease-fire and said further bloodshed will damage efforts to restore peace.

A show of mercy, activists argued, will serve the future better than a war that seems increasingly vindictive. The continuing U.S.-led assault on retreating Iraqi troops, many added, underscores the immoral nature of the war after the abandonment of potential diplomatic solutions.

“This is a time to escalate diplomacy, rather than a ground war, while they (the Iraqis) are in retreat, and spare the remaining lives,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said at a funeral for Army Pvt. Robert Talley in Newark, N. J. Talley, 18, is believed to be the youngest American killed in the Persian Gulf War.

Clerics and other anti-war activists echoed those sentiments at a news conference in Los Angeles, while hundreds of protesters rallied and marched in San Francisco.

“We have the opportunity to bring the death and destruction to an end, and I think we should seize it,” Rabbi Leonard Beerman said at the Los Angeles news conference, organized by Peace Action Network of Southern California, a coalition of more than 20 community and religious groups. “Better an insincere peace than a sincere war,” he added.

Activists acknowledged that President Bush and Congress seemed to have turned a deaf ear to such pleas. But “there’s always a chance that one of our prayers will get through,” Beerman said.

Hasan Hathout, outreach director of the Islamic Center of Southern California, reminded listeners that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is “a monster” that American foreign policy helped create. He said “the monster is finished” and declared that United Nations objectives can be accomplished through negotiation.

Leo Guerra, of the Chicano-Mexicano Coalition to Stop the War, said American soldiers have sacrificed their lives to restore the a dictatorial government in Kuwait. But Hathout said he shared in Kuwaitis’ joy in regaining their country and said it is democratic by Arab standards.

When the war is over, Hathout stressed, “the inevitable future” is that Iraqis, Kuwaitis, and Saudis now at war will “always be neighbors,” while American and other allied forces will remain outsiders. Hathout, an Egyptian who lived for many years in Kuwait, warned that in much of the Arab world, “it’s me and my brother against my cousin, and me and my cousin against the stranger. . . . What will be remembered is that it is the Americans who caused the death and destruction.”

The only way to solve this problem, added Salam Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, “is to allow the Iraqi people to take control of their own destiny.”

At the San Francisco demonstration, Peter Donahue, 26, came dressed in an Arab headdress with his face made up as a skull and his hands swathed in red-stained bandages, saying, “I am representing Arabs that are being bombed and terrorized. The war keeps going on. It just keeps going on.”

At the funeral in New Jersey, the Rev. Benjamin Chavis Jr., head of the Commission for Racial Justice, told hundreds of mourners in a eulogy that “there could be no better tribute to Robert Talley than to have the guns of war cease.” Talley and a sergeant were killed when their jeep was struck by “friendly fire” from an Apache attack helicopter.

A statement from Talley’s mother, Deborah, was read before the service: “First, let me say I am extremely proud of my son, although I am concerned about the disproportionate percentage of African-Americans serving.”

Jackson and Chavis also criticized the government for going to war while ignoring needs at home. “Hopefully the loss of life of this young man will illuminate our world as to the dangers of war and the need to have a commitment to justice at home,” Jackson said. “Maybe the death of this young man will illuminate the crisis at home as it has the crisis abroad.”

This report includes material from Times wire services.