A LARGE rally of anti-war demonstrators in Market Square heard an impassioned plea from local Quaker Adrian Rose to stop the fighting in Afghanistan.

Mr Rose, caretaker at Lancaster's Friends Meeting House, addressed a crowd of more than 150 people on Saturday and talked about how UK arms traders supported by the British Government make massive profits from instability and war.

He listed the 'brutal dictatorships' in the Gulf and Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Iraq, which could not have kept power without the arms sold to them at great profit by UK arms dealers.

He then spoke about the developing world's need for assistance with food programmes and sustainable agriculture, not arms and exploitation.

Thanking Adrian, Billy Pye, a founder of the Lancaster Coalition reminded the crowd that the amount of food estimated necessary by the UN World Food Programme to get the people of Afghanistan through the winter would cost £76 million.

By an ironic coincidence, he said, £76 million is also the estimated cost of the 50 sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles plus the air-launched missiles dropped on Afghanistan on the first night of the bombing.

Since then far heavier and costlier bombing had taken place.

He said: "All the aid agencies are now calling for a ceasefire to allow relief convoys to reach the mountainous regions of Afghanistan before winter snow makes transport impossible.

"Over three and a half million people will be unable to survive without this aid.

"Lancaster and District Coalition Against the War is calling on the British government and the British people to demand an immediate ceasefire."