Galloway, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the House of Commons, and a group of other British MPs and writers arrived from Egypt on a London double-decker bus en route to Iraq on a campaign called the Mariam Appeal Big Ben to Baghdad.

The bus, carrying medical supplies to the Iraqi people, left London on Sept. 9 and traveled through France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Galloway has in recent years led a campaign seeking the lifting of the international sanctions imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, saying the embargo has mostly affected children due to sharp shortages in food and medicine.

The group has been received by heads of state, parliamentarians and prominent personalities throughout its voyage.

The campaign is named after a 6-year-old Iraqi girl, Mariam Hamzah, whom Galloway took to a Scottish hospital for cancer treatment two years ago.

Mariam returned to Baghdad last year after completing medical treatment for her leukemia. But she came to Jordan's al-Amal Cancer Center in the capital, Amman, last Tuesday after suffering a relapse.

Doctors at al-Amal Center said Mariam was suffering from neurological disorders and has gone almost completely blind.

The Mariam Appeal, which other British and Arab politicians are due to join in Jordan before heading to Iraq, has blamed the sanctions for the alarming rise in child deaths. The group is expected to visit Mariam on Thursday.

U.N. figures show 5,500 Iraqi children under the age of five die each month from preventable diseases that were almost non-existent before the sanctions and that a total of 1 million children have died since that time.

The number of Iraqi cancer patients has also dramatically risen, which experts blame on depleted uranium used in the manufacturing of U. S. bombs, which have regularly been falling on Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War.

Doctors at al-Amal Center said that about 30 Iraqi cancer patients are being treated at the Amman hospital, but that at least 15 Iraqis a day are turned away due to lack of space and sufficient facilities.