Protesters took to the streets from Tokyo to London to San Francisco on Saturday in anti-war demonstrations fired up by speculation that a US-led strike on Iraq was drawing near.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered in cities across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East as US troops amassed in the Gulf and UN arms chiefs headed to Baghdad to warn it to cooperate over alleged banned weapons.
In the US, where the day's largest rallies took place, more than 100,000 people demanded the White House back down and give UN weapons inspectors a chance.
Thousands marched on Washington and San Francisco and at smaller protests in Chicago and Tampa, Florida, in what organizers said was the largest showing of US anti-war sentiment since US President George W. Bush started making his case for attacking Baghdad last year.
"The path this administration is on is wrong and we object. It is an immoral war they are planning and we must not be silenced," said US actress Jessica Lange, addressing a huge crowd on the national Mall in the center of Washington.
Protesters arrived by bus from California, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine and other states and gathered in freezing temperatures. Many were middle aged and said they had also demonstrated against the Vietnam war.
In San Francisco, an estimated 50,000 people -- a patchwork of environmentalists, labor activists, Hollywood celebrities, veterans and self-described anarchists -- turned out.
One placard read "If war is inevitable ... start drafting SUV drivers now," a reference to gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and the opinion of many protesters the conflict is over Iraq's oil resources.
Organizers say the deployment of US troops to the Gulf, and widespread speculation that a Jan. 27 report by UN arms inspectors could serve as a trigger for war, had galvanized peace movements.
In the Middle East, protests sounded an ominous note. Thousands in Beirut carrying Palestinian and Iraqi flags chanted, "Sign your name on a suicide attack on US interests."
Maverick British politician George Galloway said at the march, "A peaceful solution must be found, or we're all going over the cliff in the Middle East and all of us will be damaged in the fall."
Tens of thousands of Syrians blocked traffic on the streets of Damascus as they marched against what they saw as a pre-set US plan to attack a fellow Arab state.
In central Cairo, about 1,000 demonstrators called on the Egyptian government to prevent US and British warships from using the Suez Canal en route to attacking Iraq.
More than 4,000 Japanese gathered in Tokyo, police said, some wearing traditional costumes, others masks of Bush.
"I cannot forgive [America's] aggressive attitude," Koki Okazaki, a 16-year-old demonstrator, said. "It would be an awful thing if Japan were to take part in the war."
One poster depicted Bush as a kimono-clad Japanese warlord, with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a key ally, as his retainers.
In the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, a few thousand people, many of them school children, formed a human chain to condemn a possible attack on Iraq.
In traditionally neutral Ireland more than 2,000 people protested against a government decision allowing US aircraft to use southwest Shannon Airport en route to the Gulf.
RSS