- LONDON (Reuters) - More than
two million protesters joined forces around the globe on Saturday to deliver
a blunt message to President Bush -- "Give peace a chance and do not
rush into war against Iraq."
-
- From Canberra to Sofia, from Cape Town to Karachi, they
took to the streets to pillory Bush as a bloodthirsty warmonger.
-
- In the biggest demonstrations of 'people power' since
the Vietnam War, they poured scorn on Bush's hawkish stance.
-
- "This war is solely about oil. George Bush has never
given a damn about human rights," London mayor Ken Livingstone told
reporters at a giant rally in London.
-
- At least half a million people marched through the British
capital in the biggest peace demonstration in British political history.
Thousands protested in other British cities.
-
- Europe's biggest rally appeared to be in Rome where,
under a sea of rainbow peace banners, one million people marched through
the streets of Rome. Graying pensioners to dreadlocked teenagers marched
side-by-side in a carnival-like atmosphere.
-
- In France, one of the staunchest opponents of war, one
woman protesting in Paris said: "The Americans were stressed by September
11 and now they are going completely overboard."
-
- At least 50,000 people crammed into the center of Paris
where organizers believed the crowd would swell beyond 100,000.
-
- France's opposition for now to war against Iraq to rid
it of alleged weapons of mass destruction is supported in Europe by Berlin,
where some 500,000 people attended a rally in the biggest protest in Germany
since the end of World War II.
-
- They waved banners reading "No Blood for Oil,"
"Make Love Not War," and "War? No Thanks!"
-
- In the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, one banner read: "I
look at Bush but see Hitler."
-
- The day began with a slew of demonstrations in Asia.
In Japan, the only nation to have been attacked with nuclear weapons at
the end of World War II, around 300 gathered in front of the U.S. embassy
in Tokyo chanting anti-war slogans.
-
- "What the United States is doing now is wrong. We
are on the brink of World War Three," said Japanese housewife Mariko
Ayama.
-
- Australians turned out in their thousands for the biggest
protest since the anti-Vietnam War marches of 30 years ago.
-
- South Koreans shouted: "Bush Terrorist," while
Malaysian protesters depicted Bush with yellowing missiles for teeth.
-
- CONTINENTS UNITE AGAINST WAR
-
- "The whole world is against this war. Only one person
wants it," said Muslim teenager Bilqees Gamieldien in Cape Town.
-
- Protesters were cheered on Friday when U.N chief weapons
inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council that he held out hope
arms inspections in Iraq would work.
-
- In the Arab world, tens of thousands of Syrians and Palestinian
residents of Damascus took to the streets to voice their opposition to
a U.S. war against fellow Arab Iraqis.
-
- The crowds burned the U.S. and Israeli flags near the
country's parliament and chanted slogans calling a U.S. military campaign
against Baghdad a war for oil.
-
- About 10,000 people waving Iraqi, French and German flags
and Saddam Hussein pictures marched peacefully but noisily through the
Lebanese capital, Beirut, toward the U.N. offices where security forces
with riot gear and soldiers gathered.
-
- In Turkey, demonstrators pleaded: "No to more blood
and chaos in our region" and "No more American imperialism."
-
- Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz held his own one-man
protest in the Italian city of Assissi, praying silently before the tomb
of St. Francis, the patron of peace.
-
- "The people of Iraq want peace and millions of people
around the world are demonstrating for peace, so let us all work for peace
and resist the war," he said in front of one of the world's most famous
religious shrines.
-
- The global rallies gave heart to Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister
Tareq Aziz who held his own one-man peace vigil in the Italian city of
Assisi, praying silently before the tomb of St. Francis, the patron of
peace.
-
- "The people of Iraq want peace and millions of people
around the world are demonstrating for peace, so let us all work for peace
and resist the war," said Aziz, a Christian, in front of one of the
world's most famous religious shrines.
-
- The same wave of anti-Americanism swept over Europe,
already deeply divided over the need to attack Iraq. Most of the language
used in the protests was directed at the United States.
-
- "We have to discipline the United States. The biggest
threat to peace is the United States, not Iraq," said one pensioner
in Finland.
-
- "The war would be useless," said Belgian social
worker Roselyne Laforge. "It would only make the Iraq people weaker
and would keep Saddam Hussein in power."
-
- One Russian protester's banner showed a photograph of
Bush with the words: "Butcher: Get out of other people's lands."
-
- "Bush needs to make Daddy proud," said one
Dutch banner, in reference to George Bush senior who led a war against
Iraq in 1991 to oust its troops from Kuwait.
-
- "No blood for oil" and "U.S. stop bullying
the world into war" proclaimed the placards in the Danish capital,
Copenhagen.
-
- In Croatia, several hundred masked protesters burned
the American flag in front of the U.S. embassy in Zagreb.
-
- The only major trouble flared in the Greek capital, Athens,
where demonstrators burned a car and smashed several shop and bank windows
in center of the city at the start of a protest march to the U.S. embassy
by up to 30,000 people.
|
