Protesters across globe march against war

LONDON -- Millions of protesters -- many of them marching in the capitals of America's traditional allies -- demonstrated Saturday against possible U.S. plans to attack Iraq.

In a global outpouring of anti-war sentiment, Rome claimed the biggest turnout -- 1 million according to police, while organizers claimed three times that figure.

In London, at least 750,000 people demonstrated in what police called the city's largest demonstration ever. In Spain, several million people turned out at anti-war rallies in about 55 cities and towns across the country, with more than 500,000 each attending rallies in Madrid and Barcelona.

Spanish police gauged the Madrid turnout at 660,000. Organizers claimed nearly 2 million people gathered across the nation in one of the biggest demonstrations since the 1975 death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco.

More than 70,000 people marched in Amsterdam in the largest Netherlands demonstration since anti-nuclear rallies of the 1980s.

Berlin had up to half a million people on the streets, and Paris was estimated to have had about 100,000.

London's marchers hoped -- in the words of keynote speaker the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- to "turn up the heat" on Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush's staunchest European ally for his tough Iraq policy.

'Stop toadying'

Rome protesters showed their disagreement with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's support for Bush, while demonstrators in Paris and Berlin backed the skeptical stances of their governments.

"What I would say to Mr. Blair is stop toadying up to the Americans and listen to your own people, us, for once," said Elsie Hinks, 77, who marched in London with her husband, Sidney, a retired Church of England priest.

Tommaso Palladini, 56, who traveled from Milan to Rome, said, "You don't fight terrorism with a preventive war. You fight terrorism by creating more justice in the world."

Some leaders in German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government participated in the Berlin protest, which turned the tree-lined boulevard between the Brandenburg Gate and the 19th-century Victory Column into a sea of banners, balloons emblazoned with "No war in Iraq" and demonstrators swaying to live music. Police estimated the crowd at between 300,000 and 500,000.

"We Germans in particular have a duty to do everything to ensure that war -- above all a war of aggression -- never again becomes a legitimate means of policy," shouted Friedrich Schorlemmer, a Lutheran pastor and former East German pro-democracy activist.

An estimated 2,000 Israelis and Palestinians marched together against war in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

In divided Cyprus, about 500 Greeks and Turks braved heavy rain to briefly block a British air base runway.

Several thousand protesters in Athens, Greece, unfurled a giant banner across the wall of the Acropolis -- "NATO, U.S. and EU equals War" -- before heading toward the U.S. Embassy.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller said the Greek protesters' indignation was misplaced.

"They should be demonstrating outside the Iraqi embassy," he said before the march.