Massive rallies denounce war

JAKARTA - More than 100,000 angry Indonesians, many carrying young children, jammed the streets of Jakarta yesterday, shouting anti-American slogans and waving protest banners over the war in Iraq.

In the biggest street protest in the world's most populous Muslim nation since the United States-led invasion began, demonstrators shouted "America, America: terrorist, terrorist" as they brought traffic to a halt on Jakarta's main 10-lane avenue.

It was the biggest single anti-war protest in the world yesterday as demonstrators turned out in their tens of thousands from South Korea to Chile, spattering streets with paint, jeering outside US embassies and, in one case, forming a 50km human chain.

The crowd in Jakarta gathered near the British Embassy before marching to the heavily fortified US mission. Witnesses said more than 100,000 people, including thousands of women in white veils, took part. Organisers put the number at 250,000.

Some protesters had enlarged photographs of Iraqi civilian victims around their necks.

"All the people of Indonesia, without exception, want Bush to withdraw his forces from Iraq," thundered Amien Rais, head of Indonesia's top legislature and a 2004 presidential candidate, to the crowd as they passed the United Nations building.

Added Nurcholish Madjid, a respected Muslim intellectual: "Peace is being destroyed by a man called Bush."

Hundreds of police formed a cordon in front of the US mission. There was a heavy police presence along the route but the atmosphere was relaxed, with few officers carrying riot shields or automatic weapons.

More than 100,000 people protested in strongly anti-war Germany, half at a rally in Berlin, where banners read "Stop America's Terror". About 30,000 people held hands along the 50km between the northwestern cities of Muenster and Osnabrueck - a route used by negotiators who brought the Thirty Years War to an end in 1648.

Hundreds of women, some carrying placards declaring "The US and Britain are the axis of evil", protested in Sana, Yemen.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, 10,000 turned out at a rally organised by Egypt's ruling party in Port Said.

In Amman, Jordan, more than 3000 people demanded that the kingdom expel US troops.

Protesters in Rome hung black mourning banners from the city's bridges.

At Vicenza, in northeastern Italy, demonstrators threw red paint and flares at the walls of a US military base where hundreds of paratroopers now in northern Iraq had been based.

In Athens, 15,000 people chanting "We'll stop the war" marched to the US Embassy. Protesters splashed red paint on the road outside.

In Bangladesh, barbed-wire roadblocks and riot police kept thousands of protesters away from the US Embassy in Dhaka. The demonstrators burned a US flag and an effigy of President Bush.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, police used teargas to end a protest outside the Australian Embassy.

In Santiago, Chile, more than 3000 people staged a peaceful march.

Thousands in Canada and the US rallied both for and against the war.

About 4000 Canadians angered by Prime Minister Jean Chretien's decision not to support a war without United Nations approval marched in front of the Parliament building in Ottawa, waving flags of the US and its allies Britain and Australia.

In the US, up to 12,000 flag-waving war supporters packed the steps of the Pennsylvania capitol in Harrisburg.

In Miami, thousands of Cuban exiles and others marched to support the military and oppose opening relations with Cuba.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war