Anti-U.S., Israeli Occupation Rallies Sweep World

London’s high-profile mayor and Labour dissident Ken Livingstone was among the speakers. The march started from Hyde Park before a rally in Trafalgar Square speakers.

The organizers said they wanted to make Labour respond to their anger over the situation in Iraq, ahead of the party’s annual conference, reported the BBC News Online.

Police put at 20,000 the number of protester, although organizers estimated up to 100,000 had attended the event.

"The Hutton inquiry has proved, as we said all along, that the war in Iraq was an utterly fraudulent war and people are very upset about this," the BBC quoted as saying a spokesman for the Stop the War coalition.

Many of the protesters chanted anti-Bush slogans and carried banners with messages like "Blair must go" and "U.K. troops out of Iraq".

About 64 percent of Britons vocalized dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Tony Blair and 50 percent maintained he should step down, according to an opinion poll published Saturday by The Financial Times.

Among the more unusual sights on the march was a replica tank made from cardboard and painted orange, pushed by members of anti-capitalist group Globalize Resistance, the British online broadcaster said.

A demonstration on 15 February attracted a record-breaking turnout of about one million protesters.

France…

In Paris, dozens of French, Palestinian and Arab non-governmental organizations (NGOs) demanded Israel and the U.S. pull out their troops of the occupied Palestinian and Iraqi territories.

Left-wing French organizations spearheaded thousands of demonstrators, who unfolded anti-occupation banners and demanded that France intervene to protect the Palestinian people by taking part in multi-international separation troops.

"Down with the (U.S.) occupation of Iraq…Peace and Justice to Palestine," read the title of a statement circulated by the so-called Revolutionary Communist League.

The statement said that from Afghanistan to Iraq "the United States is waging a barbaric colonial war that violates all human rights."

It said that the U.S. administration tried to mislead the world into believing that it was the world’s peace broker.

"But as days went by, its real intentions have surfaced through its biased policy towards the government of (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon," it added.

The statement also lashed out at the construction of the separating wall, which was also condemned by Israeli peace activists.

The 600km-long wall is also expected to cut occupied east Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank.

It will eventually snake some 900 kilometers (540 miles) along the West Bank and leave even larger swathes of its territory on the Israeli side and could cost up to $2.2 million a kilometer or a total of $1.8 billion, even though the Israeli economy is in dire straits.