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'Troops out' protests in Europe
LONDON, England -- Chanting "Troops out of Iraq and Blair out of Number 10," thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets of London to demonstrate against Britain's continued military involvement in Iraq. Coordinated protests in Berlin and other European cities also called for an end to the U.S.-led occupation and Israel's hold on Palestinian territory, but the small turnout was a faint shadow of huge pre-war peace rallies. Marches were later due in New York and San Francisco. In the first major protest in Britain since the war ended in April, demonstrators -- some 10,000, by police estimates -- vented their anger at the invasion and the reasons given for it. The turnout was a small fraction of the estimated million people in Britain who marched in February to protest moves to war. The Stop The War Coalition, which was organizing the British event with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain, had said it expected at least 100,000 people to take part. Coalition chairman Andrew Murray had told the UK Press Association beforehand: "We are looking forward to a very large and angry demonstration." Nonetheless the march adds to the political pressure on Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose popularity and trust ratings have plummeted in the aftermath of the Iraq conflict. The failure to unearth any weapons of mass destruction -- the main justification for war -- and the public inquiry into the apparent suicide of government weapons expert David Kelly have plunged Blair into the worst political crisis of his six-year tenure. "It was all lies," protester Peter Mason, 45, told Reuters. "The millions who demonstrated before the war were right." In February, around a million people marched through London trying to prevent the war in the biggest political protest march in British history. Organizers of Saturday's protest, a day before Blair's Labour Party holds its annual conference, say they plan more rallies when U.S. President George Bush visits Britain in November. In Spain, which gave Bush political but not military support in the war, protesters planned to march in the evening but were unlikely to match the hundreds of thousands who rallied before and during the war. About 2,000 protesters gathered in the Greek capital Athens carrying placards such as "Stop imperialist intervention" and "Occupiers out of Iraq." In Berlin, police said only about 400 people turned up near the Reichstag parliament building to oppose the occupation of Iraq and support Palestinians, whose latest uprising against Israeli occupation is three years old. "We shouldn't help the Americans with money for reconstruction when they bombed Iraq," Carlotta Wendt, 14, told Reuters. Daniel Compart, a 19-year-old apprentice at a petrol station, painted his hands red to symbolize the blood he said was on U.S. hands over Iraq. "It is important that ordinary people still say they are against the war even though it is over," he told Reuters. In a counter-demonstration about 80 people waved Israeli and U.S. flags. "We support Israel and America because they are fighting Islamist and Baathist fascism," said Thomas Mueller. In Vienna, about 200 anti-U.S. protesters gathered on the central square.
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