BRITAIN: On a largely trouble-free day police said 29 people had been arrested in London during a day when thousands of people from all over the country came to demonstrate against the state visit of President George W. Bush.
Demonstrators marched wearing George Bush and Saddam Hussein masks, or dressed up as Queen Elizabeth and the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, sitting in a horse-drawn carriage in a mock state welcome.
They carried placards, banners and effigies, performed skits, sang songs, blew whistles, chanted "Go home Bush" or simply shook their fists on the few occasions Mr Bush's motorcade came into distant view.
"George Bush & Son, Family Butchers", read one placard. "Make Tea Not War", said another over a photograph of Mr Blair toting an automatic weapon and wearing a teacup on his head.
"Terrorist on Tour", "A Killer Comes to Town", and "Defend your brain against fundamentalist, militarist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist bollocks", read others as a few hundred people gathered outside Buckingham Palace.
At the base of the Queen Victoria Monument opposite the palace gates, three students from Sheffield University, daubed with thick red paint, played dead to "show our sympathy with the millions of people who have died courtesy of the Bush regime", said their classmate, Mr Chris Hammond (23). "I fundamentally disagree with having George Bush in my country because I disagree with the greed and power that doesn't take into account the millions of people who suffer because of the enormous gap in wealth between rich and poor states.
"He has no transparent policies in the international arena, the American administration has no respect for international law, for democracy, they have no respect for humanitarian principles," he said.
Mr Edward Gwinnell (73), a retired air force officer and airline pilot, said he joined an anti-war march over Waterloo Bridge to Trafalgar Square because "I feel so impotent, I don't have any voice".
"Tony Blair has taken this country into war to follow his chum Bush, whose twin objectives are to establish American power over the Middle East and gain control for the oil industry.
"All we want to do is express ourselves in protest. I'm not anti-American, but Bush and Blair rushed into this war in Iraq because Bush is a cowboy and wanted to show how powerful America is. I hope the American people don't re-elect him and that the British don't re-elect Blair."
Ms Sue Falder (58) said: "I'm here to be counted and to say the war was an illegal war. I want Bush to know that it doesn't become legal because it is happening. It's very easy to say demonstrations are full of extremists who because they are against war must be in favour of terrorism. It's not the same."
Mr A Mukhajee (35), a PhD student, carrying a placard pointing to Mr Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol on limiting greenhouse emissions, called the war in Iraq an example of "US hegemony" and said Mr Bush had "made the world an insecure place".
"In a democratic society, you can't fight one crime with another. America had the September 11th attacks and is using them as a pretext for making wars on other countries," he said. "Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, it has been going on for a long, long time. The United States never cared about it but because they have been hit, they now attack the world."
Ms Barbara Smith-Pryor (67), a retired civil servant, wore a home-made sandwich board with photographs of Mr Bush and Mr Blair that asked "What special relationship? I want a divorce."
"We have been used as a proxy for the United States to launch attacks on other countries. Our politicians don't listen to us. I want to make a statement that Bush shouldn't be here," she said.
Police helicopters hovered over Buckingham Palace and Whitehall, and police wearing iridescent raincoats stood so close together along The Mall they formed a thin yellow line. Random security checks on vehicles in the city's centre infuriated drivers, and one taxi-driver complained that it was impossible to know what roads were going to be closed because security operations were treated as top secret.
While the overwhelming majority of demonstrators were opposed to Mr Bush's visit, Ms Kim Hayes (46), was among a small group outside Buckingham Palace eager to make the president feel welcome.
"The United States and United Kingdom are the two great allies in the world. When you have a dictator like Saddam Hussein, we have to go for him, we have to rectify the situation," she said, holding a small paper sign that read, in pink lettering, "Hello, Mr Bush."
"My grandparents were bombed out of London three times, my family knows what it's like to go hungry and to suffer. The young people today don't know," she said. Some other demonstrators had been aggressive towards her, she said: "Democracy is here today, people are expressing their opinions."
Mr Joe Letts (53), parked the same red double-decker bus on Trafalgar Square that he drove to Baghdad in February full of "human shields" who had hoped to deflect the US-led attack.
"We want to make it clear that Bush should not be in this country on a state visit. He's a criminal, a murderer and has deeply embarrassed Britons like me by drawing us into a war that was illegal."
"Looking for WMDs? Try Bush's pantry," said a notice held aloft on Whitehall as police blocked cars and pedestrians to enable Mr Bush to reach Banqueting House - where, in 1649, King Charles stepped through a window on to a scaffold for his execution - to deliver his lunchtime speech.
"This is killing my business," said a publican. "If anything happened to Bush on British soil, we'd never live it down," said one policemen lining the empty avenue.
For Mr Liam Carroll (36), a member of a peace activist theatre group, "the question is how do you effect change when you have an atrocious regime like Saddam Hussein's? You could say war is one option, but then you have 30,000 dead, 40,000 maimed and the destruction of a country's infrastructure.
"That doesn't sound like a perfect solution to a humanitarian crisis. There is a legal process, and that was not respected with Iraq. This has been an illegal war," he said.