IRAQ PROTEST:Anti-war protesters were out in force across the world at the weekend to call for coalition troops to withdraw from Iraq.
In Spain, film director Pedro Almodovar joined tens of thousands of people in a march through Madrid to protest at the continuing war in Iraq and to demand the closure of the US prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
Chanting "No to War" and "The People of Madrid with the People of Iraq", the protesters marched for more than two miles from Cibeles Plaza to Atocha Square. The organisers of yesterday's event estimated the crowd at 400,000, but witnesses put the attendance at less than one-quarter of that figure. Other rallies were held around Spain, with some 2,000 people gathering in Barcelona and 500 taking part in Seville.
Spain was the scene of major anti-war protests in the run-up to and during the first months of the war, with demonstrations in Barcelona and Madrid attracting between one and two million people.
Former Popular Party prime minister Jose Maria Aznar was one of the strongest supporters of the US decision to invade Iraq. The party was voted out of office in elections in March 2004, days after 191 people were killed in bomb attacks claimed by Islamic radicals to avenge the presence of the country's troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the Turkish city of Istanbul, more than 3,000 people protested against the war in Iraq in two separate demonstrations. In the Greek capital, Athens, about 1,000 people marched peacefully from Syntagma Square to the US embassy to call for the withdrawal of coalition troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, in the US, thousands of anti-war demonstrators - some carrying yellow and black signs reading "US out of Iraq now!" - marched on the Pentagon on Saturday. The march, on a cold, cloudy and windy St Patrick's Day, came just before the fourth anniversary tomorrow of the start of the Iraq war and 40 years after a similar protest at the Pentagon over the Vietnam war.
On a stage in the Pentagon parking lot, speaker after speaker demanded an end to the war in Iraq. Some called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush. "We're here in the shadow of the war machine," said peace activist Cindy Sheehan. "We need to shut it down." She said that soldiers like her son, Casey, who was killed in Iraq, were being sent there "to die for nothing". Jonathan Hutto, a 29-year-old active-duty sailor who served in Iraq, urged the demonstrators to tell lawmakers to "get a backbone and spine" and stop the war.
One demonstrator's sign read "The worst tyrants ever: Napoleon, Hitler and Bush." Others read "Jail to the Chief" and "Impeach Bush for War Crimes". Many protesters chanted "Troops out now". The march marked the latest protest in Washington against the war, in which more than 3,200 US troops have died.
Police in Los Angeles said that 5,000 to 6,000 protesters turned out for an anti-war rally there. In downtown Hollywood, protesters carried signs in Spanish and 12 fake coffins covered with the American flag. One sign read "Iraq is Bush's Vietnam" and another read "Bush lies, soldiers die". People chanted "Bring the troops home now". Other demonstrations were planned for Austin, Texas, San Francisco and Seattle.
Protests were also staged or planned in Australia, Britain and Canada. - (AP/Reuters)