Followers of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched in Iraq today against a pact letting US forces stay in Iraq until 2011.
Thousands of demonstrators chanted and waved Iraqi flags in Baghdad's Firdos square, where US forces pulled down a statue of the ousted Iraqi dictator when they took the city in 2003, and they toppled an effigy of President George W. Bush.
The pact, approved by both governments and now being debated rancorously in the Iraqi parliament, requires US troops to leave Iraqi towns by the middle of next year and to leave the country by December 31st, 2011.
US forces will need Iraqi warrants to arrest people, and US contractors will be subjected to Iraqi law.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki obtained important concessions from the United States in months of negotiations, and has ridiculed the Sadrists for demanding a firm date for a U.S. withdrawal, only to oppose it when he delivered it in the pact.
Mr Bush had long opposed setting a deadline. President-elect Barack Obama, says he will withdraw combat forces within 16 months of taking office in January.
In Firdos Square, the Sadrist protesters erected an effigy of the outgoing US president, carrying a briefcase with the words "The pact of subservience and shame". They hurled bottles at the effigy, toppled it, tore it to pieces and set it on fire.
"I am with you in evicting the occupier any way you see fit," a cleric read out to the demonstrators in a message from Sadr, to shouts of "God is Great" from the crowd.
Sadr's supporters have staged several violent uprisings since 2003.
Prime Minister Maliki began a crackdown on Sadr's followers earlier this year, driving his Mehdi Army fighters off the streets of Baghdad and cities of the Shia south, which US officials say gave Mr Maliki new confidence in negotiations.
US officials say Sadr himself has been in neighbouring Iran since last year.
Reuters