A demonstrator is sitting next to a banner reading 'Bush + Blair + Sharon - the Hitlers of these days

DAVOS, Switzerland, January 25 (IslamOnline & News) - A planned mass demonstration against war on Iraq and globalization that was due to be held near the World Economic Forum in Davos collapsed on Saturday, January 25, after police reportedly prevented some 1,500 people from joining the march.

"The police broke their word. They are not letting trains through at Landquart. Under these circumstances it is not possible to hold a normal demonstration," David Boehner, one of the organizers, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

An estimated 1,500 Swiss, German and Italian demonstrators had assembled in snow-covered Davos by midday on Saturday, amid tight security, while another were still waiting for trains lower down in the valley.

When the planned march was abandoned around 3 pm (1400 GMT) the demonstrators angrily burnt their march permits in front of Davos town hall, complaining their freedom of speech had been violated.

Down the valley in Landquart, the cheerful atmosphere among the 1,500 other protestors waiting to catch trains up to Davos soured rapidly when the march was scrapped.

Police used water cannon and tear gas against frustrated demonstrators, who responded with snowballs.

A spokesman for the security services, which had officers stationed along the whole of the 70-kilometre (40-mile) valley, told AFP the police had used tear gas because the protestors "were trying to block the motorway".

By 6 pm police had packed most of the Landquart protestors into two trains heading for Zurich and Bern, and the demonstrators in Davos were heading for the station to return home.

The authorized march was abandoned after police said everyone coming up to Davos from Landquart would be subject to strict security controls at the halfway village of Fideris, which meant hundreds of them getting off the train to be checked.

The protest was aimed at what participants said was the cynical practices of big business and governments, whose representatives are at the World Economic Forum.

Meeting of capitalists

Police officers hold back anti-World Economic Forum (WEF) demonstrators on the road to Davos

"It's a meeting of capitalists. They are responsible for crisis and war," said one young man in his 20s who declined to be named. "They are meeting just to see how they can build their world better for them and worse for us," he told AFP in Landquart.

In Davos, a group of protestors dressed as apes with masks representing U.S. President George W. Bush, his defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon danced around a huge golden calf -- a Biblical idol -- and repeatedly beat a globe representing the world.

They burnt at least two American flags in front of the conference hall where the world leaders were meeting.

Shops in the center of the luxury resort were closed but not shuttered and a couple of storekeepers had stuck up neat, handwritten posters in the windows pleading: "U.S. -- No war please".

Several Davos residents said they sympathized with the protestors.

"I was a soldier at the age of 19 in Italy and I lost my right arm. I don't want to see war anymore. They're right," a retired German World War II veteran told AFP.