WASHINGTON, September 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Police threw up a major security cordon around downtown Washington Thursday, September 26, to head off threatened anti-globalization demonstrations protesting an IMF and World Bank summit here.

Finance ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) industrial powers are to meet in Washington Friday, September 27, ahead of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank at the weekend.

Demonstrators from groups who brought havoc to a World Trade Organization summit in Seattle in November 1999 have vowed to stop the top officials getting around Washington for key meetings this weekend.

But it is unclear how much strength the protesters have; organizers say they expect thousands at two separately organized demonstrations Friday and Saturday.

Protest organizers are unwilling to predict how many will participate, according to the Washington Post. Early actions have failed to bring large numbers, and protests may fall short of the 20,000 demonstrators for which police are preparing.

Protest organizers, however, state they expect the demonstrations to either match or be bigger than those held in April 2000 in the city, which drew 20,000. Those protests ended in mass arrests and complaints of unconstitutional police tactics, according to the Post.

Washington police chief Charles Ramsey said IMF and World Bank headquarters would be sealed off with a fenced perimeter starting late Thursday around the World Bank and IMF headquarters before the arrival of some 8,000 delegates from 184 member states.

The G7 finance ministers will meet late Friday in a building near the White House, close to the headquarters of the international finance institutions.

Traffic is expected to be disrupted by a bicycle protest against "Big Oil" early Friday.

Several other surprise protests are also expected, including a call to bring traffic and business activity in Washington to a standstill Friday and to prevent IMF and World Bank delegates from leaving their meetings Saturday, and police have urged the public to take public transport instead of driving their cars into the U.S. capital.

Many major firms have told staff to take a day off Friday and some museums will close until Sunday, September 29.

Marcia Rosenthal, director of the Golden Triangle, an association of businesses in the heart of downtown Washington, believes that most demonstrations will be peaceful.

Several downtown offices have increased internal security and are demanding that people entering their building show identification. "But I haven't heard of any closing down," she said, adding: "We have every confidence in the police department."

The George Washington University campus occupies most of 15 downtown city blocks and surrounds the IMF building on three sides.

John Petrie, the campus official in charge of public safety, has warned the university's 15,000 students, staff and faculty of traffic disruption starting Friday, but no classes or activities have been canceled.

"Our objective is to keep things as normal as possible," Petrie said. "We are reasonably confident that things will remain peaceful."

Nevertheless, the university has temporarily supplemented its staff of 105 campus police with 50 outside officers.

The downtown area will be flooded with city police, bolstered by 1,700 outside officers coming as far away as Chicago and New York, to help create a force of about 3,200.

However, according to the Post, protest organizers are saying they are nonviolent and contend that law enforcement officials have misrepresented their intentions.

On Thursday, there seemed to be more police and news reporters than protesters at a mid-day demonstration by environmentalists in front of the World Bank building.

Late Wednesday, a mere 20 activists marched outside the World Bank protesting what they say is the bank's support for building polluting incinerators.

One group called the Anti-Capitalist Convergence has promised to close off roads in the city, while another group, the Mobilization for Global Justice, plans to "quarantine" IMF and World Bank members by surrounding their