Additional reporting by Khaled Mamdouh, IOL Staff

CAIRO, February 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – In “a global human veto” to U.S. plans to attack and invade Iraq, millions of people Saturday, February 15, flooded the streets of major world capitals and cities, a historic move sending a message of “hope and peace”, not just to the Iraqi people but also to the future of mankind.

Rallies fired up in cities across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, with organizers claiming turnout of three million in Rome, and at least half a million each in Britain, France and Germany.

In London, opponents of a looming U.S.-led war against Iraq set off Saturday on a mass protest in central London which, organizers said, is the biggest demonstration in the history of the United Kingdom.

Bearing placards proclaiming "No War On Iraq", blowing whistles and cheering, thousands set off around midday (1200 GMT) from the Embankment by the River Thames, heading for a rally in Hyde Park. The electronic counter in Hyde Park registered over a million persons took part in the anti-war rally, according to Quds Press news agency.

Police expected 500,000 people would take part, while some organizers said they hoped up to one million would turn out for the “Don't Attack Iraq” march, one of many taking place around the world Saturday.

Top politicians, trade unionists and actors joined members of the public demonstrating against plans for military action by the United States and Britain, Washington's staunchest ally in the Iraq crisis.

Coaches from all corners of the country had descended on the capital in the early hours, bringing together people from across the social spectrum.

Alongside veteran peace campaigners and anti-globalization activists were pensioners, lawyers, bankers and middle-class housewives with their children.

A spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police said: "It's one of the biggest public order operations by us in recent times. All police leave has been cancelled."

The organizers hope the rally would send a clear anti-war message to Blair and his Labor government, forcing them to join forces with the majority of countries calling for the peaceful settlement of the Iraqi issue.

Lindsey German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition, told Agence France-Presse (AFP): "We are demonstrating to show the opposition to war in this country. The overwhelming majority of people are against it.

"We want to make it absolutely clear to (Prime Minister) Tony Blair that he is not acting in the name of the majority of people if he continues to go to war."

High-profile supporters of the London march include the capital's left-wing mayor, Ken Livingstone, and veteran left-wing former MP Tony Benn, who traveled to Baghdad earlier this month for a TV interview with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Livingstone told BBC radio earlier: "I believe that this (push for war) is simply about American companies getting control of Iraq's oil and I think it's absolutely obscene that we are prepared to attack Iraqis just to enrich the cronies around President (George W.) Bush."

Referring to a poll that showed 72 percent of Londoners objected to a war on Iraq he added: "At the end of the day one would assume that a British government would listen to its people."

Giant Italian “No” to War

The Italians said a giant 'no' to the prospect of a U.S.-led war on Iraq

And in Rome, Italians said a giant 'no' to the prospect of a U.S.-led war on Iraq Saturday when a massive crowd estimated by organizers at three millions took part in a massive anti-war demonstration.

The huge turnout is a major rebuke of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's backing for Washington's hard line stance on Iraq, which has been controversially extended to allow the U.S. army to use Italy's roads, railways and ports in the build-up to a conflict.

The organizers, a broad coalition of Catholic, anti-globalization and left-wing labor unions, claimed three million people were on the streets of the capital by mid-afternoon.

Rome's police headquarters told AFP it would not give an official figure for the march until later Saturday.

Marchers had begun gathering before dawn in the Italian capital. By midday, the sunshine-bathed streets of the city centre had been transformed into a river of rainbow-colored peace flags and banners. The last of the marchers moved off from the start point four hours after the vanguard.

The leader of Italy's biggest opposition party, Piero Fassino of the Democrats of the Left, said the size of the protest "is very significant, and I believe the government must take account of it."

Several giant banners read "Stop the War, Close Camp Darby" a reference to the biggest of the seven U.S. bases on Italian soil in Livorno, Tuscany.

"Not one man, Not one base," exhorted posters along the march route put up by the Refounded Communist Party. A plane flew over the crowd trailing the message "Italian communists say no to war."

Half A Million Germans

Organizers said it was the biggest peace rally in Berlin since the 1980s

In Berlin, meanwhile, half a million people joined a mass rally in Berlin to protest against a possible U.S.-led war in Iraq, one of the biggest post-war demonstrations in Germany, police and organizers said.

The figure surpassed the expectations of protest organizers, who had predicted a turnout of around 100,000.

"The axis of evil runs through the Pentagon," said one banner, referring to the label branded on Iran, Iraq and North Korea by Bush following the September 11 attacks.

"Schroeder is not one of Bush's warriors," said another, referring to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's anti-war stance.

Organizers said it was the biggest peace rally since the 1980s, when the United States deployed missiles in Germany aimed at the then Soviet Union.

Similar demonstrations were held in other towns across Germany.

The World United Against War

"Bush: hands off Iraq," read one banner in Moscow. "Don't attack Iraq on MY behalf," read another in Belgrade, while in the streets of Islamabad, protestors set U.S. flags ablaze.

The mass rallies follow Friday's crucial meeting of the 15-member UN Security Council, after which Washington said a decision on war was only "weeks" away.

In Hong Kong, too

Protest marches were being held from Zagreb to Calcutta, Damascus to Hong Kong, while New York was to be the focus of the main U.S. demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands expected at a rally near U.N. headquarters.

"I am here against the war because of the values that I was taught in the U.S. Bush is anti-American," said Reverend Donald Mader, a U.S. citizen who joined 40,000 others in a protest march in Amsterdam.

Rallies were reported in dozens of European cities, including Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bern and Brussels, with up to 100,000 in Dublin, and tens of thousand across Scandinavia.

Thousands of South Africans, including three government ministers, lined the streets of Cape Town, bearing placards saying "Bombs kill babies" and "There's a terrorist behind every Bush".

In Asia, schoolgirls, writers, peaceniks, lawyers and trade unionists were among some 3,000 Pakistanis who marched against war on Iraq, burning U.S. flags.

Some 10,000 people marched through the east Indian city of Calcutta, while rallies were also reported in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

New Zealand had kicked off the global protests with around 14,000 demonstrators protesting in Wellington and Auckland.

More than 100,000 people protested across Australia, the only country apart from Britain to have sent forces to the Gulf to join the U.S. military build-up in preparation for war against Iraq.

Massive rallies also took place in Brazil, Ecuador, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Palestinian territories. In short, almost all world peoples joined the historic rallies.

Arabs Also Protest Against War

Even in the Arab world, where free public rallies are not a usual scene, Arabs rallied across the Middle East Saturday against the threat of a U.S. war on Iraq.

In Baghdad

Outside of war-threatened Baghdad, where one million people demonstrated, the largest protest was in Damascus, where more than 200,000 marched on the parliament amid a sea of Syrian, Iraqi, and Palestinian flags.

"Today Iraq, tomorrow whom?," asked one of their banners. Another denounced the "Axis of Evil: America, Britain, Israel", and another said "No to war, yes to peace."

Former Syrian Culture Minister Najah Attar demanded in a speech "the immediate departure of all foreign forces from Arab land that are a threat against the Arab nation," referring to the massive U.S. and British troop buildup in the Gulf region.

Fear that U.S. plans to oust Saddam Hussein masked a plot to control the Middle East's vast oil reserves and to dominate the region cropped up repeatedly in slogans from Damascus to Cairo.

Anti-Americanism has flourished in the region since the Palestinian Intifada erupted in September 2000, marking the collapse of the Middle East peace process and, in the Arab view, the start of a heavily pronounced U.S.-tilt toward Israel.

In Beirut, where 10,000 people demonstrated, banners read "Arab land must not serve as a base for the American attack" and "America wants to spill our blood to suck our oil."

In Cairo, around 600 people gathered in central Cairo Saturday morning, surrounded by some 2,000 police, to demonstrate against war on Iraq and denounce Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Demonstrators carried banners saying "No to death, war and destruction" and waved Palestinian and Iraqi flags, organizers told IslamOnline on Saturday, February 15.

Cries of "George W. Bush is the enemy of God" and "Iraq, we do not forget you," could be heard.

The organizers added that the number of demonstrators was limited due to heavy police interference and the emergency laws, effective since the assassination of late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in October 1981.

Although another demonstration was scheduled for the afternoon by the fortress-like U.S. embassy in the center of Cairo, Egypt aggressively polices its protests and generally limits them to university campuses.

In Amman, thousands of Jordanians marched to protest U.S. plans to invade Iraq, but the participation appeared to be less than the 10,000-strong protest in the capital two weeks ago.

A coalition of opposition parties, from the Islamic Action Front, which is the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, to the tiny Communist party, walked under rain for two kilometers (1.2 miles), watched carefully by police along the way.