coffee as they walked, others had poodles tucked under their arms.

One man on stilts had dressed as President Bush. Others carried effigies depicting Bush and Prime Minister John Howard as his puppy, trailing behind him.

Despite the huge turnout in Sydney and elsewhere, Howard said it didn’t indicate widespread opposition to his unstinting support of the Washington’s tough stance on Iraq.

“I don’t know that you can measure public opinion just by the number of people who turn up to demonstrations,” Howard said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

RALLY NEAR THE U.N.

On Saturday, demonstrators packed the streets north of the U.N. headquarters, filling police-barricaded protest zones for more than 20 blocks as civil rights leaders and celebrities energized the banner-waving crowd.

“Just because you have the biggest gun does not mean you must use it,” Martin Luther King III told the demonstrators as he stood before an enormous banner reading: “The World Says No To War.”

“Peace! Peace! Peace!” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said as he walked from the United Nations toward the massive rally. “Let America listen to the rest of the world — and the rest of the world is saying, ‘Give the inspectors time.”’

Organizers of the rally, who had hoped for 100,000 people, estimated the crowd at anywhere from 375,000 to 500,000. NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said about 100,000 people were in the crowd, which stretched 20 blocks deep and spanned three avenues.

Fifty arrests were made and two protesters were hospitalized — one with an epileptic seizure and another who had diabetes, Kelly said. Eight officers also were injured, including a mounted police officer who was pulled off his horse and beaten, Kelly said.

TEAR GAS IN COLORADO

Police in Colorado Springs, Colo., fired tear gas at protesters, sending at least two to a hospital, and made arrests after the demonstrators blocked a major thoroughfare near an Air Force base.

Police spokesman Lt. Skip Arms said police fired tear gas after the protesters failed to heed repeated warnings to disperse.

Anti-war rallies had been planned in about 150 U.S. cities, from Yakima, Wash., to Augusta, Maine, as well as in major cities including Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and Seattle.

“We need to leave Iraq alone,” said Detroit rally organizer Kris Hamel of the Michigan Emergency Committee Against the War on Iraq.

Rallies including the one in Knoxville, Tenn., drew young and old, in tie-dyes and dreadlocks, in collared shirts and khaki slacks. Protester Rick Held said he was “surprised it’s not just the usual suspects” participating. “Bush must really be screwing up to bring out the mainstream.”

A demonstration planned in San Francisco was held back a day to make way for the city’s traditional Chinese New Year’s parade. Some planned to return for the protest on Sunday.

Other demonstrators, including about 1,000 in Manhattan, supported the possibility of U.S. military action.

In Wausau, Wis., some 200 war supporters routinely interrupted speakers with shouts of “George Bush, free Iraq” or “U.S.A., U.S.A.”

London saw one of the largest marches for peace on Saturday — at least 1.5 million people, organizers claimed, although initial police estimates were about 750,000. They hoped to heap pressure on Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been Europe’s biggest supporter of the tough U.S. policy.

“I feel they should take more time and find an alternative, and not see the only solution to the problem in bombarding the country,” said Maria Harvey, 58, a child psychologist, who said she hadn’t marched since the protests against the Gulf War in 1991.

HUGE RALLIES IN ROME, BERLIN

There was another huge turnout in Rome, where many in the crowd displayed rainbow “peace” flags. Organizers claimed three million people participated, while a police official put the crowd at around 1 million.

Hundreds of thousands marched through Berlin, backing a strong anti-war stance spearheaded by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Police estimated the crowd at between 300,000 and 500,000.

“We’re not taking to the streets to demonstrate against the United States, or for Iraq. We’re taking to the streets because we want a peaceful resolution of the Iraq conflict,” said Michael Sommer, head of the German Federation of Unions.

In Syria, a nation on the front line if war comes, some 200,000 protesters marched through Damascus.

Officials say two thousand Israelis and Palestinians marched through Tel Aviv. Jewish men in skullcaps and Arab women in headscarves carried signs reading “War is not the answer” and other slogans. During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq fired dozens of Scud missiles at Israel. Marchers say they’re motivated by moral and ideological opposition rather than the fear of a repeat of such missile attacks.

In Bulgaria, Hungary, South Korea, Australia, Malaysia and Thailand, demonstrations attracted thousands, while the crowds were in the hundreds or less in Romania, Bosnia, Hong Kong, Indian-controlled Kashmir and Moscow.

Police estimated that 60,000 turned out in Oslo, Norway, 50,000 in bitter cold in Brussels, while about 35,000 gathered peacefully in frigid Stockholm.

Crowds were estimated at 10,000 in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, 5,000 in Capetown and 4,000 in Johannesburg in South Africa, 5,000 in Tokyo, 3,000 in Vienna and 2,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

BAGHDAD LAUDS PROTESTS

Iraq staged its own demonstrations on Saturday, when tens of thousands of people, many carrying assault rifles and portraits of Saddam, took to the streets of several Iraqi cities to pledge their loyalty to the Iraqi leader.

Sunday, Iraq gloated over the global outpouring of opposition to the U.S. threat, saying the anti-war demonstrations signaled an Iraqi victory and “the defeat and isolation of America.”

IRAQ LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

Iraq’s tightly controlled news media gave prominent coverage to the demonstrations. Iraqi television showed footage of millions marching in the world’s cities — under the logo “International Day of Confronting the Aggression.”

“The world said with one voice: ’No to aggression on Iraq,”’ read a headline in the government daily Al-Jumhuriya. “The world rises against American aggression and the arrogance of naked force,” read a front page headline in the army daily Al-Qadissiya.

SMALL-SCALE CLASHES IN GREECE

Several thousand protesters in Athens, Greece, unfurled a giant banner across the wall of the ancient Acropolis — “NATO, U.S. and EU equals War” — before heading toward the U.S. Embassy.

Police fired tear gas in clashes with several hundred anarchists wearing hoods and crash helmets, who broke from the otherwise peaceful march to smash store windows and throw a gasoline bomb at a newspaper office.

SMALL SCALE CLASHES IN GREECE

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller said the Greek protesters’ indignation was misplaced.

“They should be demonstrating outside the Iraqi embassy,” he said before the march.

Meanwhile, demonstrators in Asia expressed skepticism that Iraq posed a threat to world security, saying that Bush was seeking to extend American control over oil reserves.

“We must stop the war as it is part of the United States’ plot for global domination,” protest organizer Nasir Hashim told 1,500 cheering activists outside the U.S. Embassy in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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