Some 100,000 send Bush a message on his home turf

US: At least 100,000 protesters braved biting cold and uncompromising police restrictions in New York to deliver a resounding anti-war message to President George W. Bush on his home turf.

As a result of the huge turnout, the US president, already facing widespread opposition internationally over his plans for war with Iraq, may now have to reckon with a re-energised peace movement in his own backyard.

Organisers claimed over 400,000 people took part but the New York Police Department, which imposed severe restrictions on the protest, put the number at 100,000.

Either way, Saturday's protest near the United Nations headquarters on Manhattan's East Side was the biggest demonstration in the city for decades, and the biggest internal challenge yet to President Bush's policies.

The protest represented a victory for the organisers, United for Peace and Justice, a broad-based coalition which promised - and delivered - a peaceful event solely focused on opposition to the war on Iraq.

This was no shaggy-haired, dope-smoking Vietnam demonstration; instead, it drew crowds from across all age groups, ethnic communities, labour organisations and social classes.

It was also quintessentially New York, a rainbow gathering of diverse and often kooky groups. There were the Radical Cheerleaders and their catch-cry: "We fight bombs with pom-poms."

Four women in Supremes wigs sang "Stop in the name of war", while, nearby, "Glamrockers against the War" rubbed shoulders with "Queers for Peace". There were church groups from numerous faiths, including a Jewish contingent, and the city's countless ethnic groups - though not the Irish - were well represented. Families of serving US soldiers and victims of the September 11th attacks also joined in the protest.

Saturday's event was planned as a march to UN headquarters until local judges last week refused the necessary permit on security grounds. As a result, protesters were corralled into 20 blocks along First Avenue, and most had to rely on a local radio station to follow the speeches on the main platform. Similar restrictions, it was noted, were unlikely to be imposed on next month's St Patrick's Day parade.

Thousands more spilled over into parallel avenues, where police in riot gear and on horseback patrolled. Temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees made the ban on a march all the more painful.

Veterans of protest, such as singer Harry Belafonte and actress Susan Sarandon, headed the celebrity list. Folk singer Pete Seeger sang a gravelly-voiced Somewhere over the Rainbow, while Richie Valens opened the rally with Freedom, just as he did at Woodstock 34 years earlier.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu compared the restrictions to the behaviour of security forces in apartheid-era South Africa. Only the UN had the legitimate authority to decide whether a war was just he said.

"The just war says you have exhausted all possible and peaceful means, and the world says, 'No, we haven't'." The New York protest passed off largely peacefully, with fewer than 50 arrests. Across town, about 1,000 pro-Bush campaigners gathered to voice their support for the President's war on Iraq.