Tens of thousands of people, led by some top Hollywood stars, demonstrated on the streets of the United States' largest cities to protest President George W. Bush's US plans to invade Iraq.In New York on Sunday, at least 15,000 people gathered in Central Park to denounce Washington's stance towards Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, including Oscar-winning movie star Susan Sarandon and her actor husband Tim Robbins.

Sarandon, star of hit films such as "Thelma and Louise" slammed the Bush administration's alleged bellicose policy as "madness ... a war that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people."

The actress and her husbad, who starred in Robert Altman's hit indictment of Hollywood's cut-throat business style "The Player," called on Americans to contact their members of Congress to oppose plans to attack Baghdad.

Robbins claimed that the government of Bush, who comes from Texas, was more interested in oil profits than global diplomacy and was ready to attack other nations.

"Colombia will be next. This is an an oil hungry administration," he said.

Also among the huge crowd of protesters in New York were relatives of some of the 2,800 victims of the airborne terror attacks on New York's World Trade Center on September 11 last year.

"I don't want my country to bomb Iraqi children, women, men, innocent people, in my name ... not in my name," insisted Janet Williams, whose brother Bill died in the September 11 strikes.

The protest was one of a string of demonstrations organized by a group dubbed "Not In Our Name," a coalition of anti-war activists opposed to the US bombing of Aghanistan and US plans to launch military action against Iraq.

Two arrests were for disorderly conduct during the lively but otherwise peaceful protest, police in New York said.

Protesters in such cities as New York, San Franciso and Los Angeles chanted slogans and held up placards bearing slogans such as "Change the US administration, not Iraq's."

In downtown San Francisco, some 5,000 people protested in the city's Union Square area, according to the local police department.

"This was a fairly significant demonstration, but it was entirely peaceful and no arrests were made," Paul Yep, a spokesman with the San Francisco Police Department told AFP.

In Los Angeles, about 3,000 people took part in protests held near the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles, forcing police to close down a battery of streets in the area and even a freeway, albeit briefly.

Police said that demonstration was the largest so far against Washington's Iraq policy, but reported no violence or arrests.

"This is all about stopping this war," protester Joey Johnson said. "It's unjust, immoral, it's unprecedented, it's not
legitimate, it's a global onslaught."

In addition to opposing a war on Iraq, protesters also want Washington to stop detentions and roundups of immigrants and halt "police state" restrictions on civil liberties.

More protests took place in other US cities and some were planned for Monday in such places as Chicago, Seattle, Washington, Portland in the state of Oregon, Houston, Atlanta in the southern state of Georgia and Denver in Colorado.

On Friday, several hundred celebrities and intellectuals published a "Not in our Name" manifesto in the Los Angeles Times, urging Americans to resist their government's policies.

We "call on the people of the US to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world," they wrote.

Among the signatories were "JFK" movie director Oliver Stone, "Gosford Park" filmmakers Robert Altman and Terry Gilliam, actress Jane Fonda, "Lethal Weapon" star Danny Glover and Susan Sarandon, star of "Thelma and Louise."

PHOTO CAPTION

A protester wearing a costume of death takes part in a demonstration in New York's Central Park to protest against a possible U.S. war on Iraq October 6, 2002. Anti-war protests were also scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)