European leaders convened an emergency summit on Iraq Monday evening, their divisions over the need for war thrown into stark relief by the unity of their electorates' hostility to the prospect.

The massive weekend antiwar demonstrations across the continent have clearly strengthened the hand of French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who have led diplomatic efforts to forestall US war plans.

And marchers in London, estimated at between 750,000 and a million people, have complicated the outlook for British Prime Minister Tony Blair - Washington's firmest European ally - as he seeks to rally his European Union colleagues behind a threat of imminent force against Baghdad.

The demonstrations, which gathered an estimated five million protesters in the most impressive showing of European public opinion for decades - and hundreds of thousands more in America, Australia, and other countries - "will definitely strengthen France, because Chirac can see that these are his armies," says Sergio Romano, a prominent Italian political analyst.

In Italy, where premier Silvio Berlusconi has taken a staunchly pro-American stand, the size of the demonstration is expected to move him away from such a clear position, Dr. Romano suggests. "Where before the emphasis was very much on being with the Americans, now it will shift towards being with the United Nations as master of the game," he predicts.

War against Iraq would be "very difficult" with much of the public opposed to military action, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Monday after the London demonstrations, though he also reiterated that for Iraq, "Time is running out."

Coming on the heels of a UN Security Council debate last Friday, at which French and German pleas to give UN weapons inspectors in Iraq more time won applause, the demonstrations appeared to offer the chance of a slower approach to war. But US officials made clear that the expression of European public opinion would not deter them.

Asked on Fox News Channel on Sunday whether the protests had unnerved the administration, US national security adviser Condoleeza Rice said "no, nothing could be further from the truth."

The marches were, however, likely to encourage EU leaders to seek a compromise position that would lean more towards stressing the need for a UN mandate for a war, and away from supporting US threats against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

That would answer the complaints of many of the weekend demonstrators, who are not pacifists but who fear the consequences of a unilateral attack by the United States, supported by a "coalition of the willing" such as Britain and Australia.

"A lot of people who went on the march aren't so much against war per se, as against the general approach to going to war," said Tim Ham, a business consultant who joined the London demonstration with his parents.

"Our objection is more that we are not going through the UN route," he added. "It's the undermining of the global institutions and the unilateral approach that is very much my objection."

A hallmark of the British demonstration - the diversity of the marchers - was also apparent in Rome, Berlin, Madrid and Paris, and in New York, where between 100,000 and 500,000 protesters, depending on who was counting, clogged the streets of Manhattan.

Page: 1 | 2