One graphic sign showed Bush's face at the end of two bright red bombs with the caption: "Drop Bush, not bombs." Another demonstrator's sign said: "Regime change begins at home." Bush administration policy holds that a "regime change" must come about in Iraq, by force if necessary.

The protest coincided with anti-war demonstrations in San Francisco; Rome; Berlin; Copenhagen, Denmark; Tokyo; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Mexico City.

"This effort today is part of a worldwide effort to choose peace over war, coexistence over co-annihilation. To pre-emptively strike Iraq, to kill a lot of innocent people to get to Saddam, is amoral," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, speaking to reporters at the pre-march Washington rally.

Among dozens of speakers, actress-activist Susan Sarandon said, "In the name of fear and fighting terror, we are giving the reins of power to oil men looking for distraction from their disastrous economic performance; oil men more interested in the financial bottom line than a moral bottom line."

Police did not estimate the crowd, which appeared to number several thousand people. The rally site was on green lawns near the Vietnam memorial. The U.S. Park Police turned back people with signs who tried to file beside the memorial wall itself.

In Germany, a crowd estimated by police at 8,000 people carried placards that declared "War on the imperialist war" along with a few Iraqi and Palestinian flags. The marchers massed at Berlin's downtown Alexanderplatz ahead of a planned march past the U.S. and British embassies. Another 1,500 showed up in Frankfurt, 500 in Hamburg.

Rain poured on 1,500 demonstrators outside the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen. In neighboring Sweden, more than 1,000 hit the streets in Stockholm.

In downtown Tokyo about 300 protesters sang anti-war songs and held up banners. One said: "Stop the war before it starts."

Buses brought in hundreds of demonstrators, college students and out-of-town residents for Washington's rally. A man with a gray beard wore a pin on his cap that read "Dissent is patriotic" and carried a sign that read "Honor Wellstone: Speak truth to power."

Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), who voted against the congressional resolution authorizing force in Iraq, died Friday in a plane crash while campaigning for re-election.

While a marchers was planned near the White House, Bush and wife Laura were not at home to see or hear them. They flew Saturday from their Texas ranch to Mexico, where Bush was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

More than 750 people, held since Wednesday by the secessionists, were rescued. Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Vasilyev put the initial death toll among the captives at 67. But Russian news agencies later quoted the Health Ministry as saying more than 90 hostages had died.

President Vladimir Putin went on national television in the evening to ask forgiveness for the deaths. “We have not been able to save all. Forgive us,” a solemn Putin said.

Russian officials insisted they had no choice but to launch the assault after the rebels started killing hostages. “We saved more than 750 people,” Vasilyev said outside the theater where a popular musical had been brutally interrupted. All 75 foreigners, three of them American, were rescued.

The government kept silent on the type of gas used nor was there a clear explanation of how more than 100 people died. “You ask me if we used gas or not. Well, I am authorized to say that special means were used,” Vasilyev said. “That allowed us...to neutralize the kamikaze women who were strapped with explosives and held their fingers on the detonators.”

The special forces’ assault began in freezing rain before dawn when the gunmen executed two hostages. First, the unspecified gas was spread. Then forces stormed in.

Television footage showed some kicking in glass doors and opening fire, the thunder of their weapons setting off car alarm shrieks in the theater parking lot.

None of the soldiers was wearing a gas mask but some smashed windows and pulled open curtains as they went in. The hostages were brought out, some of them in the arms of special forces, most of them loaded unconscious onto city buses.

“They killed two hostages before our eyes, a woman and a man. They shot the man in the eye, there was a lot of blood,” Interfax quoted Olga Chernyak, one of the hostages, as saying from her hospital bed. She said she lost consciousness soon afterward, apparently because of the gas.

Nine of the hostages died because of heart problems, shock or lack of medicine, Vasilyev said, but how the remainder died was not specified. No children were among the dead, he said.

Fifty hostage-takers were killed — some with a bullet to the head execution-style. The young guerrilla commander, Movsar Barayev, was among those killed. Officials said three other gunmen were seized on the scene, and authorities searched the nervous city for attackers and accomplices who may have escaped.

A Federal Security Service official said the well-armed raiders had foreign links and contacts with unspecified embassies in Moscow, raising the prospect that insurgents with backing from international terrorists could be plotting other violence in Russia.

Putin thanked foreign countries for their “support in the struggle against the common foe. This foe is strong and dangerous, inhumane and cruel. It is international terrorism.”

A government official said Russia would seek the extradition of foreigners for funding Chechen separatists. Putin’s senior human rights representative, Abdul-Khakim Sultygov, said extradition requests would target organizations in “certain countries, including Western ones”. He said Russian special forces were set to “neutralize leaders of groups located mostly in Chechnya or in (Georgia’s) Pankisi Gorge”.

The captives had been indulging a new Moscow craze for grandiose, Western-style musicals, in this case “Nord-Ost” (North-East) — the tale of a Russian Arctic explorer — when terror struck. By yesterday morning, the red plush theater seats were empty except for a few bodies of dead Chechen fighters.

Russian TV footage from the theater showed the corpses of several of the female captors, clad in black robes and head coverings, sprawled in the red plush seats, their heads thrown back or on their folded hands — as if asleep, except for the precisely placed bullet holes in their heads. One body was jackknifed backward over a seat. The women had canisters with metal fragments and up to two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of explosives strapped to their bodies. The assailants laid many other bombs in the hall, some with the equivalent of 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of TNT, officials said.

Chechnya’s fugitive rebel president, Aslan Maskhadov, condemned the actions of the radical faction. “We decisively reject terror as a method of reaching any goals,” he said in a statement posted on the Internet from his hiding place.

Western nations had shown some sympathy for the moderate Chechen leadership before Sept. 11, particularly in light of Russian military excesses. Signs that some Chechens might have had ties to radicals like Osama Bin Laden have changed some minds.

During a check of Moscow hospitals, the web news service gazeta.ru said its reporters found only “four or five” of the injured had received bullet wounds. It said 349 ex-hostages were admitted to hospital No. 13, and 104 others to the veterans hospital No. 1. Many were suffering from gas poisoning and were in a state of shock. Nine of the hospitalized former captives had died from cardiac arrest or suffocation, gazeta.ru said.

Doctors at one Moscow hospital said 42 people were in a poor condition after being treated for poisoning by an unknown substance, and Germany’s ambassador said two German nationals among the hostages had also breathed in some sort of gas.

“Forty-two have been admitted. Their condition is poor. All were poisoned with an unknown gas, an unknown poison,” Vladimir Ryabinin, a doctor at Moscow’s top emergency Sklifosovsky hospital, told reporters.

“The two German hostages have been bodily unharmed but they are still under the impact of something which could definitely be some gas. They are drowsy,” German Ambassador Hans-Friedrich von Ploetz told reporters at the scene.

Eyewitnesses said that many of the scores of hostages were unconscious and inert in the arms of security forces bringing them out of the building.

“I saw about 60 people carried out. They were not moving at all. But there were no wounds at all on their bodies,” said Reuters photographer Sergei Karpukhin. “I saw others staggering out of the building but they didn’t seem to know where they were or what they were doing.”

One young man, who would not give his name, said he had been told by his girlfriend that gas had poured into the hall. “After that she didn’t remember anything. She has now recovered consciousness in hospital,” he told reporters.

After spending three long nights waiting for news outside the besieged theater, relatives of freed hostages moved their vigil to the gates of a nearby hospital, where they patiently waited in freezing rain to finally embrace their loved ones.

Only one former hostage was seen leaving City Hospital No. 13 into the arms of waiting relatives. Other families were told they would have to wait at least until today, and many had no information about the condition of their relatives.

Despite the frustration, the people gathered outside the hospital said their overriding emotion was relief. They came to the hospital after being notified that their loved ones were there — and not among the at least 90 hostages killed.

“I’m smiling because today is a joyous day,” said Viktor Teryokhin, who was waiting for his stepdaughter, 20-year-old Darya Kokoshko.

Khatib ripped apart the US plan for “dictating conditions on reform including on the legislative elections and the nomination of a prime minister. All of this is internal Palestinian affairs. We reject such dictates. This plan is for public relations in order to satisfy other Arab countries,” he added.

Burns flew off to Yemen after a three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories that ended with little to show for his efforts to push the peace process forward.

Israel tightened its grip on the West Bank town of Jenin.

Palestinian witnesses said the Israeli Army detained 11 people there.

Hundreds of troops backed by heavy armor rolled into Jenin on Friday, commandeering buildings, searching homes and imposing a curfew. The army drew fire from the Palestinian resistance and also on the diplomatic front from the European Union, which urged restraint.

Israeli military chiefs said the Jenin operation — dubbed “Vanguard” — would last as long as necessary to flush out those waging a Palestinian uprising for independence. Palestinian medics said six people were seriously wounded in clashes with the army. Three Palestinians, including two children were wounded by Israeli gunfire in the flashpoint southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah. A 14-year-old boy was seriously wounded as Israeli Army bulldozers were being operated in the sector, while a 10-year-old boy and a 45-year-old man were also hit in apparently separate incidents.

“Iraq’s laudable cooperation over the inspectors’ return should avert a (US) strike and lead to a settlement by legitimate means on the basis of relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” he told reporters.

“We have repeatedly stressed our keenness to spare Iraq any military strike,” said Prince Saud, who was speaking after a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Faruq Al-Shara.

“We oppose military action against Iraq. It would not be logical for the Security Council to adopt a resolution authorizing the use of force against a UN member state,” said Shara, whose country is currently one of the 10 non-permanent council members.

“Iraq has agreed to readmit the inspectors. Consequently, the inspectors should be allowed to return as soon as possible and the American obstacles to their return should be eliminated,” he said.

“As Arabs, we cannot allow our territory to be used for aggression against an Arab state,” added the Syrian minister.

Earlier, Prince Saud and Shara co-chaired a meeting of the Saudi-Syrian Joint Commission to explore prospects of enhancing bilateral ties. Addressing the meeting, Prince Saud said no bargaining will be acceptable on Jerusalem.

The meeting called for canceling tariffs on the import of national products, effective from Jan. 1, 2003. The two countries have already signed a free-trade agreement. Trade between the two countries doubled last year to reach SR1.5 billion.

Qaddafi, who has threatened several times to leave the group over its alleged failure to uphold Arab causes, notably the Palestinian issue, met for an hour here with League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. But the talks appeared to have not gone well. “I have not succeeded in convincing the Libyan party to go back on its decision,” Moussa told reporters after the meeting.

However, Moussa, who flew in from Cairo for the talks and also met with African Unity Minister Ali Abdul Salam Triki, said that “consultations” were still going on between Libya and the 22-member organization.

Libya informed the League on Thursday of its decision to pull out from the pan-Arab body without officially announcing a reason. However, both Moussa and Triki had said the decision was taken to protest against the “Arab stance in general,” although the country’s ties with the grouping have been rocky for some time.

A senior League official also told AFP on condition of anonymity that Tripoli had grown impatient with a lack of concrete action on the two-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict and US threats to strike Iraq.

It is not the first time that Qaddafi has threatened to pull out of the Arab League. In March, he called on his country’s Parliament to examine a Libyan pullout because of the alleged shortcomings of the organization’s assistance to the Palestinians. That threat prompted an urgent visit by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.

Libya also considered quitting in 1998 because of the “defeatist” attitude of Arab states toward the UN sanctions imposed on Tripoli over the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing, for which it has now agreed to pay compensation. At the same time, Qaddafi decided to focus on relations with non-Arab African states, but again Libya chose to stay in the League after a visit by Maher’s predecessor.

In yesterday’s talks, Moussa, quoted by the state JANA news agency, told Qaddafi he was “very embarrassed by the Libyan request to withdraw, which comes as the Arab nation is going through a dangerous period because of its weakness”.

“Libya’s presence in the Arab League will encourage the organization to take decisions which we need to overcome this difficult period,” Moussa said.

When he arrived at the airport, he chided the Libyan leader, saying: “It is not an easy thing to abandon one’s Arab identity, which is not a suit that one can simply take off.” But he added, “Libya is an Arab country and must always be part of the Arab family,” and conceded its unhappiness was a “message to the Arab nation to act.”

Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail was also in Tripoli to try and get the Libyans to back down on the threat, JANA said. Qaddafi has made a spate of stinging remarks on the League in recent months. “Stop begging. Ever since 1957, the Arabs have been negotiating for (the return of) 42 percent of Palestine, while the Africans have not let go of an inch of their territory,” he said in July.

The same month, he accused the Arabs of showing “naivety” toward the United States, and branded as “extreme folly” US threats of military action to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein over his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

But Qaddafi also took his Arab counterparts by surprise in September 2001 when he proposed that the League accept Israel as a member if the Jewish state agreed to the return of all Palestinian refugees.

Activists expressed hope that 100,000 people would turn out in the US capital to express opposition to their government’s threat to take military action against Iraq if it does not cooperate fully with United Nations weapons inspectors.

In Germany, there were demonstrations in about 70 towns and cities with the largest in Berlin where almost 10,000 people marched along city center streets. In Amsterdam, some 4,000 people turned out in heavy rain to protest against US policy.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told Europe 1 radio that France was willing to use the draft resolution put forward by the United States on Friday as a basis for seeking an agreement among the 15 members of the Security Council. But consensus on a resolution was needed urgently, he added.

“We are going to try to work with the Americans on the basis of the text they have proposed. If we don’t manage that, then we will obviously officially propose our own text,” de Villepin said.

De Villepin’s comments added to efforts in New York by French and Russian diplomats on Friday to press Washington to make changes in its text, which is cosponsored by Britain. A resolution in the Security Council needs nine “yes” votes for adoption and no veto from its five permanent members, the United States, France, Russia, China and Britain.

Amid the diplomatic maneuvering, US President George W. Bush sought Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s backing for the new UN resolution demanding Iraqi disarmament. Jiang met Bush on Friday at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush said after the talks: “China supports Iraq’s strict compliance with UN Security Council resolutions.” The Chinese president was noncommittal and China’s ambassador to the United Nations voiced reservations about some of the wording of the US resolution.

Russia, which has questioned whether Iraq still has any stockpiles of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, eliminates “material breach” and “serious consequences” in its draft. Russia’s version also removes US attempts to give UN inspectors broad new rights.

France, which sees its text as a bridge between the United States and Russia, also deletes “material breach” but includes a reference to “serious consequences.”

The decision to make Sayeed the new chief minister of the state was taken at a meeting between him and Congress President Sonia Gandhi yesterday. The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), the Panthers Party and some independents will also be part of the coalition.

“We have decided that Mufti Muhammad Sayeed will be leading the government in Jammu and Kashmir,” Sonia told reporters in Delhi. “We are determined to see that the hopes and aspirations of the people of the state are fulfilled.”

Sayeed hoped that the aspirations of the people of Kashmir, who had voted fearlessly in spite of terrorist threats, would now be fulfilled.

“To meet the challenges ahead, we have decided to unite and work out an agenda, a common minimum program,” said Sayeed, who was home minister in the government of former Prime Minister V.P. Singh in 1989-90.

“This is a golden opportunity, a turning point in the history of the state. We will give a healing touch to the people of the state.”

The decision comes after more than two weeks of negotiations between the two parties that had almost broken down earlier this week with the Congress and the PDP insisting that the chief minister come from their party. Sonia maintained that the decision had been taken “in the larger interests” even though the chief ministers of other Congress ruled states had insisted that the party should head the coalition in the state.

The nitty gritties of the common minimum program and the question of whether there would be a deputy chief minister would be worked out at a meeting today, Sayeed and Sonia said.

“The common minimum program would also be seen by the other coalition partners,” Sonia added.

Earlier yesterday, the PDP and the Congress crossed the first hurdle in forming a coalition government in the state by agreeing to the common minimum program for governance.

One of the main objectives of the program would be to usher in “peace with honor” to the insurgency-hit Himalayan state, leaders of the two parties said. The breakthrough followed several hours of talks between Congress leaders and Sayeed and his daughter Mehbooba Sayeed.

“All differences have been reconciled,” said Congress Working Committee member Arjun Singh.

Asked to disclose some of the points in the common agenda, the Congress leader said: “Our mandate has to be translated into practice... The agenda would include bringing peace with honor back to Jammu and Kashmir and development of the state.”

The hectic parleys and bargaining brought a taste of familiar coalition pangs to the state plagued by two decades of militancy.

The PDP has softened from its earlier demand for nothing less than the chief minister’s post in a coalition with the Congress but, as a face-saver, wants the first term in rotational chief ministership. With 16 seats in the 87-member assembly, Sayeed’s party had doggedly insisted earlier that the chief minister should be from the Kashmir Valley, where it fared better than the Congress.

On the other hand, the Congress, which won most of its 20 seats from the Jammu region, was equally determined that its state President Ghulam Nabi Azad be the chief minister.

The political impasse led to governor’s rule in the state after the National Conference, which lost the elections but finished as the single largest party with 28 seats, resigned from office. This week the Congress reopened the door for talks and invited Sayeed to New Delhi for a fresh shot at an alliance.

As the negotiations continue in New Delhi, Kashmir has started preparing for an oath-taking ceremony to mark the installation of a new government.

State Chief Secretary I.S. Malhi met top officials to discuss security and other arrangements for the ceremony, likely to be held at the Sher-e-Kashmir International Convention Center.

Meanwhile, five militants and a politician’s wife were among 10 people killed in separatist violence in Kashmir, police said yesterday.

Three rebels and an army soldier were killed in a fierce gun battle overnight in south Kashmir, police said. In a separate incident, two militants were killed yesterday by troops near Shoo-in, 50 km south of Srinagar, police said. They said two people died elsewhere in Kashmir. Police said a servant employed by a pro-India politician, Mushtaq Mir, opened fire yesterday at the leader’s wife and a security guard in Anantnag town. The two were shifted to hospital where they died.