Amid heavy security, anti-Bush protesters jeer president

LONDON — Watched by circling helicopters, rooftop snipers, and thousands of police, a few hundred noisy protesters derided President Bush in a mock procession as he officially began his state visit to America's staunchest ally Wednesday.

Outside Buckingham Palace, where Bush was welcomed by Queen Elizabeth II with pageantry and a 41-gun salute, police kept a smattering of demonstrators and Bush supporters behind metal barriers several dozen yards from the gates.

Police later scuffled with some of the several hundred demonstrators who assembled outside the palace as darkness fell. The demonstrators banged drums, blew whistles and charged "Bush go home!"

One sign read "not elected, not compassionate, not intelligent, not welcome." A thousand onlookers stood nearby, some holding American flags.

Bush and his wife, Laura, who arrived at the palace by helicopter Tuesday night, rode in a motorcade the 100 yards from their suite at the palace to a forecourt for the welcoming ceremony with the queen, her husband Prince Philip, Prime Minister Tony Blair and other dignitaries.

Many Londoners have greeted the visit with grumbles about road closures and police pulled off other duties to guard the president, but protests so far have been small.

The real test of anti-Bush sentiment comes Thursday. The Stop the War Coalition hopes for 100,000 or more to march past Parliament and the nearby Downing Street office of Blair, Bush's major supporter in the troubled occupation of Iraq.

On Wednesday, several hundred anti-war protesters held a colorful "alternative state procession" from the south bank of the River Thames to Trafalgar Square. Led by a horse-drawn carriage bearing a man in a Bush mask and a faux queen, demonstrators chanted, "Resist, resist, Bush and Blair are terrorists" as they marched under heavy police escort.

Lindsey Ingles, a student from Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, said she was protesting Bush's policies at home and abroad.

"He's spending trillions of dollars on the war, but my tuition is almost $30,000, and I've got very little state aid," she said.

Kate Hudson, chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament — who marched dressed as a weapons inspector with an inflatable missile — said the pageant "is a little event in the long British political tradition of satire. We are here to make a very serious point in a humorous way.