"It's more urgent and more important than ever that there be a mobilization," said Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, who is helping to organize a rally in New York on Saturday.

"Only now the focus is, 'No' to colonial occupation," she said.

Rallies are also planned on Saturday in San Francisco, Washington and several US cities as well as in some 40 countries, including Japan and Korea.

In Europe, planned demonstrations in Italy, France, Denmark, Greece, Germany and London would go ahead as scheduled, organizers said, despite the prospect of a quick end to the war launched on March 20 to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"It is clear the war is not over," said Andrew Murray, chairman of the Stop the War Coalition in London. "There are still people being killed and we will also emphasize our opposition to occupation."

The group has called a march through London, during which participants are to observe a minute of silence in memory of civilians who died in the three-week-old conflict .

On March 22, two days after US and British troops invaded Iraq, between 200,000 and 700,000 people marched in the British capital against the war. Murray said he expects a similar turnout on Saturday.

In Germany, a demonstration was planned in Berlin although organizers said they were aware their movement may be losing steam now that the Iraqi regime has fallen and the guns gradually fall silent.

"We are well aware that few people will be mobilized as a result of developments," said Jens-Peter Steffen, a spokesman for pacifist group "Axis for Peace".

In Italy, organizers said they expect hundreds of thousands of people to turn up in Rome for a mass rally despite a rail strike that has already led to the cancellation of 11 trains specially chartered to transport demonstrators from outside the capital.

"People will turn up because they are aware the war is not over and we must mobilize to build the peace," said Gian Franco Benzi, of the "Stop the War" committee.

Some three million people turned up for a similar demonstration on February 15, a day of mass rallies worldwide before the launch of the war.

The anti-war camp said the rallying cry on Saturday will be the end of Iraq's occupation by coalition troops and for the United Nations to play a key role in the country's reconstruction.

Medea Benjamin of the San Francisco-based Global Exchange group said protests will lambast US-led efforts "to privatize humanitarian aid instead of using more traditional channels like the Red Cross and NGOs, or non-governmental organizations.

"We would like to see the UN take charge of the transition, which would strengthen the rule of law, not the rule of force," she said, adding that, "if the Iraqi people are to have a chance for...a better life, the US model "is not going to lead them there."

SPACE.WIRE