A spokesman for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) said the protesters would take part in a global day of international mobilizations to protest the US-led war on Iraq.

ANSWER said demonstrators planned to encircle the White House.

Streets were closed off for several blocks around the presidential mansion and IMF headquarters, and also Blair House, opposite the White House, where foreign dignitaries are lodged.

Finance ministers from the G7 -- Japan, the United States, France, Canada, Germany, Britain and Italy -- were due to convene in the US capital early Saturday, then join colleagues from the 184-nation International Monetary Fund and World Bank for further weekend talks.

The IMF and the World Bank emphasized that they had taken all the security measures necessary ahead of the meetings.

Outside Washington, other protests were planned in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Massive rallies were to take place in some 40 major cities around the world -- including in Britain, Italy, Japan and Korea -- to call for an end to the US-led war.

With the war itself apparently entering final stages, protest organizers said their rallying cry would be an end to the impending occupation of Iraq by coalition forces.

US peace activists, far from celebrating the presumed quick end to the war in Iraq, have said they are outraged at the prospect of a lengthy military occupation in Iraq.

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

She insisted that despite the fast-changing events in Iraq, this weekend's world-wide protest "is absolutely going forward -- if anything with greater determination and greater clarity.

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

The weekend's protests are organized by the ANSWER coalition, a confederation of anti-war and social action groups that was a key organizer of the massive demonstrations held in the weeks prior to the war.

The protesters, however, represent a minority view.

According to a new opinion poll by the Pew Research Center, 76 percent of Americans believe the United States made the right decision when it went to war with Iraq to bring down the government of Saddam Hussein and rid Baghdad of its suspected weapons of mass destruction.

Fifty-one percent said it would be necessary to kill or capture Saddam Hussein in order to declare victory.

Other protest organizers said they were pushing for the United Nations to take the lead in the post-war reconstruction of Iraq.

Medea Benjamin of the San Francisco-based Global Exchange group said protests would 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.

Anti-occupation activists have already attacked the man picked to head an interim government in Iraq, retired three-star US general Jay Garner, 64, under fire for his links to the defense industry and strong support of Israel.

SPACE.WIRE