PARIS - Several thousand people marched through central Paris on Sunday to protest President Bush's two-day visit to France and denounce American domestic and foreign policy.

Several thousand people carry banners as they march through the French capital Paris Sunday May 26, 2002 to protest President Bush's two-day visit to France. They denounced American domestic and foreign policy. The banner in French reads: "Bush, Chirac do not bomb Iraq, Let's stop the war". (AP PHOTO/Francois Mori)

Marchers shouted "Bush, you are the terrorist" as they walked from the landmark Place de la Republique to the Bastille, where they burned American flags.

Some 4,500 people attended the march, LCI television reported.

Hours before, several dozen death penalty opponents gathered near a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Paris to denounce Bush's support for capital punishment.

The statue is located near a bridge were death-penalty opponents hung 152 cardboard figures that dangled from string to denote each person executed in Texas during Bush's nearly six years there as governor.

Michel Taube, head of France's "Together Against the Death Penalty" Association, said the grim display was a message to "tell the United States to abolish the death penalty, as European countries have done."

Leftist and extreme left organizations, ecologists and pro-Palestinian groups were involved in Sunday's demonstration in Paris, where Bush met with French President Jacques Chirac at the presidential palace.

At a press conference afterward, Chirac dismissed the protests against Bush as "marginal" and said they did not represent a widespread feeling of antipathy toward the United States or its president.

"Relations between Europe and the United States are not only a very old, not only essential to the world equilibrium, but I would say, in reality, becoming more and more important," he said.

Another march took place in Caen in the Normandy region, where Bush will travel on Monday to honor the thousands of U.S. soldiers who died there during World War II. About 1,000 people attended.

French farmer Jose Bove, who shot to fame as an anti-globalization activist after wrecking a McDonald's restaurant in southern France to show his opposition to fast food, accused Bush of pursuing a policy that led to U.S. domination of the world.

Several protesters hoisted a large picture of a pretzel, with a sign that said "Watch out, Bush!" The president choked on a pretzel earlier this year while watching football, lost consciousness for a few seconds and fell and hurt his head.

Others taking part in protests include Attac, a Paris-based anti-globalization organization that helped organize mass protests at the Genoa G-8 meeting in July 2001; and environmental groups, which have sharply criticized Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol that sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming.

Copyright 2002 Associated Press

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