Police in the United States have arrested two Nobel Peace prize winners and more than 60 other people protesting near the White House against the US-led war in Iraq.
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Mairéad Corrigan Maguire is arrested by a police officer during a peace protest in front of the White House.
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Police handcuffed Ms Mairéad Corrigan Maguire, who won the prize in 1976 for peace activism in the North, and Ms Jody Williams, a 1997 winner for her work to ban land mines, after they refused to leave Lafayette Park opposite the home of the US president.
The Nobel laureates were detained along with religious leaders and Vietnam-era protester Mr Daniel Ellsberg as they sat in a circle in the park and chanted "Peace, shalom." They held roses as well as gruesome posters showing civilian casualties from the war.
Ms Maguire told journalists before being taken away that she planned to stage an anti-war protest each day outside the White House until April 18th, Good Friday on the Christian calendar.
"In Northern Ireland we were encouraged to resolve our problems with dialogue and I would like to see that happen here," added Ms Maguire, who said she had asked President George W. Bush to meet her.
"This is what our democracy looks like," shouted Ms Williams to reporters when she was handcuffed by police.
A spokesman for the US Parks Police said nine people had been arrested for crossing a police line opposite the White House and that the rest were held for protesting without a permit. "We expect them all to be released within a couple of hours," he said.
Mr Ellsberg, a former Marine and high-level military analyst who leaked Pentagon secrets about the Vietnam war to the press in 1971, was cheered by supporters who stood behind police barriers when he was led away.
Catholic and Methodist bishops and a leading rabbi were also among those arrested in the demonstration, which was organised by the Catholic group Pax Christi.
Mr Bush was not in the White House at the time of the protest but in Florida for a briefing on the war at Central Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base.
About 250 opponents of the war protested in Tampa, a few miles away from where the president addressed troops.
In New York, 16 anti-Israel demonstrators were arrested on Wednesday morning after chaining themselves together across Fifth Avenue near 47th Street and disrupting Manhattan traffic for about an hour, police said.
Protesters were splashed with fake blood and wore t-shirts saying "Witness to Israeli War Crimes".