Prime Minister John Howard o­n Sunday thumbed his nose at the hundreds of thousands of Australians who took to the streets over the weekend to rally for peace, and refused to budge o­n his support for an impending war against Iraq.

He held o­n to this position despite the fact not since the Vietnam conflict has Australia seen an anti-war protest o­n this scale, reflecting growing restiveness against the country's involvement in any war o­n Iraq.

Protesters in Sydney continued marching Sunday. At least 250,000 people turned out to protest any involvement in a war against Iraq by Australia, the o­nly other country apart from the United States and Britain to send troops to the Gulf ahead of the expected conflict.

On Sunday, Howard said: "What I am doing here is what I think is right for Australia. I don't know whether you can measure public opinion by just the number of people turning up for demonstrations.

"I hate war as much as the next person, I despise it, but I know if the world community walks away from this issue we will have to confront it at an infinitely greater cost," he told Channel Seven TV upon his return home from a week-long trip to the United States, Britain and Indonesia.

"That is the lesson of history and that is what people should understand,'' he added.

'Howard out!'

Canberra has committed 2,000 personnel that will join 200,000 US and British troops already in the Gulf or en route there.

But Australians opposed to war in Iraq came out in huge numbers over the last few days.

On Friday, 150,000 people blocked the streets in the central business district of Melbourne, in south-eastern Australia. o­n Saturday, 10,000 more Australians took to the streets of the western city of Perth in peace rallies. It was the same in other cities, and thousands filled the centre of the capital Canberra questioning Howard's support of the United States.

In Hobart, thousands more blocked city streets before protesting outside the Tasmanian state parliament.

''Bring the troops home Howard out!" were the chants heard all around the country.

Asked what he would say to the parents of Iraq children who could well die in the war, Howard replied that international decision-making was about taking risks. "Well they wouldn't be dying if their President (Saddam Hussein) had respected international opinion," added Howard.

Howard's comments immediately drew criticism.

Insulting intelligence

"I find it astonishing that the prime minister is saying to the Australian people he doesn't care about polls and public opinion and says he's doing what is right for Australia," said former UN weapons inspection chief Richard Butler.

Added Butler: "There's a poll that he could take, if he wanted to, the o­ne reflected by these protests that are now sweeping the world - that would be to put a question to the Australian people as a referendum - do you want to go to a war with the United States without UN approval?"

"What result would he get and would he pay attention to that result?" asked the former UN weapons inspection chief.

Butler also said Howard was insulting the intelligence of the Australian people in his comments about children dying in Iraq.

"An astonishing answer against Iraqi women and children - if they get killed, it's somehow their fault because Saddam is their president. I think it stretches the credulity and intelligence of the Australian people to be spoken to like that," he said.

Opposition Labor foreign affairs spokesperson Kevin Rudd said that arrogance was creeping into Howard's handling of the Iraq situation and that it was obvious he was out of touch with public opinion.

"What the Australian people are sending Mr Howard is potentially a million-strong memorandum, which is the Australian people are yet to be convinced that he's made any case to them as to why Australia should be a part of a military action against Iraq outside the framework of the United Nations," Rudd said o­n Nine Network's TV.

"The bottom line is this: he's done a bad job in convincing the Australian people that a case exists for going to war against Iraq outside the UN framework," added Rudd.

Credibility compromised

In Perth, Greens Legislative Assembly member Dee Margetts said the peace rally was a huge success.

"John Howard says he won't be swayed by large turnouts. He must be. Any government in Australia who sees these kinds of numbers has got to take notice," she added.

Margetts said there were alternatives to war, but that Howard had compromised the credibility of Australian troops in any future UN peacekeeping efforts in Iraq.

"The credibility of Australian troops as honest-broker is very much in danger as Howard commits the troops to a war in Iraq. I would still like to think Australia has time to play a positive role rather than to be part of the problem,'' she pointed out.

As millions of protesters demonstrated over the weekend in a global outpouring of anti-war sentiment against possible US plans to attack Iraq, parliamentarians for Peace founder Brian Greig told the Perth rally that Australians were sending a message to the world they were not represented by the prime minister o­n the issue.

"As it stands, John Howard has effectively committed our troops to war but he has made the decision according to the wishes of someone who was never voted in by the Australian people, namely (US President) George W Bush," he said.

In the past week, Howard met with Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In Indonesia, where he tried to allay fears about the war, he found himself up against sentiments that Canberra's position o­n Iraq was ''anti-Muslim''. He called this view an ''an absurd and monstrous distortion of what is at stake".

Earlier, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said that Australia was seen as being "a bit too enthusiastic" in its pro-US position and that ''it's very easy for the masses in the Islamic world to conclude that this war is, in the end, a war against Muslims''. - IPS