CHICAGO, May 20: A diverse crowd of protesters began streaming into a downtown Chicago park on Sunday for one of the city’s largest demonstrations in years – a march to the lakeside convention centre hosting a historic Nato summit.    

Peace activists were joined by war veterans and people more focused on the economy. Marchers arrived at Grant Park with signs denouncing Nato, including ones that read: “War(equals)Debt” and “Nato, Go Home.”

They planned to walk four kilometres to the site where President Barack Obama and other world leaders were meeting to discuss the war in Afghanistan, European missile defence and other issues.

Organizers of Sunday’s rally had initially predicted tens of thousands of protesters this weekend. But that was when the G-8 summit of leading industrial nations was also scheduled to be in Chicago.

Earlier this year, Mr Obama moved the Group of 8 economic meeting to Camp David, the secluded presidential retreat in rural Maryland.

Chicago kept the Nato summit, which focuses on international security matters but not the economy. That left activists with the challenge of persuading groups as diverse as teachers, nurses and union labourers to show up for the Chicago protests even though the summit’s main focus doesn’t align with their most heart-felt issues.

“I’m here to protest Nato, which I feel is the enforcement arm of the ruling 1 per cent – of the capitalist 1 per cent,” said protester John Schraufnagel, who took a bus from Minneapolis to Chicago.    Sunday’s protest followed several smaller demonstrations over the previous two days, including a march on Saturday to the home of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s former chief of staff.    Later that evening, hundreds of demonstrators zigzagged through downtown, some decrying terrorism-related charges levelled against three young men earlier in the day. Increasingly tense clashes on Saturday night tested police who used bicycles to barricade off streets and horseback officers to coax protesters in different directions. Eighteen people were arrested.

Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said officers would be ready with quick but targeted arrests of any demonstrators who turned violent.

“If anything else happens, the plan is to go in and get the people who create the violent acts, take them out of the crowd and arrest them,” warned Mr McCarthy. “We’re not going to charge the crowd wholesale – that’s the bottom line.”

Protest organisers were also trying to keep things peaceful on Sunday.    “I will be walking all day and guiding all day, trying to keep tempers calm,” said Sue Eleuterio, 59, of Highland, Indiana, a long-time activist who plans to act as a “peace guide” by mediating problems between police and protesters.

“Our goal, believe it or not, is to have a family friendly protest that is peaceful.”

Security has been tight throughout the city. As police gathered en masse on street corners, near parks and landmarks, the city’s streets remained largely vacant and many downtown buildings closed.    ’

Three activists who travelled to Chicago for the summit were accused on Saturday of manufacturing Molotov cocktails in a plot to attack Mr Obama’s campaign headquarters, Mr Emanuel’s home and other targets.

Defence lawyers argued that the police had trumped up the charges to frighten away peaceful protesters. They told a judge it was undercover officers who brought the firebombs to an apartment in Chicago’s South Side where the men were arrested.

On Sunday, police said two other men were in custody after being accused of planning to make Molotov cocktails to be used during the Nato summit.—AP