Millions of people took to the streets across Europe Thursday as annual May Day rallies mixed traditional labour demands with anti-war protests, with violence marring events in Germany, Turkey and other countries.

One million protestors marched throughout Germany, double last year's number according to trade union estimates, but in Berlin, where at least 65 rallies were planned, trouble led to almost 100 arrests.

Police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse about 200 people who pelted them with fireworks and other projectiles during a 6,000-strong peace rally in eastern Berlin.

The main march, organised by the DGB trade union congress, targetted Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's controversial cost-cutting package of social and economic reforms aimed at boosting the flagging German economy, the European Union's largest.

Banners read: "Berlin needs work, an education, a future."

In London, scuffles broke out between demonstrators and police after about 300 people staged a sit-down protest outside the London offices of the giant US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

In Istanbul, truncheon-wielding riot police swooped on demonstrators after they refused to disperse from what police called an illegal protest in central Taksim square, the Anatolia news agency reported. About 30 left-wing marchers were detained.

In Austria and France, where governments plan to increase pension contribution periods to beyond the current 40 years and eliminate early retirement, quashing the proposed reforms was the main battle cry for tens of thousands of protestors.

In Paris, leader of the right-wing National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen – whose shock rise to the second round of 2002 presidential polls brought supporters out in force last year – drew only 3,500 backers, according to police, 10,000 according to organisers, at his traditional march this year.

Anti-war protests marked rallies in most countries across the continent.

In Athens, several thousand people converged on the heavily-guarded US embassy shouting anti-US slogans and carrying banners saying: "Work, not bombs" and "No to the occupation of Iraq."

In Spain, the two main trade unions marched together under the slogan "peace, jobs and no war" and issued a joint statement that May Day should be "another rejection of those who are proud of having conducted an unjust and illegitimate war" – a reference to Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's staunch support for the US-led offensive in Iraq.

Swedes carried banners saying: "USA go home" and "Freedom, yes. Occupation, no." Other protests in Stockholm called for a no-vote in the September referendum on whether to adopt the euro.

In Denmark, 10,000 people according to police marched peacefully through Copenhagen, condemning the right-wing government's support for the war in Iraq.

A minor altercation between anarchists and skinheads in the Czech capital Prague led to allegations of police provocation. The rest of the estimated 300 anarchists present demonstrated peacefully, calling for "peace in huts and war in palaces".

In Portugal, some 30,000 demonstrators according to police took to the streets of Lisbon to protest a recent sharp rise in unemployment which demonstrators blamed on the economic policies of the country's centre-right government.

Demonstrators in Cyprus, meanwhile, called for reconciliation.

Over 2,000 Greek and Turkish Cypriots gathered at a joint rally in Nicosia for the first time in decades after Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash eased restrictions on movement across the divided island.

Several hundred Turkish Cypriot unionists crossed the Green Line to join fellow left-wing Greek Cypriots in a show of unity not seen in Europe's last divided capital since well before the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island.

Much further east, some 200 protesters in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek rallied against the presence of a US military base in the Central Asian republic, with one speaker saying: "We're living under the yoke of American fascism."

In Russia, where May Day was a major holiday in the Soviet days, tens of thousands of people took part in nationwide rallies but the authorities coopted the event that was just recently a major day of protest for the Communist opposition.

In Moscow, only 15,000 mainly elderly Communist sympathisers turned out, waving red flags and demanding the resignation of President Vladimir Putin, while a rally held by city authorities drew a bigger crowd of 25,000.AFP