PARIS, Aug 17 (AFP) - A handful of US expatriates living in France held a small protest Wednesday under the Eiffel Tower, their way of participating in a night of vigils against the Iraq war taking place later the same night across the United States.

The 16 people at the Paris gathering said they and the US-based demonstrators were showing support for Cindy Sheehan, the US woman who has been camped outside US President George W Bush's Texas ranch in protest against the US-led occupation of Iraq. Sheehan's son, a soldier, was killed in Iraq last year.

"We're also thanking the French government for not having joined the Iraq war," said one of the expatriate protesters, who identified herself only by her first name, Karen.

A fellow protester, who said his first name was Arnie, added: "I think these kind of things isolate the (Bush) administration."

The group sat quietly on the steps of a monument to peace located at the far end of a park from the Eiffel Tower, which loomed over the expatriates and hundreds of picnicking French people and tourists.

Anti-war movements supporting Sheehan organised hundreds of similar candle-lit vigils Wednesday across the United States.

They hope the media attention surrounding Sheehan's one-woman campaign will fuel the increasing disapproval of the war registered in US public opinion surveys and force Bush to bring home the 138,000 troops he has deployed in Iraq.

More than 1,850 US soldiers have died in Iraq since Bush ordered the March 2003 invasion of the country to rid it of a supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Copyright AFP

Subject: French news, Iraq, Iraq war, anti-war, protesters, George Bush, Cindy Sheehan