Europe, US antinuclear protests

Antinuclear demonstrations erupted in the United States and Western Europe during the Easter weekend. About 1,000 Dutch demonstrators began a 20-hour protest against a plant producing enriched uranium. They say the uranium could be used to produce nuclear weapons. Tens of thousands of demonstrators held marches and blockaded military bases in West Germany as part of a four-day program of antinuclear protest. Police estimated that 15,000 people attended a rally in Duisburg.

Some 4,000 Scottish demonstrators lay down in a city square to protest plans to deploy US cruise missiles in Britain. A day earlier, crowds estimated at between 40,000 and 100,000 massed in the countryside west of London to form a human chain linking three nuclear bases. Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher fiercely attacked the four-day protest, accusing the demonstrators of playing into the Kremlin's hands.

In the US, meanwhile, three demonstrators nosed their powerboat into the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., and climbed onto a platform next to a drydocked Trident nuclear submarine. Naval military police issued trespassing citations. In New York and Groton, Conn., 95 religious peace demonstrators were arrested in protests against nuclear weapons.