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PARIS : The Paris leg of the Beijing Olympic flame relay was cut short on Monday after pro-Tibet activists disrupted the event, repeatedly forcing officials to douse the torch and take refuge on a bus.
The constant interruptions by hundreds of campaigners protesting China's human rights record finally forced the organisers to halt the planned torch procession outside the French parliament, where some deputies hung a Tibetan flag on a railing.
It was taken by bus to its final destination - a stadium in the south of the city where clashes promptly broke out between pro-Tibetan activists and China supporters, forcing police to intervene.
There had been scuffles from the very start as the flame set out on its journey from the Eiffel Tower, with police hauling men and women out of the planned route and a man in a wheelchair knocked over in the chaos.
The torchbearers were forced at least four times to take refuge on a bus as they struggled through the capital protected by a phalanx of motorcycle outriders, jogging firemen, and police on roller blades.
Each time the running torch had to be extinguished and relit from the "eternal flame" which was surrounded by heavy security.
A high-profile ceremony planned at city hall was called off after officials draped a Tibetan flag from the building.
Paris Mayor Bertrand Delonoe said Chinese Olympic organisers had changed their route to avoid the protests.
At least eight people were arrested, including a local politician wielding a fire extinguisher, two pro-Tibet campaigners and five media rights activists, three of whom had chained themselves to the Eiffel Tower.
As the relay set off, hundreds of pro-Tibetans booed and jeered from Human Rights Square across the River Seine.
They carried banners with messages such as "Tiananmen 1989 - Lhasa 2008" and "For a bloody world welcome to the Olympics made in China."
Members of the media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) were at the forefront of the protests, unfurling large black banners - showing the Olympic rings turned into handcuffs - from the Eiffel Tower, along the Champs Elysees and over the main door of Notre-Dame Cathedral.
The incidents in Paris came a day after rowdy protests on the torch's London leg, where its progress was disrupted several times and where it also had to be briefly put on a bus for security.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge on Monday urged China to peacefully end unrest in Tibet, piling further pressure on the nation's communist rulers ahead of the Beijing Games in August.
"Violence for whatever reason is not compatible with the values of the torch relay or the Olympic Games," he said at a meeting of National Olympic Committee heads in Beijing.
Exiled Tibetan leaders say more than 150 people have been killed in the unrest against Chinese rule which began on March 10.
China insists its security forces have killed no one while trying to quell the protests. It says Tibetan "rioters" have killed 20 people.
In China, the state-controlled CCTV's late night news reported briefly on the protests, saying a small number of people tried to disrupt the flame's journeys through London and Paris.
The Xinhua news agency later issued a dispatch in English saying the torch was extinguished twice "for safety reasons."
The leader of the Tibetan community in Paris, Thupten Gyatso, called the day of protests a "great success."
But the head of the French Olympics Committee condemned the protests as "highly regrettable."
"I think people should have let this flame through, that they could have held their protests to one side," said Henri Serandour.
The Olympic torch was lit again for a brief ceremony outside the stadium before being finally extinguished at around 6:00 pm (1600 GMT).
From Paris the flame leaves for the Americas, with stops in San Francisco on Wednesday and Buenos Aires on Friday, on the latest leg of a worldwide tour from Greece to Beijing. - AFP/de
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