Olympic Torch Extingushed and put on bus for safety reasons

The Beijing Olympic flame had to be confined to the safety of a bus Monday as hundreds of pro-Tibet activists disrupted its progress through Paris despite a heavy police escort.

French police scuffled with campaigners protesting China's crackdown in Tibet and at least four people were arrested as they attempted to block the torch's planned relay route through the city.

The flame began its journey from the Eiffel Tower, with former French athlete Stephane Diagana leading off the proposed relay of 80 runners chosen to carry it through the Paris streets.

The torch was protected by a phalanx of motorcycle police, jogging firemen, police on roller blades and dozens of riot police vehicles.

But it had barely progressed more than 200 meters (yards) before it was put aboard a bus to prevent any attempt to extinguish the flame.


Pro-Tibet activists, gathered on Human Rights Square across the River Seine, whistled and jeered as they watched it begin its 28-kilometre (18-mile) route to a stadium in the south of the city.

Officers pushed back several protestors who were trying to reach the Eiffel Tower from Human Rights Square.

Activists had promised a day of "spectacular" protests despite the high-level security surrounding the torch, whose passage Sunday across London was disrupted several times by protestors.

Paris police had vowed to secure a perimeter of some 200 metres (yards) around the flame.

The torchbearers will be protected by a cordon of 65 motorcycle police, 100 jogging firemen, another 100 police on roller blades and nearly 50 vehicles with more than 200 riot police.

"The flame of discord" was how two national French newspapers described it in their front-page headlines, while the front of the left-leaning Liberation daily was covered with a picture of the Olympic rings turned into handcuffs.

A Chinese embassy advisor in Paris said the torch's relay would be a "great festival" for the French people and that any protests would come from a "tiny minority."

But Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which disrupted the lighting of the flame in Athens, has promised "symbolic, spectacular" actions.

And Paris's Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe planned to unfurl a giant banner over city hall in defence of human rights.

The Olympic flame's Paris relay came as International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge called on China, during a meeting of National Olympic Committee heads in Beijing, to peacefully end unrest in Tibet.

The flame arrived in France late Sunday after a chaotic stop in the British capital, where police battled to keep pro-Tibet protesters away from the torchbearers and made 37 arrests.

Robert Menard, head of the RSF group, has denounced the security arrangements.

"All that is missing is an appeal to Parisians to stay at home along the lines established in Beijing, where only officials welcomed the Olympic torch on a Tiananmen Square emptied of passers-by," he said in a statement.

Beijing has faced international criticism over its opening ceremony. The flame's Paris leg comes days after President Nicolas Sarkozy upped the pressure over China's crackdown in Tibet, refusing to rule out a boycott of the August 8 Olympic response on anti-Chinese protests in Tibet, which exiled Tibetan leaders say killed up to 150 people. China says Tibetan rioters have killed 18 civilians and two policemen.

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.