Paris protesters impede Olympic torch

PARIS — The Olympic torch relay in Paris was cut short yesterday amid rowdy protests against China’s human rights record and its crackdown in Tibet that forced police to temporarily extinguish the flames several times during its 17½ mile journey across the French capital.

Some 500 demonstrators brandishing Tibetan flags were massed at Trocadero Square across from the Eiffel Tower, where the relay began shortly after midday, guarded by 3,000 French police who followed the flame”s path on roller blades, bikes and police cars.

More protesters brandished such banners as “Boycott Chinese goods” and “Save Tibet,” as athletes carried the torch down the Champs-Elysees on the Right Bank, before crossing the Seine River and ending up at the Charlety track in southern Paris.

However, the heavy security was unable to prevent members of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders from scaling the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral, a few miles away, to hang banners depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs.

Security officials were also forced to temporarily put out the flame three times and put the torch on a bus for safety during its journey across the city.

“If this helps advance the cause of human rights in China, if it makes the heads of state and government move … to be a bit more radical … this is what this serves,” the group’s head, Robert Menard, told France-info radio, defending the protests by the press watchdog group which had also disrupted the lighting of the Olympic torch in Athens.

Some French politicians joined the censure against Beijing”s human-rights record. Socialist Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe cancelled an Olympic torch ceremony yesterday and the Paris city hall was draped with a Tibetan flag.

Several members of the French parliament also joined the pro-Tibet rally across from the Eiffel Tower.

The chaotic greeting here echoed the one the torch had received just a day earlier in London, where police arrested 37 people.

While British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would attend the opening Olympic ceremony in Beijing,French President Nicolas Sarkozy has not ruled out boycotting the July event. Foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said yesterday that Mr. Sarkozy was keeping his options open.

“Nicolas Sarkozy said … that all the possibilities were open, all the roads could be pursued in function of the evolution we are following every day,” Mr. Kouchner told LCI television station, adding he was in constant contact with Chinese authorities and the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Nevertheless, Mr. Sarkozy”s diverse Cabinet has been unable to speak with a single voice on the Olympics — a situation mirrored last fall when several members, including Mr. Kouchner, criticized a state visit to Paris by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

In an interview with Le Monde, outspoken human-rights minister Rama Yade suggested Mr. Sarkozy had set conditions for attending the Olympic ceremony. She later denied using the actual term “conditions.”

“We pose no conditions on a big country like China,” Mr. Kouchner told LCI.

Still, he outlined areas where Paris hoped to see change — notably that Beijing allow reporters to investigate the recent Chinese crackdown in Tibet and hold talks with the Dalai Lama.

Beijing has sharply criticized the protests that have marked each stop of the torch to date.

Chinese Olympic organizers slammed Sunday”s rallies in London as “disgusting.” A Chinese Embassy adviser in Paris told French radio the Paris protesters represented a “tiny minority” in France.

For their part, ordinary Parisians appeared of two minds about the Olympics, with some supporting the protests marking the torch”s 85,000-mile journey across the world to China, but not necessarily backing a boycott of the Games.

“The decision to allow the Olympic Games to take place in China was taken years ago — the protests should have taken place then,” said businessman Frank Perina.

Standing outside the Paris stock exchange, retired stockbroker Jacques Perquel said he believed Mr. Sarkozy should boycott the opening ceremony.

“I think the president has no need to go there, but I think the athletes must perform,” he said. “The bad thing was to pick China for the Olympics. But now it”s done, and we cannot change a thing.”