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Police trap beats Salzburg protest, By Hannah Cleaver in Salzburg and Bruce Johnston in Rome

ANTI-GLOBALISATION protesters clashed with police at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Salzburg yesterday after they forced their way into a restricted zone of the Austrian city.

At least one protester was badly hurt during scuffles with riot police. Windows were smashed and police lines stoned, with one officer injured. After about 45 minutes of clashes riot police trapped most of the demonstrators in a back street, where they held them, largely without incident, well into the evening.

Police said 500-700 people were trapped between two large groups of riot police at each end of the street. A spokesman said they would have been allowed to leave the area had they submitted to a search, but they refused. The violence came when a large part of the 2,500 or so demonstrators at a rally in front of the railway station pushed their way out and into the street.

The demonstrators chanted "This is what democracy looks like" and many sang the Communist anthem the Internationale. Many had prepared themselves for trouble and most were carrying bottles of water to bathe their eyes if tear-gas was used. About 660 business and political leaders, including some 15 heads of state and government and 40 cabinet ministers, are attending the three-day meeting organised by the Geneva-based WEF.

Austrian anti-capitalist groups who had been preparing in Salzburg all week were joined by protesters from America, the Czech Republic, Spain and Switzerland. The authorities in Salzburg had prepared for the worst and had turned the city into a three-layered no-go zone, with access increasingly tightly restricted closer to the conference centre were the meeting was held.

Meanwhile, police in Italy made important concessions ahead of next month's G8 summit in Genoa. Senior officers agreed at a six-hour meeting with the Genoa Social Forum, which represents 750 protest groups, to abandon plans to seal off the city.

The national police chief, Gianni Di Gennaro, agreed to allow limited access by opening the Genoa Brignole railway station, and some motorway exits to the city. Protesters, who could number 100,000, would be accommodated in a stadium, in the gardens of a disused asylum and at a sports ground, police said.

An "alternative summit" planned for July 15 would be held at another stadium.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001