US:CONFUSION SURROUNDED the start of the relay of the Olympic torch through San Francisco yesterday, as thousands of China supporters and protesters converged along the planned route.
The first runner held the torch aloft and began the route, flanked by tall, blue-clad Chinese security officials. But the group then promptly disappeared into a large waterfront warehouse complex in what appeared to be a possible last-minute change of route by authorities to head off trouble.
What Chinese Olympic organisers called a "Journey of Harmony", quickly became the mystery of the missing flame.
As thousands of protesters converged on San Francisco yesterday, there were tense confrontations with rival demonstrations just hours before the scheduled start of the torch relay. San Francisco has a large Chinese-American population, many of whom were proudly waiting to see the torch relay. "Lies! Lies!" shouted the pro-Chinese demonstrators at Tibetan activists.
In the city's Ferry Park, bordering the route for the torch, hundreds of Tibetan activists gathered to prepare for what many hoped would be a day of peaceful protest against the Olympic flame. Not far off, supporters of the Chinese Olympics were watching a mass display of tai-chi.
Officials estimated that at least 6,000 protesters would line the six-mile route along the city's waterfront, while a pro-Chinese business group said it had printed 10,000 T-shirts for distribution to the public during the day.
The latest protests involving the torch came as US president George Bush considered the possibility of forgoing the opening ceremonies of the Beijing games, a move that inevitably would be seen as a snub to China.
Mr Bush, who has promised to raise the issue of human rights with China, has accepted an invitation from the country's president, Hu Jintao, to attend the ceremony. But White House press secretary Dana Perino sounded less sure: "It is extremely premature for me to say what the president's schedule is going to be."
In San Francisco, city and police officials, after consulting police in London and Paris, said they had opted for a three-tier layer of protection for the 79 runners in the relay.
Police on foot would be surrounded by officers on bicycles, who in turn would be ringed by motorcycle police. No mention was made of the blue-tracksuited Chinese security personnel whose presence caused a furore in Europe.
A no-fly zone was in force over the city, boats were standing by on the waterfront to take the torch should a sit-down protest block the route, and San Francisco's mayor, Gavin Newsome, told reporters that a last-minute change to the planned route was more likely than not.
The day started with Burmese monks marching across the Golden Gate bridge, originally part of the route for the torch relay. Soon after, rallies against China's policies in Tibet and Darfur started up close to the waterfront route of the relay.
One bystander, Peter Chen, holding a cardboard Olympics flag, said he had come to the display after seeing the unruly scenes in Paris and London.
"I saw the protests and it made me angry. People can express their point of view but not in a violent way. I hope people will look at the bigger picture. There is much more freedom in China than there was 20 years ago," he said.
In Ferry Park, Tenzin Subhar, whose parents fled Tibet for India before moving to the US 15 years ago, said she had come to draw attention to the human rights abuses perpetrated by China in Tibet.
Holding a placard bearing the symbol of the Olympic rings in the form of handcuffs, she said: "I'm very thankful. The people in Tibet need to know they are being listened to."
Tagudh Youngdoung, an organiser of the Free Tibet Team, said that the events in Tibet in March had acted as a "spark in the forest".
He said: "We are not against the Olympics or torch bearers. [ But] just chanting and holding prayer vigils - the world has become tired of that . . . perhaps if you push, people will look a little further into what is going on."
The eve of the relay was marked by a rally for Tibet attended by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and actor Richard Gere. Thousands listened as the archbishop compared the repression in Tibet to the apartheid era in South Africa.
"Thank you for continuing that tremendous tradition to stand for freedom," he said. "We want to tell the dictators and the oppressors of this world, hey, you have already lost."
Earlier the city's police chief, Heather Fong, said she had been alarmed by events in Europe: "If there's violence and people get hurt, then it hurts every opinion that is out there."
In China, government officials warned against disruption of the relay as the torch reaches Tibet.
"If someone dares to sabotage the torch relay in Tibet and its scaling of Mount Everest, we will seriously punish him and will not be soft handed," said Qiangba Puncog, governor of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.
Tibetan monks burst into media briefing
XIAHE, China - A group of 15 Tibetan Buddhist monks interrupted a state-sponsored media tour of a riot-hit region of western China yesterday, demanding the return of the Dalai Lama and yelling that they had no human rights.
In the second such incident in as many months, the monks, carrying a banned Tibetan flag, burst out of the Labrang monastery in the town of Xiahe, in the northwestern province of Gansu, and rushed across a plaza to a group of 20 visiting Chinese and foreign journalists.
"The Dalai Lama has to come back to Tibet. We are not asking for Tibetan independence, we are just asking for human rights, we have no human rights now," one monk told the reporters.
Many of the monks had their heads covered in robes. They said other monks were still being held by authorities and that armed plainclothes agents were stationed throughout Xiahe.
Hundreds of monks from the Labrang monastery led a march through Xiahe last month, after riots erupted in the Tibetan regional capital Lhasa on March 14th.
Last month, about 30 monks stormed a briefing by a temple administrator for a select group of foreign journalists at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, shouting that the reporters were being lied to.