Paris - As France's truckers, one of the country's most militant groups of workers, yesterday removed a threat to plague the World Cup with protests over pay, pilots and train-drivers stepped up pledges to disrupt the event. Mr Roger Poletti, head of the truckers' branch of the Force Ouvriere trade union, said after a daylong protest that truck drivers would lift a score of blockades put up on motorways countrywide and hold off new protest action.