Olympic flame heads to China amid protests

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece handed the Olympic flame to China, the hosts of the 2008 Games, on Sunday despite attempts by pro-Tibet protesters to disrupt the ceremony.

A small group of activists tried to stop the flame from reaching the Athens stadium where Beijing officials were waiting, but they were quickly removed by Greek police.

Hundreds of police lined the flame's route, scores of security vehicles followed the torch bearers and helicopters hovered overhead -- the strictest security measures since torch relays were launched at the 1936 Berlin Games.

"In 130 days the 2008 Beijing Olympics begin. We and the other nations of the world look forward to this moment," said Beijing Games organizing chief Liu Qi before accepting the flame. The Games run from August 8 to 24.

Protesters holding Tibet flags and shouting "Free Tibet" and "China out of Tibet" failed to break through the police cordon and get to the final torch-bearer entering the stadium, said a Reuters witness.

Police detained 21 Greeks and foreigners for staging the protests but said they would be released later. Several others were moved away from police cordons.

Lit at a protest-disrupted ceremony in ancient Olympia last week, the flame will arrive in Beijing from Greece by charter plane at about 9 a.m. (9 p.m. EDT on Sunday) on Monday before being officially welcomed at a ceremony on Tiananmen Square.

Security will be tight on the square, the focal point of democracy protests that were crushed in 1989, to ensure chief Beijing organizer Liu is not embarrassed a second time.

Rights activists unfurled banners condemning China's rights record at last Monday's flame-lighting ceremony.

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From Beijing, the torch will be taken around the globe and across China on a 137,000 km (85,130 mile) relay before being used to light a cauldron at the opening of the Games.

It arrives in London next Sunday and will then be paraded in Paris and San Francisco -- a four-day stretch where most protests are expected.

"Look at all this police and all this security," said Yiorgos Konstandopoulos, an office clerk attending the ceremony at the stadium where the first modern Olympics were held in 1896. "It's the (IOC's) fault for awarding the Games to China."

Protests marred the relay within Greece. Demonstrators lay on the ground in front of vehicles accompanying the flame in Olympia and the northern city of Thessaloniki, holding up the runners several times.

Exiled Tibetans and human rights activists targeted the Olympic flame to protest against a crackdown by Chinese forces on protests in Tibet and parts of western China.

China has ruled Tibet since a 1950 invasion and has accused Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama of plotting "terror" ahead of the Olympics.

(Additional reporting by Nick Mulvenney in Beijing; Writing by Dina Kyriakidou; Editing by Keith Weir)