Tight security surrounds Beijing torch relay in Greece

By Karolos Grohmann

ATHENS (Reuters) - Tight security surrounded the last day of the Greek leg of the Beijing Games torch relay on Saturday with police repeatedly changing the route to the Athens Acropolis for fear of protests.

Human rights activists and Tibetan demonstrators disrupted the globally televised torch lighting ceremony in ancient Olympia on Monday, breaking a security cordon and unfurling protest banners during the Beijing organizing chief's speech.

Further protests marred the start of the relay, with demonstrators lying on the ground in front of vehicles accompanying the torchbearers in Olympia and holding up the runners several times.

"The relay route to the Acropolis has already been changed three times today," a Greek official close to the relay told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"We ourselves do not know the exact time of the flame's ascent to the Acropolis."

Exiled Tibetans and human rights activists have vowed to demonstrate in Athens on Saturday and Sunday, the day the flame is officially handed over to Beijing Games organizers (BOCOG).

The flame will then arrive in China on March 31 for the start of a domestic and international relay.

More than 1,000 police will be on guard during the handover ceremony in and outside the Panathenian stadium, site of the first modern Olympics in 1896.

The security operation has also triggered the anger of the local foreign press association and the photojournalists' union who said in a statement that their fundamental right to inform was severely curbed by the tight measures.

NO POLITICAL DEBATE

Chinese forces cracked down on protests in Tibet and parts of western China recently after a wave of anti-government protests that have highlighted discontent with Communist rule in those areas.

China has ruled Tibet since a 1950 invasion and has blamed Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama of plotting "terror" ahead of the August 8-24 Olympics.

"We are here to celebrate the Olympic spirit, not to come to a political debate," BOCOG Executive Vice President Wang Wei told a news conference.

"People have not gotten the truth. The truth is the turmoil was orchestrated by a small group of people... everything was well timed."

About a dozen human rights activists demonstrated peacefully outside the conference site before being moved further away by police.