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EU summit

Protests in Nice - Police injured as street riot greets leaders 
by Jon Henly

The staid resort town of Nice became a shifting battlefield for riot police and protesters as the EU summit got under way yesterday to the smell of teargas and the sound of police sirens and helicopters clattering overhead.

Some 4,000 rioters, many masked or hooded, clashed repeatedly with police wearing body armour in the streets around the vast Acropolis congress centre where european Union leaders are meeting until sunday to discuss crucial institutional reforms.

Flag-waving anti-globalisation demonstrators joined Spanish anarchists, French revolutionary communists, radical trade unionists and Basque and Corsican separatists in pitched battles with police throughout the morning, setting fire to a bank and overturning dozens of cars.

At one stage demonstrators fought their way to within 100 metres of the congress centre, triggering a volley of stun grenades and teargas shells.

"We solemnly condemn these acts," the French president, Jaques Chirac, told a press conference later.  "They are in radical contradiction with the democratic traditions of all our countries.  They do democracy no service."

Dispersed by fierce charges from CRS riot police, demonstrators replied with a hail of stones, bottles and molotov cocktails.  Authorities said at least 16 officers were injured, one seriously, and a dozen protesters arrested.

The demonstrators were "extremely determined, armed with baseball bats, iron bars and carrying jerry cans filled with petrol", said a spokesman from the local government office.  "There were certainly unpredictable and uncontrolled elements among them."

Around a dozen people were also injured at Vintomiglia on the Italian-French border in clashes between police and some 1,000 protesters trying to reach the Nice summit.

In the worst of the French violence, rioters set fire to a Banque Nationale de Paris office a few hundred metres from the Acropolis and then attacked the fire-fighters who tried to put it out with sticks and paving stones.

Slogans reading Long Live Eta, Direct Action, Death to Money and fascism=Capitalism were daubed on the building's facade in Basque, French and Italian.  Other banks, offices and car dealerships were splashed with similar slogans.  Demanding social justice in europe, the protesters chanted "No Pasaran", "Europe is not for sale" and "No to a federal Europe".

Across the street, an estate agency's windows were smashed and its desks and computers overturned.  "I feel discouraged and disgusted," said its owner, Luc Mercier.  "They attacked the windows with sledgehammers.  I'm just happy no one was hurt."

Another angry crowd attacked the car of a motorist who had knocked over several protesters.  The worst of the violence appeared to be over by midday, with a sizeable group of protesters heading for nearby Monaco to protest against international tax evasion.  some 150 were later detained at the border of the principality, which has long been accused of being a centre for money laundering.

Many protesters condemned the violence.  "We are peaceful protesters, we don't want any violence," said Javier Pla, 20, a student from Valencia in Spain, clutching a gas mask.  "These people are terrorists."

Anti-globalisation and anti-capitalism protests have become routine at inter-governmental meetings since protesters succeeded in severely disrupting the World Trade Organisation summit in Seattle last year.

Protesters also created mayhem at an International Monetary Fund meeting in Prague, an informal EU summit Biarritz and an Asian-European summit in Seoul.