Agence France Presse
GENEVA, June 25 (AFP) - As many as 6,000 people took to the streets here Sunday in a demonstration organised by anti-globalisation groups on the eve of the United Nations special world summit on social development.
Police said the demonstrators numbered 4,000, while organisers insisted 6,000 gathered at the appeal of a pressure group -- the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens (ATTAC) -- and several NGOs.
An ATTAC official said 62 countries were represented in the march, with France's contingent the largest at around 2,000.
However the famed French anti-trade liberalisation activist Jose Bove, leader of the 40,000-member French Peasants Confederation and famed for vandalizing a McDonalds restaurant, was not present.
Bove, considered a hero after his role in last November's demonstrations outside the World Trade Organisation's ministerial meeting in Seattle, was held up in France where he is preparing for his trial next week.
However Alain Krivine, a spokesman for France's Revolutionary Communist League, did march alongside the protestors.
"With Seattle, a new movement was born, renewing the internationalist movement and bringing together the old generation and the new," Krivine declared.
But with Swiss police and army reinforcements keeping the protestors well contained, the demonstration passed off peacefully.
Just two years ago, in May 1998, a similar protest of 5,000 people deteriorated on the margins of a WTO ministerial meeting.
Sunday's protest comes on the eve of a UN special world summit on social development, during which heads of state and government ministers are due to examine progress on goals set five years ago on moves towards people-centred development.
"Four out of six billion human beings live in poverty, with the concentration of wealth becoming stronger and stronger," said one protestor in a group carrying effigies of Dracula, their symbol for the WTO.
"We will not sell our souls to multinationals," others shouted.
The five-day summit, a special session of the UN's General Assembly, aims to follow up on 10 commitments made in Copenhagen in 1995 for eradicating poverty, boosting social integration and attaining full employment.
It is the first special General Assembly meeting to take place outside of UN headquarters in New York.
In September demonstrators are scheduled to descend on Prague, for a International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting.:
