Agence France Presse
TRIESTE, Italy, March 3 (AFP) - Several thousand environmentalists, students and leftwing protesters marched through the streets of this Adriatic port city here Saturday, shadowed by squads of helmeted riot police, as a Group of Eight (G8) ministerial meeting unfolded.
In a powerful show of strength, the Italian authorities brought in around 3,000 police to barricade the streets surrounding a historic palace in the port where the environment ministers were meeting.
The local press predicted Saturday that the talks could be overrun by thousands of "Seattle people," opposed to globalisation, who were being stealthily organised through the Internet.
Police dogs, teargas grenade launchers and dozens of buses and Land-Rovers, filled with backup police in full anti-riot gear, were held in reserve, but were unneeded.
The march was noisy but good humoured and there were no reports of violence. There was a brief moment of tension near the venue when a handful of protestors launched firework rockets into the sky and tossed a few coloured smokebombs at police to make their views known.
"There are the criminals, there are the people responsible," shouted an activist from the radical group Tute Bianche through a massive loudspeaker system, placed on the back of a truck which crawled through the rain-soaked streets, blasting out rap and reggae music.
Five demonstrators, dressed in sombreros, taunted the police with a Mexican-style rendition of the theme music to the Laurel and Hardy movies.
Raffaela Bolini, a member of an Italian grass-roots environmental group, Arci, said she came from Rome to express her concern about the world's deteriorating environment and what she said was the undemocratic clout of the rich industrial nations.
"We believe that the G8 is not a democratic, legitimate organisation to govern the world. We have a legitimate organisation, which is the United Nations," Bolini said.
A young woman who gave her name as Georgia, a 16-year-old student from Trieste, said that environment questions were the biggest concerns of today.
"We can try to save the world by acting at the grass roots, making even the smallest contributions count," she said.
The three-day G8 meeting was to end Sunday. The group comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.:
