FRANCE:THE OLYMPIC flame was extinguished twice here yesterday. Protests by thousands of Free Tibet activists, the Green Party and the Reporters Without Borders group forced police to carry the torch in a bus for much of its journey.
The procession, which was to have covered 28km and involved 80 French athletes, was disrupted from the moment it started at 12.35pm. The Olympic gold medallist hurdler Stéphane Diagana carried the torch only a few metres on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower when Sylvain Garel, the president of the Greens group on the Paris city council, lunged at him and tried to grab the torch.
Mr Garel was pulled away by police as he shouted "Freedom for the Chinese!" It was "inadmissible that the games are taking place in the world's biggest prison," he said later.
Another Green official, Mireille Ferri, the vice-president of the Ile-de-France regional council, was arrested trying to reach the Eiffel Tower carrying a fire extinguisher. At least 28 people were reported arrested, nine fewer than in London on Sunday.
The Paris procession was as violent and disorderly as London, despite 3,000 police on foot, roller blades, bicycles, motorcycles and on horseback.
Police twice extinguished the flame "for technical reasons" before putting it on a bus to shelter it from protesters.
The irony of yesterday's botched ceremony was that most French politicians and many of the athletes involved were in sympathy with the protesters. A stop at the Paris town hall was cancelled at the request of the Chinese "for reasons of security and image", said mayor Bertrand Delanoë. He hung a large banner saying "Paris defends human rights around the world" on the facade of his building.
Green city councillors also unfurled the Tibetan flag and Reporters Without Borders' black banner with handcuffs interlinked like the Olympic rings from the windows of the town hall. Forty deputies stood outside the National Assembly before a banner saying, "Respect for Human Rights in China".
Marie-José Perec, the former Olympic champion runner, said: "I think it is very, very good that people have mobilised like that."
A Tibetan pushed down by police near the Eiffel Tower bled profusely from the mouth.
At one point, when the relay was interrupted for the third time, protesters threw plastic bottles, cups and pieces of bread at a male athlete in a wheelchair, as well as at the bus carrying the torch.
Pro-Chinese and Tibetan protesters came to blows outside Charlety stadium, the final destination. The bus stopped just a few metres outside the stadium and a runner carried the torch in to the stage.
Yesterday's events have increased pressure on the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
The French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said yesterday that Mr Sarkozy's absence was still an option.
It would have added significance because France will hold the presidency of the European Union when the games take place in August.
Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee's president, took the unusual step of publicly questioning Chinese policy in Tibet when he addressed Olympic delegates in Beijing.
"I am very concerned with the international situation and what is happening," he said.
"The torch relay has been targeted. The IOC has expressed its serious concern and calls for a rapid peaceful resolution in Tibet."
The flame now travels to San Francisco, where it will encounter further protests.