Fresh anti-G8 clashes in scarred Rostock (Roundup)

Jun 4, 2007, 14:51 GMT

Rostock, Germany - Radical demonstrators fought anew with riot police in the German city of Rostock Monday, two days after clashes at protests against this week's G8 (Group of Eight) summit.

Police said they made at least 15 arrests, but the violence was far less than on Saturday, when nearly 1,000 people - police and demonstrators - were injured.

A wide spectrum of anti-G8 groups, ranging from Christian pacifists to leftwing extremists who reject all state authority, have gathered in Rostock before the three-day summit begins this Wednesday. Some came from abroad.

Most of the protesters promised to stay non-violent, but police estimated 2,000 of the protesters were potential 'Black Block' activists who march masked, in black clothes and at the ready to fight with police.

Police said that of nine people remanded in custody on assault charges after the Saturday riots, two were Spanish, one Ukrainian, one Polish, one Belgian and four German.

Police detained 128 persons at the Saturday riot, 16 of them non-Germans. Most were freed without being arraigned but may be charged later.

Germans differed widely in their response to the riots.

Some protesters accused police of 'provoking' violence by sending phalanxes into the crowd to arrest stone-throwers, whereas police trade union leaders said riot control had to be stricter or police lives would be lost.

Political parties including the Greens, who had a delegation at the demonstration, condemned the radicals.

German border guards said they turned back a bus at the Polish border Monday because 18 Polish protesters on board had gas-masks, helmets and instructions for countering riot police in their baggage.

On Monday, the main demonstration, by about 1,000 people, was directed against German visa laws and called for 'global freedom of migration,' including allowing poor people to move to Germany.

The march was mainly peaceful and a blockade of an immigration-agency building was only of brief duration, police said in Rostock, a city 25 kilometres north-east of the Heiligendamm venue for the summit.

In Berlin, interior ministry spokesman Stefan Kaller denied spot-checks at German frontiers and airports had been too lax. Germany normally has no passport checks on arrivals from 14 European nations, but travellers have had to have their identity documents ready since late May.

Kaller said that had enabled border police to check 500,000 arrivals, denying entry to 85 persons.

Protest groups had earlier advertised the Saturday rally throughout Europe as a riposte to the club of seven Western nations and Russia, which are to discuss economic, climate-change and other policies at the G8 meeting.

At the German constitutional court in Karlsruhe, officials said a ruling was likely Tuesday or Wednesday on an urgent protesters' appeal for permission to march to gates of the summit compound this Thursday.

Last week a tribunal ruled that the Thursday protest must stay on a main highway which comes no closer than six kilometres to the summit hotel.