May 29 (Bloomberg)
German police and anti-globalization protesters clashed
during running street battles in Hamburg yesterday in what authorities warned
could be a foretaste of trouble at next week's summit of Group of Eight
leaders.
Some 179 policemen were injured in the clashes, Hamburg police spokesman Andreas
Schoepflin said. Authorities drafted in more than 2,800 policemen from six
federal states to monitor a march of almost 4,000 protesters, he said. Marchers
were protesting against a two-day gathering of foreign ministers from European
Union and Asian nations in the city.
`We're not taking any chances, our strategy is to apply zero tolerance against
criminal offenders,' Schoepflin said in a telephone interview today.
The clashes in Hamburg, Germany's second-biggest city, add to existing strains
between authorities and protesters in the run-up to the June 6-8 summit of G-8
industrial nation leaders, to be hosted by Chancellor Angela Merkel in the
Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm, about 100 miles to the east.
A German court last week partially lifted a ban against demonstrations around
Heiligendamm, though tensions still simmered following police raids in Hamburg
and Berlin, a car fire-bombing and the erection of a steel fence around the
summit location.
Schoepflin said 120 protesters were temporarily detained during yesterday's
clashes. Seven men were taken into custody when found preparing Molotov
cocktails in Hamburg's St. Pauli district, scene of yesterday's trouble,
according to another police spokesman, Ralf Meyer.

`No Resort to Violence'
Merkel, who will be seeking pledges by G-8 governments on steps to combat
climate change and enhance scrutiny of financial markets, has said she
understands when police deal with potentially violent protesters.
`One thing must be clear: Violence is no means to enforce political goals,'
Merkel said in a statement published on the German government's Web site May
26.

`We must therefore ensure that there will be no resort to violence.'
German authorities are preparing for the arrival of what protest organizers say
could be as many as 100,000 people in the northern coastal city of Rostock on
June 2 to demonstrate against the Heiligendamm gathering. The G-8 is an
international forum for the governments of Canada, France, Germany, Italy,
Japan, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.
Security at international gatherings was stepped up after a series of
confrontations that started at a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in
1999, peaking in July 2001 at a Group of Seven summit in Genoa, Italy, where
police shot and killed a demonstrator.