GAMES OF SHAME

Paris' Olympic torch relay descended into chaos Monday, with protesters scaling the Eiffel Tower, grabbing for the flame and forcing security officials to repeatedly snuff out the torch and transport it by bus past demonstrators yelling "Free Tibet!"

The anti-Chinese demonstrations ignited across the capital with unexpected power and ingenuity, foiling 3,000 police officers deployed on motorcycles, in jogging gear and even inline skates.

Chinese organizers finally gave up on the relay, canceling the last third of what China had hoped would be a joyous jog by torch-bearing VIPs past some of Paris' most famous landmarks.

Thousands slowed the relay to a stop-start crawl, with impassioned displays of anger over China's human rights record, its grip on Tibet and support for Sudan despite years of bloodshed in Darfur.

Five times, the Chinese officials in dark glasses and tracksuits who guard the torch extinguished it and retreated to the safety of a bus — the last time emerging only after the vehicle drove within 15 feet of the final stop, a track and field stadium. A torchbearer then ran the final steps inside.

Outside, a few French activists supporting Tibet had a fist-fight with pro-Chinese demonstrators. The French activists spat on them and shouted, "Fascists!"

In San Francisco, where the torch is due to arrive Wednesday, three protesters wearing harnesses and helmets climbed up the Golden Gate Bridge and tied the Tibetan flag and two banners to its cables. The banners read "One World One Dream. Free Tibet" and "Free Tibet." They later climbed down.

In all, seven people were charged with conspiracy and causing a public nuisance, with the three climbers facing additional charges of trespassing, said Mary Ziegenbien, a spokeswoman with the California Highway Patrol.

On Tuesday, China condemned protests as "despicable," blaming them on groups seeking to split Tibet from the country.

The 17.4-mile route in Paris started at the Eiffel Tower, headed down the Champs-Elysees toward City Hall, then crossed the Seine before ending at the Charlety track and field stadium.

Throughout the day, protesters booed trucks emblazoned with the names of Olympic corporate sponsors, chained themselves to railings and hurled water at the flame. Some unfurled banners depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs from the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral. Others waved signs reading "the flame of shame."

The Interior Ministry said police made 18 arrests.

Officers sprayed tear gas to break up a sit-in by about 300 pro-Tibet demonstrators who blocked the route. Police tackled protesters who ran at the torch; at least two activists got within arm's length before they were grabbed by police. Near the Louvre, police blocked a protester who approached the flame with a fire extinguisher.

One detained demonstrator, handcuffed in a police bus, wrote "liber" on her right palm and "te" on the other — spelling the French word for "freedom" — and held them up to the window.

With protesters slowing down the relay, a planned stop at Paris City Hall was canceled. Earlier, French officials hung a banner declaring support for human rights on the building's facade.

A spokesman for the French Olympic Committee, Denis Masseglia, estimated that a third of the 80 athletes and other VIPs who had been slated to carry the torch did not get to do so.

On a bus carrying French athletes, one man in a track suit shed a tear as protesters pelted the vehicle with eggs, bottles and soda cans.

The chaos started at the Eiffel Tower moments after the relay began. Green Party activist Sylvain Garel lunged for the first torchbearer, former hurdler Stephane Diagana, shouting "Freedom for the Chinese," before security officials pulled him back.

"It is inadmissible that the games are taking place in the world's biggest prison," Garel said later.

Outside parliament, as the torch passed, 35 lawmakers protested, shouting "Freedom for Tibet."

"The flame shouldn't have come to Paris," said Carmen de Santiago, who had "free" painted on one cheek and "Tibet" on the other.

Pro-Chinese activists carrying national flags held counter-demonstrations.

"The Olympic Games are about sports. It's not fair to turn them into politics," said Gao Yi, a Chinese doctoral student in computer science.

France's former sports minister, Jean-Francois Lamour, stressed that though the torch was extinguished along the route, the Olympic flame itself still burned in a lantern where it is kept overnight and on airplane flights. A Chinese official said that flame was used to re-light the torch each time it was brought aboard the bus.

Pro-Tibet advocate Christophe Cunniet said he and other activists were detained after they waved Tibetan flags, threw flyers and tried to block the route. Cunniet said police kicked him, cutting his forehead. "I'm still dazed," he said.

At least one athlete, former Olympic champion Marie-Jose Perec, was supportive of the demonstrators. "I think it is very, very good that people have mobilized like that," she told French television.

But other athletes and sports officials were bitterly dismayed.

"A symbol like that, carried by young people who want to deliver a message of peace, should be allowed to pass," said the head of the French Olympic Committee, Henri Serandour. "These games are a sounding board for all those who want to speak about China and Tibet. But at the same time, there are many wars on the planet that no one is talking about."

International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Giselle Davies agreed. "We respect that right for people to demonstrate peacefully, but equally there is a right for the torch to pass peacefully and the runners to enjoy taking part in the relay," she said.

China's Foreign Ministry assailed the demonstrations. "We express our strong condemnation to the deliberate disruption of the Olympic torch relay by Tibetan separatist forces," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in a Web statement. "Their despicable activities tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit and challenge all the people loving the Olympic Games around the world."

Jiang also disputed reports that the torch had to be extinguished several times, calling them false. "To protect the security and dignity of the Olympic torch under the circumstances there, the modes of relay were temporarily changed," she said.

Jiang also denied that authorities were in any way forced to extinguish the torch, implying it was their decision to put it out.

Police had hoped to prevent the chaos that marred the relay in London a day earlier. There, police had repeatedly scuffled with activists and 37 people were arrested.

Beijing organizers criticized the London protests as a "disgusting" form of sabotage by Tibetan separatists.

"The act of defiance from this small group of people is not popular," said Sun Weide, a spokesman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee. "It will definitely be criticized by people who love peace and adore the Olympic spirit. Their attempt is doomed to failure."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has left open the possibility of boycotting the Olympic opening ceremony depending on how the situation evolves in Tibet. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday that was still the case.

Activists have been protesting along the torch route since the flame embarked on its 85,000-mile journey from Ancient Olympia in Greece to the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics.

The round-the-world trip is the longest in Olympic history, and is meant to highlight China's rising economic and political power. Activists have seized on it as a platform for their causes.

The relay also is expected to face demonstrations in New Delhi and possibly elsewhere on its 21-stop, six-continent tour before arriving in mainland China May 4.

France's interior minister has defended the way police handled the widely disrupted Olympic torch relay in Paris.

Michele Alliot-Marie says the 18 arrests Monday show that officers did their job of protecting the flame and torchbearers while letting protesters express themselves.

The interior minister told Europe-1 radio on Tuesday that the start-and-stop procession a day earlier posed problems, including "fights" among some spectators.

Meanwhile, the No. 2 Chinese Embassy official in France says the disruptions were a "fiasco" for protesters supporting Tibetan independence.

Ku Xing said on RTL radio the protesters couldn't grab the flame or fully stop the relay as they had hoped. Ku called the disruptions an "indignation."

China dubbed its Olympic torch relay the “Journey of Harmony,” a 21-nation promotional tour for the most expensive Games the world has seen and for a host nation eager to showcase its rising wealth and diplomatic clout.

But what was supposed to be a majestic procession through the French capital resulted in waves of chaos on Monday, as human rights groups used the event to assail China’s record on rights and make the Olympic Games an increasingly delicate political challenge for the governing Communist Party.

China has spent eight years and tens of billions of dollars preparing to host the Summer Games, which Beijing has envisioned as a kind of coming-of-age party to showcase its rapid growth.

But the outbreak of violent unrest in Tibet and a continuing crackdown there by Chinese security forces has emboldened China’s critics, a diverse coalition of rights groups whose demands are often ignored in China and played down by Western leaders eager to promote Chinese trade and investment.

Passing through Paris under armed guard, the torch was extinguished several times, and police officers moved it aboard a bus to protect it as demonstrators swarmed the security detail. Chinese Olympic organizers abruptly canceled the last leg, as well as a stop at City Hall, where a banner proclaimed, “Paris Defends Human Rights Everywhere in the World.”

About 3,000 police officers — on foot, horseback, inline skates, motorcycles and even boats on the Seine — had been deployed in an attempt to prevent a repetition of scenes played out in London on Sunday, when the relay turned into a tumult of scuffles and dozens of arrests.

The torch ceremonies have focused attention on causes that have languished on the world’s back burner for decades. At the International Campaign for Tibet, telephones have rung continually with calls from news media outlets, politicians and people wanting to sign petitions and hold events, said Jan Willem den Besten, the Dutch campaign coordinator.

“What is most dramatic is to see how broad and deep the support has become,” Mr. den Besten said. “You almost have to feel sorry for the Chinese because it’s turned completely against the public image they wanted to present.”

In San Francisco, where the torch is to arrive on Wednesday, several protesters scaled the vertical suspension cables of the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled two large banners reading, “One World, One Dream,” and “Free Tibet 08.” At least seven people were arrested.

At the same time, the city’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, was huddling with the police to consider last-minute changes to the torch’s route and new security measures, said Nathan Ballard, a city spokesman. “If adjustments to the route for safety reasons are necessary, then adjustments will be made,” said Mr. Ballard, who said the mayor had been in contact with American and Chinese officials and with protest groups.

Also on Monday, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton joined a small but growing number of leading political figures in the United States and Europe who have called for a boycott of the opening ceremony of the Games.

In Paris, at the Trocadéro, opposite the Eiffel Tower, human rights organizations like Amnesty International and press freedom groups like Reporters Without Borders protested side by side with representatives of a banned underground Chinese democracy party, Taiwan nationalists and proponents of independence for the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in western China.

“We all have the same problem,” Can Asgar, a leader of the Uighur diaspora in Munich, yelled into a microphone at the Trocadéro.

“Freedom for Uighurs. Freedom for Tibet. We must fight together.”

The Eurostar train from London to Paris on Sunday evening carried a large contingent of advocates moving from one protest to the next, including Tibetan nuns who had been jailed in China for 12 years and Tibetan athletes who live in Switzerland and call themselves Team Tibet. Busloads of protesters arrived from Belgium and the Netherlands.

The range of China’s opponents was so thoroughly covered that it included a protest by Amnesty International on behalf of a blind Chinese human rights lawyer who is in prison in Beijing.

Paris became a scene of disarray. At least one protester came within a yard of the swarm of police officers and Chinese Olympic officials crowding around the torchbearer. On several occasions, officers tackled protesters. The police said about 20 people had been arrested.

A man identified by the police as a Green Party activist was grabbed by security officers as he headed for Stéphane Diagana, the president of France’s athletics league and a former world hurdles champion, who was carrying the torch from the first floor of the Eiffel Tower.

Again and again, protesters interrupted the procession. On a street along the Seine, demonstrators forced officers to retreat with the torch onto a bus to continue along the route, the police said. Around the same time, the flame went out. The torch went out more than four times, according to the French Olympic Committee, as the police repeatedly moved it aboard the bus, including the final stretch between City Hall and the stadium that houses the French Olympic Committee’s offices.

In Beijing on Monday, a spokeswoman for the city’s Olympic organizing committee — speaking before the disruptions in France — vowed that the relay would continue on its international route. “The torch represents the Olympic spirit, and people welcome the torch,” said Wang Hui, the spokeswoman. “The general public is very angry at this sabotage by a few separatists.”

Meanwhile, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, used a meeting of national Olympic committee representatives in Beijing on Monday to criticize the London protests, but also to call for a rapid and peaceful solution to the confrontations in Tibet.

He rejected the idea of boycotting the Games.

“The torch relay has been targeted,” Mr. Rogge said in a speech to the Association of National Olympic Committees, according to Reuters. “The I.O.C. has expressed serious concerns and calls for rapid, peaceful resolution in Tibet.”

“Violence for whatever reason is not compatible with the values of the torch relay and the Olympic Games,” he said. “Some people have played with the idea of boycotts. As I speak today, there is no momentum for a general boycott.”

But after the meeting, the leader of the Norwegian Olympic Committee, Tove Paule, said in an interview that the torch relay should be reconsidered.

“The International Olympic Committee may have a bigger problem when the torch relay continues, if we get more of these demonstrations,” Ms. Paule was quoted as saying by NRK, the Norwegian public broadcaster, Reuters reported.

When the flame moves to San Francisco on Wednesday, it will be the sixth stop on its monthlong international tour.

Amnesty International and several other rights groups have pledged to rally along the route of the torch, which is scheduled to be run six miles along the city’s scenic waterfront. A heavy law enforcement presence is expected, with local police officers supplemented with officers from other California cities and state and federal agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration said it would also enact a low-altitude, no-flight zone over the route.

Ngodup Tsering, the president of Tibetan Association of Northern California, said he expected several thousand protesters to converge on San Francisco, which he hoped would not escalate into the type of scrum seen in Paris on Monday.

“We are trying to educate our people, to remind them that they are here to be nonviolent,” said Mr. Tsering, whose group is based in Berkeley, Calif. “We have to be prepared, and very calm and nonviolent.”