skirmishes yesterday
More than 10,000 police from all over Britain have been drafted into Scotland ahead of tomorrow’s G8 summit in Edinburgh.
Assistant Chief Constable Tom Halpin
Police blamed a hard core of activists for the scuffles that brought much of the Scottish capital to a standstill yesterday and led to 111 arrests yesterday.
The protests took place before a summit of leaders of the G8, who will gather tomorrow at Scotland's Gleneagles Hotel, to try to tackle African poverty and devise a strategy against global warming.
Mindful of the violence that erupted at previous G8 summits in Genoa, Italy, in 2001 and Evian, France, in 2003, Scottish police have thousands of officers on standby in case of trouble.
Chief Constable John Vine of Tayside Police, which is responsible for security at the summit, said his force was happy to work with organised and peaceful demonstrators.
However, he added: "Make no bones about it, if we encounter people who are prepared to use violence to achieve their aims . . . we will take robust action."
Yesterday's demonstrations in Edinburgh began peacefully as protesters, banging drums and shaking bells, marched and danced between police containment cordons.
Police said the trouble was started by "a hard core of determined activists". They said they believed the ringleaders had been held.
Among the protesters were masked members of the Black Bloc, an anarchist group based in Germany and Scandinavia that has been prominent in protests at past G8 summits.
Assistant Chief Constable Tom Halpin said the police response was "proportionate" but critics described it as "inflammatory".
"The behaviour of the police has been provocative and a total overreaction. They seem to be spoiling for a fight," said Frances Curran, a Socialist member of the Scottish parliament.
Thousands of demonstrators are descending on Edinburgh to take part in protests as leaders of the world's wealthiest nations gather for their summit.
The G8 are expected to agree on billions of dollars in new support for Africa, the world's poorest continent. Aid, debt relief and climate change are on the agenda of a summit of the G8 summit.
World leaders are also expected to discuss rising oil prices, and their implications for global growth, and China's yuan currency, which many see as undervalued and giving unfair advantage to Chinese exporters.
US President George W. Bush is taking a hard line at the summit and has signalled to the rest of the G8 not to expect any favours at the summit.
Mr Blair has been stymied on climate change by the United States, the world's biggest polluter, which has been grudging in accepting the world is warming and has rejected the Kyoto protocol on controlling carbon emissions.
All the other G8 powers - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia - have signed up to the treaty to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, which came into force in February.
On Saturday Live 8 concerts attracted a television audience around the world estimated at two billion to highlight the continued plight of the poorest nations.
The former Ultravox singer Midge Ure, a leading light in the Long Walk to Justice movement, condemned those involved in yesterday's trouble. "We are here as the antithesis of what those guys want to achieve. I still can't understand what they are trying to do.
"We are here because we have an agenda, a point we want to make and we are doing that. Forget those guys with masks and swaddling or whatever it is around their heads."