Olympic torch relay bypasses San Francisco crowds

Uneasiness about security prompts detour

A Tibetan supporter (right) argued with a Chinese supporter yesterday at the Ferry Plaza in San Francisco. (JEFF CHIU/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

SAN FRANCISCO - The Olympic torch was rerouted away from thousands of demonstrators and spectators who crowded the city's waterfront yesterday to witness the flame's symbolic journey to the Beijing Games.

The planned closing ceremony at the San Francisco Bay waterfront was canceled and another one was planned at San Francisco International Airport. But that was also canceled and the torch was moved directly onto a plane.

Massive crowds had gathered at the waterfront to support and protest the flame.

The last-minute changes were prompted by security concerns following chaotic torch protests in Paris and London.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said the well choreographed fake-out was prompted by the size of the crowds amassing outside AT&T Park, site of the relay's opening ceremony, and whether they try to mob the torch bearers.

There was "a disproportionate concentration of people in and around the start of the relay," he said in a phone interview, while traveling in a caravan that accompanied the teams of relay walkers on its alternate course.

"We felt by the time we got everybody on the sidewalks, too much time would have passed."

Less than an hour before the relay began, officials cut the original 6-mile route nearly in half.

Then, at the opening ceremony, the first torchbearer took the flame from a lantern brought to the stage and held it aloft before running into a warehouse.

A motorcycle escort departed, but the torchbearer was nowhere in sight.

Officials drove the torch about a mile inland and handed it off to two runners away from protesters and media, and they began jogging toward the Golden Gate Bridge, in the opposite direction of the crowds awaiting its passing.

Many spectators were disappointed and angered by the route change.

Chi Zhang, a software engineer from Sunnyvale, waited to see the torch since 10 a.m. He shook his head sadly four hours later when he heard the route had been changed.

"That's surprising," he said. "We were very excited about this. This was supposed to be the only stop in the United States. I took a day off work to be here."

There were signs of tension even before the torch relay began. Pro-Tibet and pro-China groups were given side-by-side permits to demonstrate, and representatives from both sides spilled from their sanctioned sites across a major street and shouted at one another nose to nose, with no visible police presence to separate them.

The torch's 85,000-mile, 20- nation global journey is the longest in Olympic history, and is meant to build excitement for the Beijing Games.

But it has also been targeted by activists angered over China's human rights record.

Meanwhile in Washington yesterday, the House criticized China for its "disproportionate and extreme" response to protests in Tibet, and urged the Beijing government to hold direct, unconditional talks with the Dalai Lama on the future of Tibet.

The House resolution, sponsored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California called on China to end its crackdown on nonviolent protests in Tibet, release Tibetans imprisoned in peaceful demonstrations, and allow international monitors and journalists unfettered access to the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas of China. It passed, 413 to 1.

In the Senate, Senators Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, and Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon, introduced a similar resolution.

Like the House measure, it states that the opening of further Chinese diplomatic missions in the United States should be contingent on Beijing allowing the United States to establish an office in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.