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Anti-trade protesters smash Davos shops, cars

DAVOS(Switzerland): Anti-free trade protesters tried on Saturday to force a way through police lines to disrupt the Davos conference of world business and political leaders and smashed windows of shops, cars and a restaurant.

Waving banners denouncing the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in this normally quiet Swiss mountain resort as a "meeting of murderers", the protesters were headed by men in black ski masks, some wielding sticks.

With them was militant French peasant leader Jose Bove, who had been invited, but refused, to take part in discussions at the Forum, which U.S. President Bill Clinton addressed on Saturday as the protesters gathered.

Police equipped with water cannon halted the marchers some 500 metres (yards) from the Davos conference centre.

Two or three policemen were injured, one when some demonstrators pulled off his helmet and began beating him around the head, witnesses said.

Police used pepper spray and rubber bullets against a handful of hardcore protesters.

Many of the demonstrators, who numbered between 1,000 and 1,500 according to witnesses, came to Davos by special bus and or by train. Three came down a mountainside by paraglider.

Police said many were believed to have entered Switzerland from Italy for the protest, permission for which had been denied by Davos city authorities on security grounds during Clinton's six-hour visit.

Permission has been given for a protest on Sunday, and as the demonstration petered out, many of the marchers said they would come back again then.-Reuters