GENOA, Italy, (AFP) -Radicals are threatening to breach tight security as world leaders begin meeting here Friday for a Group of Eight summit to discuss poverty, disease and a stuttering world economy. (Read photo caption below)
Some 30,000 protesters from disparate anti-globalisation groups marched peacefully through part of the city late Thursday in a first test for Italy's blanket security arrangements for the summit.
At least three times that many are due here Saturday in the biggest anti-globalisation protest yet.
Radicals among the groups, responsible for the worst of the violence at last month's European Union summit in Gothenburg, have vowed to smash through cordons protecting the leaders and said police would be forced to use violence to stop them.
Seven of the eight leaders of the world's most industrialised nations were due to arrive in this security-saturated city early Friday. Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi flew in from Tokyo late Thursday.
The leaders will head into the summit's opening session at midday. Russian President Vladimir Putin is due here four hours later, skipping the first session which involves the Group of Seven financial powerhouses.
The sense of showdown here is palpable.
US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a joint press conference at the end of Bush's two day visit to Britain that violence will not deter them from business in Genoa.
Both said the trade liberalisation measures which would be discussed at the summit would benefit the developing countries that protesters have said they wanted to help.
Blair hoped demonstrators would protest "peacefully, because the things we are discussing at this summit in terms of global trade, in terms of the developing world, are things that are of huge importance not just to the most prosperous parts of the world, but also to some of the poorest countries of the world."
Bush told reporters: "For those who would use this opportunity to say the world should become isolationist, they are condemning those who are poor to poverty, and we don't accept it."
Radicals who have infiltrated the anti-globalisation movement said they had earmarked Friday as the day on which they will breach a high-security "red zone" in central Genoa, cut off from the rest of the city by four-meter (13-feet) high steel and concrete gates.
Demonstrators indicated they are prepared for a robust police response, many arriving at a sprawling tent city on the edge of Genoa with perspex shields, helmets and heavy plastic vests.
Protestors continued to stream into to the city aboard trains and special buses from across Europe throughout Thursday, mainly from France, Germany, Britain, Switzerland and elsewhere in Italy.
The three-day meeting will address problems of the worldwide economy, fighting Third World poverty and slowing the spread of AIDS and other killer diseases.
G8 leaders -- from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- will also join Friday with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in launching a warchest to battle AIDS and other diseases.
They will meet the same day with leaders of Algeria, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa.
The leaders must also discuss the threat of global warming after Bush refused to endorse the Kyoto Protocol to curb the output of gases blamed for heating up the planet.
The intensity of the Gothenburg clashes and the Genoa security preparations has prompted EU Commission President Romano Prodi to urge world leaders to return to the spirit of the earliest summits in the mid-1970s.
Because of fears of violence, all the leaders except for Bush, whose plans are being kept secret, will stay on board the European Vision cruise liner docked in the city's old port.
The area is being patrolled by Italian navy and police boats as Genoa prepares for the worst and hopes for the best.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Police walk through an encampment of police vehicles as Genoa's old town is sealed off to protect a weekend Group of Eight summit against anti-globalization demonstrators July 19, 2001. With concrete barricades and steel mesh fences, the police closed off a key-shaped 'red zone' including the 13th century Ducal Palace where the G8 leaders will meet as well as an old port where most of them will sleep on board a luxury ocean liner. (Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)