Thousands protest Bush in Paris

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

AP via Miami Herald - May 26, 2002
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/3343590.htm

Thousands protest Bush in Paris

By JEAN-MARIE GODARD

PARIS - Several thousand people marched through central Paris on
Sunday to protest President Bush's two-day visit to France and
denounce American domestic and foreign policy.

Marchers shouted "Bush, you are the terrorist" as they walked from
the landmark Place de la Republique to the Bastille, where they
burned American flags.

Some 4,500 people attended the march, LCI television reported.

Hours before, several dozen death penalty opponents gathered near a
replica of the Statue of Liberty in Paris to denounce Bush's support
for capital punishment.

The statue is located near a bridge were death-penalty opponents hung
152 cardboard figures that dangled from string to denote each person
executed in Texas during Bush's nearly six years there as governor.

Michel Taube, head of France's "Together Against the Death Penalty"
Association, said the grim display was a message to "tell the United
States to abolish the death penalty, as European countries have
done."

Leftist and extreme left organizations, ecologists and
pro-Palestinian groups were involved in Sunday's demonstration in
Paris, where Bush met with French President Jacques Chirac at the
presidential palace.

At a press conference afterward, Chirac dismissed the protests
against Bush as "marginal" and said they did not represent a
widespread feeling of antipathy toward the United States or its
president.

"Relations between Europe and the United States are not only a very
old, not only essential to the world equilibrium, but I would say, in
reality, becoming more and more important," he said.

Another march took place in Caen in the Normandy region, where Bush
will travel on Monday to honor the thousands of U.S. soldiers who
died there during World War II. About 1,000 people attended.

French farmer Jose Bove, who shot to fame as an anti-globalization
activist after wrecking a McDonald's restaurant in southern France to
show his opposition to fast food, accused Bush of pursuing a policy
that led to U.S. domination of the world.

Several protesters hoisted a large picture of a pretzel, with a sign
that said "Watch out, Bush!" The president choked on a pretzel
earlier this year while watching football, lost consciousness for a
few seconds and fell and hurt his head.

Others taking part in protests include Attac, a Paris-based
anti-globalization organization that helped organize mass protests at
the Genoa G-8 meeting in July 2001; and environmental groups, which
have sharply criticized Bush for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol that
sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global
warming.

 
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nytrad-05.27.02-05:12:51-3634