Demonstrators gear up to vent fury at G8 summit

BERLIN (AFP) - An estimated 100,000 protestors from anti-globalisation and anti-war groups will march through the northeastern German city of Rostock on Saturday to vent their fury at next week's G8 summit.

As the luxury seaside resort in nearby Heiligendamm prepares to play host to US President George W. Bush and his fellow Group of Eight leaders of the world's wealthiest nations from Wednesday, protestors will launch a week of protests.

Police fear the demonstrations will be hijacked by militants seeking to cause the sort of violence that has scarred past G8 summits, most memorably in the Italian city of Genoa in 2001 when a protestor was killed in clashes with riot police.

Fears of trouble in Rostock heightened when a 5,000-strong protest at a meeting of European and Asian foreign ministers in the northern city of Hamburg this week culminated in pitched battles between masked protestors and police using teargas and batons.

One of the organisers of Saturday's demonstration, Ines Brembach, said she was confident that 100,000 people from 162 groups would take part.

"We are expecting a powerful but peaceful demonstration," she told AFP.

"The participants represent a wide spectrum and are opposed to globalisation, the war in Iraq and a range of issues.

"It is ridiculous to suggest the G8 is trying to achieve a more peaceful world when they are exporting weapons which are leading to the destruction of Africa and its agriculture."

Protestors have also vowed to block the roads to the summit venue in a bid to prevent the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States from arriving.

Germany's main neo-Nazi group, the National Democratic Party (NPD), says its members will also protest against the G8 summit on Saturday, after a court overturned an earlier ban on the march through the state capital Schwerin, to the southwest of Rostock.

The German police say however their main concern is preventing protestors from the extreme left-wing intending to cause violence from joining demonstrations to coincide with the summit.

"Our aim is to prevent radical militants from coming," the head of the federal police, Joerg Ziercke, said in a recent interview with Die Welt newspaper.

As is now customary for G8 summits, the luxury hotel where Bush and the other leaders will gather has been surrounded by a heavily guarded fence topped with barbed wire.

The German authorities are taking no chances with security, deploying 16,000 police to deal with the protests at a cost of 12.5 million euros (16.8 million dollars).

Police sharpshooters wearing face masks were even positioned on the hotel which was hosting the press centre for a meeting of G8 foreign ministers in the city of Potsdam, just outside Berlin, on Wednesday.

German investigators believe a recent spate torching of cars, including the family Mercedes car belonging to the chief editor of the country's top-selling Bild newspaper, is linked to the G8 summit.