BIARRITZ: Facingaccusations from political opponents of being out at sea over his Brexitstrategy, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson strode into the Atlantic Oceanfor a bracing dip yesterday before tackling trade talks with western allies ata G7 summit. Johnson plunged into the waters off Biarritz flanked by Frenchsoldiers and with Britain's ambassador to France, Ed Llewellyn, in tow, aJohnson aide said.
Better known forhis fondness of cycling before entering 10 Downing Street, Johnson swam arounda rocky outcrop several hundred meters off a Biarritz beach. "Let me giveyou a metaphor," Johnson told ITV. "I swam round that rock thismorning. From here you cannot tell there is a gigantic hole in that rock. Thereis a way through." "My point to the EU is that there is a waythrough, but you can't find the way through if you just sit on the beach."
With a deepeningpolitical crisis at home, Johnson is making his international debut at a gatheringof G7 leaders in the French resort of Biarritz, less than three months beforethe United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union. Caught between Europeanand US thinking, Johnson was treading a delicate path, needing to avoidangering a volatile Trump and risking trade ties while not alienating himselffrom other leaders who have a more multilateral approach to world politics.
Police fire teargas
Meanwhile, Frenchpolice used tear gas and water cannon to break up anti-G7 protesters in thesouthern city of Bayonne, as leaders from the world's leading industrializednations arrived for their summit just a few kilometers away in Biarritz. SinceMonday, anti-capitalist activists, environmentalists and otheranti-globalization groups have been flocking to a counter-summit insouthwestern France that organizers insisted would be peaceful.
More than 9,000anti-G7 protesters took part in the largest protest on Saturday - a mass marchover a bridge linking France and Spain that took place without incident.However the atmosphere was more hostile in Bayonne, where hundreds ofprotesters chanting anti-capitalist slogans did not seem to follow a route,instead wandering the streets trying to find a way into the city centre.
However thepolice, who were deployed en masse in the city, put up a barricade blockingtheir path. The protesters tried to get through the barricade and police facedthem down for more than an hour, according to AFP journalists. The angry crowdswere eventually dispersed in the evening after the police used tear gas andwater cannon. While several people were detained, the local authorities haveyet to announce the number of arrests.
'Amazonia isburning'
The larger,peaceful march took place in the French coastal town of Hendaye, about 30kilometers from Biarritz, with police giving a figure of 9,000 but organizerssaying as many as 15,000 people turned up. Biarritz is a popular tourist destination that would normally be baskingin its annual summer boom, but with US President Donald Trump and other worldleaders flying in for three days of talks, the resort was in lockdown."Heads of state: act now, Amazonia is burning!" read one banner asthe huge crowd rallied under cloudless blue skies in Hendaye, the sloganreferring to the wildfires ravaging the world's largest rainforest.
"If theclimate was a cathedral, we would already have saved it," read another,referring to Notre-Dame in Paris, which was ravaged by a fire in April thatprompted donors to pledge 850 million euros ($954 million) to rebuild it.Waving thousands of flags, they marched across the Bidassoa River heading forthe Spanish town of Irun, chanting slogans while some played drums. Thecolorful crowd was an eclectic mix of environmental activists, families,anti-globalists, a handful of anti-government "yellow vest"protesters and Basque nationalists, AFP correspondents said.
"We are veryhappy because it was a huge challenge," said Sebastian Bailleul ofAlternatives G7, one of the march's organizers. But authorities remain on highalert, with Biarritz in lockdown. "I want to call for calm and forunity," French President Emmanuel Macron said in an address to the nationjust before the opening of the summit, where world leaders were to address theAmazon crisis along with other global issues.
13,000 police
Overnight, 17people were arrested and four police lightly injured when skirmishes eruptednear in Urrugne, a village some 25 kilometers south of Biarritz. Friday night'sconfrontation occurred as activists tried to block police from a site wherethey had set up camp, with police firing tear gas and using controversialrubber rounds known as LBDs to disperse them, AFP correspondents said.
France hasdeployed more than 13,000 police and gendarmes to secure the event amid fearsof disturbances by radical anti-capitalist groups, anarchists or the yellowvest protesters. But the demonstrators insisted their aims were peaceful."It's important to show that people are mobilized and do not accept thetype of world they're offering us," said Elise Dilet, a 47-year-oldactivist with Bizi, a Basque anti-globalization group.
A raft ofunprecedented security measures has been put in place for the summit, with thepicturesque Grand Plage beach off-limits to everyone except delegates and thoseaccredited for the summit. Earlier this week, police arrested three Germanactivists carrying a tear gas canister, an icepick and wrenches along withdocuments "linked to the extreme left", prosecutors said. They werecharged with planning violence, sentenced to several months prison and bannedfrom returning to France.
Another Germannational was arrested early Wednesday and deported, since French authoritieshad banned him over "violent actions" at a previous G20 meeting,legal sources said. In anticipation of trouble, France has set up a specialmagistrates' court, with 17 prosecutors and 70 lawyers on hand, as well asholding cells with capacity for 300 people for anyone caught breaking the law.- Agencies