http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/current/international/stories/nukedemo.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
PARIS (Reuter) - French police detained several dozen Greenpeace protesters Friday after a cat-and-mouse game across central Paris with anti-nuclear activists trying to defy a ban on them forming a ``human chain'' in the capital.
Officials said those detained were among several hundred activists from the environmental pressure group who popped up in about a dozen locations in the city to unfurl banners denouncing France's intended nuclear test campaign in the South Pacific.
Many of the protesters were foreigners, apparently German or Dutch, eyewitnesses said.
Recent opinion polls show a majority of the French oppose the resumed weapons tests but the anti-nuclear fever gripping neighboring north European states has not affected France, resulting in paltry attendance at anti-bomb demonstrations.
Yet police appeared soon after the Paris demonstrators gathered, eyewitnesses said. Those detained were held for blocking traffic and taking part in a banned demonstration.
Police prevented several foreign-registered cars with canoes or dinghies on their roofs from entering central Paris where demonstrators apparently wanted to launch the vessels in the river Seine near the National Assembly.
Greenpeace had intended to form the ``human chain'' through central Paris to carry millions of signatures against the nuclear tests to the office of President Jacques Chirac.
Paris police banned the protest, planned to coincide with the earliest date for the resumption of French nuclear testing, saying it was likely to cause public disorder.
Chirac has announced that France will stage a final series of seven or eight underground tests from September to next May at the Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls, ending a three-year moratorium on testing.