More arrests at Republican convention

8.15am

NEW YORK - Police arrested at least two dozen activists on Tuesday in an all-day wave of acts of civil disobedience and other demonstrations to protest against the Republican convention in New York.

Seventeen protesters were arrested for illegally blocking traffic on foot or on bicycles in the Wall Street financial district and six were taken into custody for illegally wearing masks at a Harlem subway station, police said.

One man was arrested by about 10 police officers after he climbed a tree to obtain a better view of a rally by fellow immigration activists outside US government offices, eyewitnesses said.

Since last Thursday, more than 570 people have been arrested in demonstrations across the city to protest against the US-led war in Iraq and other Bush administration policies.

New York's 37,000 strong police department is out in force on foot, horses, bicycles and in the air to monitor protests and to guard the city after government warnings of a terrorist attack during the election season.

The Republican convention opened at Madison Square Garden on Monday under tight security with speakers praising President George W Bush as a decisive leader in the US war on terrorism. The meeting ends on Thursday. Bush will face Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in the November 2 presidential election.

Political activists and police had expected the protesters to try to take centre stage on Tuesday after the A31 Action Coalition vowed a day of nonviolent civil disobedience, including sit-ins and street theatre to confront corporations and Republican delegates.

"To spend a few hours or a day in jail is really a small sacrifice ... compared to people who have been subject to Bush administration policies," War Resisters League activist Elizabeth Broad said at an A31 news briefing.

The group said it expects some affiliates to take unannounced "direct action" and the day will end with "civil disobedience and resistance" at a site designated for demonstrations two blocks from the convention site.

At the immigration rally, activists accused the Bush administration of unfairly detaining hundreds of mostly Muslim men since the September 11, 2001 attacks by Islamic radicals.

"We came here to be in solidarity with the immigrant community who have been hassled and discriminated against," Maya Sharmen, 21, a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey said. "Bush has tried to make them into scapegoats."

Most of the demonstrations in the last six days have been peaceful, including an anti-war march on Sunday by several hundred thousand people past Madison Square Garden.

In one violent incident on Monday night, a plainclothes police officer was beaten unconscious at a demonstration.

In one piece of street theatre on Tuesday activists in pig snouts protested over Halliburton's controversial contracts in Iraq. The protesters called the company "Hallibacon" and threw fake money up in the air outside a major Manhattan hotel hosting Halliburton's breakfast for Texas Republican Party delegates. There were no arrests at the demonstration.

- REUTERS