Olympic torch begins journey in Beijing

BEIJING — The elaborate ceremony to rekindle the Olympic torch went off without a hitch Monday in closely guarded Tiananmen Square — with hundreds of cheering women in brightly colored T-shirts, flower-toting children and confetti.

There were no protests in Beijing, although some are expected during the 85,000-mile world tour.

Demonstrations are expected as the torch goes to London, Paris and San Francisco. Even stops in Kazakhstan on Wednesday and Turkey on Thursday could be flash points for China's Muslim Uighur minority living abroad.

President Hu Jintao presided at the elaborate ceremony in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, where the flame — carried from Greece in a lantern aboard an Air China flight — reignited the Olympic torch.

The ceremony, filled with political jargon, multicolored balloons and confetti, was broadcast on state television 130 days before the games open. It was meant to display a confident China ready to use the Olympics to show off its growing economic and political clout. About 5,000 people attended the invitation-only event. Hundreds of seats were vacant, save for dozens of plainclothes security agents in black jackets.

Liu Qi, head of the Beijing organizing committee, in his speech repeated that the games will be "green Olympics, high-tech Olympics and the people's Olympics."

There were few ordinary Chinese at the ceremony, however. Roads around the square were closed, nearby subway stations were shuttered, and police barricades kept back thousands of people about a half-mile from the tiny flame.

"The government takes this very seriously," said a man calling himself An Ping who was in the crowd behind the cordon. "They have invested a lot of money in the Olympics, so they want it to go smoothly. It (security) is good because if there is a problem, it will affect the ceremony."

A nearby woman who gave only her family name, Zhao, added: "There are lots of people from outside Beijing. It would be chaos if we didn't have this much security."

The stretch of Chang'an Boulevard — Beijing's 12-lane main thoroughfare — was closed in front of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, as were nearby streets.

Liu, who also heads Beijing's Communist Party, was embarrassed last week in Greece when a protester ran up behind him while he was giving a speech, waving a black flag with handcuffs substituting for the Olympic rings.