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Lock-down at G8 summit site
03/07/2005 21:40 - (SA)
Gleneagles - An 8km ring of steel; 10 000 police on standby; watchtowers and a no-fly zone. Gleneagles Hotel was locked down on Sunday as a sophisticated G8 security operation to protect the world's most powerful men came into force.
John Vine of Tayside police has spent the past 18 months planning for the arrival on Wednesday of leaders of the Group of Eight industrialised nations in this picturesque corner of rural Scotland.
His team is braced for hundreds of anarchists and anti-globalisation protesters who intend to disrupt the three-day summit - and the possibility of a terrorist strike.
"It is a potential terrorist target," Vine told Associated Press Television News. "All our planning has been based on it both being a terrorist target and of course a target for public protest, so there is a necessity for us to have an exclusion zone."
Operation Sorbus - named after the berry of the rowan tree, which according to folklore wards off evil spirits - includes a 2m-high steel mesh fence around the perimeter of the exclusive Gleneagles hotel and country club, running through rolling farmland in the Perthshire countryside. It is guarded by a series of watchtowers and a network of surveillance cameras.
As well as a formidable obstacle, the fence is also a clear demarcation line; protesters who attempt to cross it face immediate arrest, Tayside police say.
Inside the perimeter where the leaders of Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Russia, Canada, Japan and Italy will meet from Wednesday to Friday, are further extensive security measures, which police officials declined to describe. Special units
About 10 000 officers drafted from across the United Kingdom are available to deal with G8 protesters - from peaceful environmental and anti-poverty campaigners to hardcore anarchists. About 3 000 police are assigned to Gleneagles itself, including a specialist firearms team, officers mounted on horseback and a guard-dog unit.
An airship will act as a spy in the sky to spot troublemakers and beam back video footage to officers on the ground.
Police have set up four checkpoints on rural roads that pass close to the hotel's grounds and championship golf courses. Only delegates, media and local residents issued with accreditation will be allowed to pass. In a further security measure, fuel stations across central Scotland have been banned from selling fuel in portable containers until the summit ends.
"Our strategy will be to try to deal with those people very quickly, very effectively, to try to separate them out from the peaceful protesters," said Vine. "We know that this event will attract those elements to it. It always has done and it will on this occasion.
- AP
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