Police used tear gas and pepper spray yesterday to hold back demonstrators staging protests in Washington against international financial policy.
Swiss Chanel Ceramic Replica WatchDelegates to the spring meeting of the International Mon-etary Fund were spirited to work early and under extraordinary protection.
But at least four Finance Ministers were unable to attend meetings as thousands of protesters blocked roadways and prevented the delegations getting through.
Mr Pedro Malan, Mr Joaquim Pina-Moura, Mr Laurent Fabius and Mr Tarrin Nimmanahaeminda, the Ministers from Brazil, Portugal, France and Thailand, were cut off by the protests.
"I tried to get into the IMF at nine o'clock because of my meeting," said Mr Pina-Moura, in Washington to represent the European Union.
"I tried on foot and afterwards with Mr Fabius in a van with the police, but it was impossible."
He added: Replica Christian Dior "For reasons of politeness, I cannot comment on the organisation.
"It's not because we were late, because we left well before the time of our meeting."
He said he and Mr Fabius were being represented inside the meeting by other officials.
Protesters accuse the World Bank and IMF of destroying the environment with dams and similar projects, allowing sweatshops and imposing harsh debt repayment programmes that weaken developing countries.
Police chief Mr Charles Ramsey estimated up to 10,000 demonstrators were on the streets yesterday. Around 600 were arrested over the weekend.
Many demonstrations were non-violent but one angry confrontation occurred near the IMF headquarters, not far from the White House.
With helicopters whirling overhead and police sirens wailing, a group of protesters ran toward anti-riot officers. Some carried pieces of chain- link fencing from a construction site.
Rolex Watches ReplicaOfficers, some on motor-cycles, charged into the crowd, firing tear gas and pepper spray.
Vacheron Watch ReplicaFellow protesters dragged their colleagues away.
A large banner reading "IMF plus World Bank equals hundreds rich, billions poor" was hung by protesters who blocked a street near the campus of George Washington University.
Marchers carried signs with slogans such as: "Stop the war against poor." Another group carried a pink papier-mache pig emblazoned with the words "World Bank" and holding a globe in its mouth.
Busloads of protesters arrived in the city for a series of demonstrations that will end today.
"We have a right to be here and we also have a right to protest, and we also have a right to walk away," said protester Mr Larry Holmes, complaining that police had penned demonstrators in a barricaded area to arrest them.
Protesters complained that there was no warning before the arrests began.
"No matter how many of us are arrested, we are resolved to carry our message to the streets," said Mr Ilyse Hogue, of Mobilisation for Global Justice, one of the organisers of the demonstrations.
Replica Franck Muller WatchesAn anti-sweatshop demonstration outside a Gap shop turned into an impromptu striptease when police took a man wearing a grass skirt with nothing underneath into custody and made him put on underwear.
That prompted a dozen or so other people in a crowd of 200 to strip down to their underwear.
The largest group of protesters congregated as close as they could get to the World Bank and its sister lending institution, the IMF, upset that police had shut down their protest headquarters, declaring it to be unsafe.
