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Fuel protests spread disruption across Europe |
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September 13, 2000
LONDON (AP) - Protesters and union leaders called Tuesday for European governments to slash fuel taxes and continued demonstrations that snarled traffic, blockaded refineries and led panicked motorists to stock up on gasoline. "These guys are doing it to save their livelihoods," said Mike Salmon, of the British Road Haulage Association, representing truck drivers who claim that high oil prices and levies threaten to bankrupt them. Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands were hit hardest by the protests Tuesday, with scattered demonstrations reported in France and Germany. As traffic jams spread in Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair cancelled a planned trip to the north to hold emergency meetings with key ministers, Downing Street announced. Queen Elizabeth and her senior advisors gave the government the go-ahead to employ emergency measures, but officials had not specified how far they might go. Belgian truckers intensified their protests by blockading gasoline depots, disrupting freeway traffic and maintaining a stranglehold on main thoroughfares in the capital, Brussels. Negotiations between road haulage unions and the Belgian government were to resume after breaking up Monday evening with no agreement. Protests spread across Belgium on Tuesday. Truckers imposed a go-slow on a freeways linking Brussels with the northern port of Antwerp. The main freeway to Luxembourg was jammed near southeastern Arlon and the highway from Brussels to the northern French city of Lille was blocked on the border. In the Netherlands, truckers set up road blocks on five major freeways across the country on the second day of unorganized protests. In the western German city of Saarbrucken, more than 200 trucks, buses and taxis drove honking their horns through the center of town, near the French border. Rallying in front of the state parliament building, the protesters demanded that an energy tax imposed by the Social Democratic-led government be repealed. Truckers, taxi drivers, farmers, tour operators and others who claim that high oil prices are hurting their business want their governments to follow the French lead in granting concessions. Both the British and German governments said they would not copy France. The handful of French protests Tuesday were staged by shopkeepers and professionals who claimed to have been cut out of the deal. "We cannot and we will not alter government policy on petrol through blockades and pickets," Blair said Monday, drawing an angry reaction Tuesday from the protesters. "Tony Blair has made a gross mistake and has grossly underestimated the will of the country," said Brynle Williams, a spokesman for protesting farmers and truckers. Across Britain, thousands of gas stations were closed Tuesday, and tanker fleets remained at a standstill. Some hospital patients faced delayed surgical operations as ambulances were put on an emergency-only schedule. Police early Tuesday cleared the route to one oil terminal in Norfolk, but had not moved against protesters elsewhere. A high proportion of British gasoline stations had no fuel whatsoever, up to 90 percent in Wales, and many of those that were open had only diesel, according to automobile clubs and oil companies. Texaco spokesmen said that 350 of its stations, mostly in Wales and southwest England, were out of nearly out of fuel. And a spokesman for Shell said that 520 of its filling stations were in similar straits. In Wales, police said that one motorist, Anthony Probert, 62, died after waiting for more than an hour for fuel. "It is difficult to say what caused the man's death at this point. But it must have been very stressful situation waiting in a car on a hot day worrying that you may not be able to get fuel," said police Sgt. Andrew Lloyd. A decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to raise its production quota by 800,000 barrels a day had no immediate impact on the protests, although it did send October contracts of North Sea Brent crude down 45 cents at $32.33 a barrel on the International Petroleum Exchange in London. |