BEIJING - BEIJING tightened security yesterday ahead of today's arrival of the Olympic torch, after demonstrations by protesters during its passage through Greece last week.

Journalists covering the event were told to collect their accreditations in person a day early, rather than at today's ceremony to welcome the torch in Tiananmen Square in the heart of China's capital.

There was an increased security presence in the square yesterday, with its northern section cordoned off.

The authorities have given few details about the ceremony.

The torch was to arrive early aboard an Air China flight, ahead of a 137,000km relay around the globe and across China which will take just over four months and is expected to be dogged by protests.

Chinese leaders will attend the ceremony, state media said, and the flame will be taken by an unidentified Chinese torchbearer. The Beijing Youth Daily suggested it might be famed Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang.

The grandiose relay is the longest in Olympic history and features the most torchbearers.

However, it has provided a stage for human rights activists criticising China over a range of issues, including its handling of the Muslim Uighur community in north-western China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region, its control over Tibet, and its relationship with Sudan, where continuous fighting has been blamed on Beijing's refusal to pressure Khartoum. Beijing is the biggest buyer of Sudan's oil exports.

Dozens of Tibetan exiles burned an effigy of Chinese President Hu Jintao as they reached India's capital New Delhi yesterday, carrying a symbolic flame which they say is running parallel to the official torch.

'Long live the Dalai Lama' and 'Stop killings in Tibet', they chanted during a protest demonstration close to India's Parliament.

The flame goes tomorrow to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and then on to Istanbul in Turkey and StPetersburg in Russia.

These stops were not expected to bring problems, but the following three were: London, Paris and San Francisco. Protests have been scheduled at all three cities.

Over the weekend, European Union foreign ministers expressed 'strong concern' about violence in Tibet, but skated around the issue of China's role in the unrest.

Before the two-day EU meeting in Slovenia, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had already ruled out an EU boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games in August.

But Germany will have no ministerial-level participants there. Neither Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier nor Chancellor Angela Merkel plan to go to Beijing.

ASSOCIATED PRESS