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Australian security officials have agreed to allow Chinese "attendants" to run alongside the Olympic torch in Canberra despite earlier insistence they would follow behind in a bus.
The move, contradicting earlier statements by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, came despite warnings that the "attendants" would face arrest if they
tried to intervene in any conflict along the still-secret route of the relay.
Possible clashes between pro-China and pro-Tibet groups next Thursday have also concerned the Returned Services League, worried the route might pass the National War Memorial on the eve of Anzac Day.
The presence of the blue tracksuited "attendants" has been a sensitive security issue since violence in the streets of London, where their intervention against pro-Tibet protesters earned them the description of "thugs".
The possibility of their guarding the torch in Canberra has also raised hackles over Australian sovereignty and the competence of the nation's security agencies.
Rudd and Attorney-General Robert McClelland have been consistently adamant that security will be an exclusively Australian affair, and that Chinese "attendants" would be allowed only to follow the torch in order to keep it alight.
"My understanding is that we have said from day one that we will be providing all the security and I mean, all the security," Rudd said last week.
The policy was emphasised again after Australian International Olympic Committee representative Kevin Gosper said Chinese security guards would be called from their bus "if there was really serious trouble".
McClelland's office retorted: "The Australian Government and the Australian Capital Territory Government and ACT policing have repeatedly said, and it remains the case, that Olympic attendants that accompany the Olympic torch to Canberra will have no security or law enforcement role whatsoever."
Security officials have consistently declined to publicly announce the route of the torch. But the torch appears likely to be carried by 80 runners through the city centre, past Parliament House and through the Parliamentary Triangle, across Lake Burley Griffin by rowing eight, and past the War Memorial.
Pro-China students claim to have organised crowds of up to 3000.
ACT Police Minister Simon Corbell said "attendants" would run outside the police cordon and would only have limited access to ensure the flame remained alight during transfers between torch runners.
"They have no security role whatsoever and that will be done entirely by the Australian federal police members of ACT policing," he said.
Rudd said after the ACT announcement that Australia had made clear to Chinese authorities that "under no circumstances, no matter what occurs" would the attendants be called upon to perform security functions.