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Quiet Adelaide rather bemused by Rumsfeld's visit

More residents of this peaceful south Australian city have been killed by sharks than by terrorists, but US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld brought a whiff of global fear with him on a visit yesterday.

From an outdoor cafe in the center of town, with a breeze ruffling the leaves of shade trees under a clean blue sky, the upmarket Hyatt Hotel across the road looks like a prison.

Emergency fences 5m high block access to the long, lazy driveways, squads of police patrol the grounds and guards with attack dogs sniff the sidewalks among passers-by.

Adelaide, the capital of South Australia state, is unused to this sort of attention -- making its rare appearances in international news mainly through attacks on surfers and divers by great white sharks.

Schoolchildren walk by the anti-terrorist Hyatt fences, wearing laid-back uniforms of shorts, T-shirts and wide-brimmed hats which protect them from the much greater threat of skin cancer in this sun-drenched city.

In the cafe, a sign outlaws smoking within 1m of the bar, as Australia tries to wean its populace off a habit that is blamed for killing more people in a year than terrorism has killed in the history of the world.

Rumsfeld's visit, to shore up a military alliance which has seen Prime Minister John Howard contribute troops to the US-led invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, is a strange sideshow in the world's terrorism circus.

A block away from the Hyatt, a small group of demonstrators, probably less than 200, gathered on the steps of the state parliament to denounce Rumsfield's presence.
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