GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (AP) — Thousands of demonstrators packed a German Alpine resort town on Saturday, protesting over a wide range of causes before the arrival of the leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies for a two-day summit.

Though the demonstration in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was largely peaceful, a small group of protesters clashed with police as they marched through the town, throwing bottles at officers who then shot pepper spray at them. At least two protesters had to be taken away by medics for treatment.

Police said they didn't immediately have any information on arrests.

During the demonstration, black-clad anarchists chanted slogans against police violence, anti-capitalists held signs denouncing a proposed trans-Atlantic trade deal and peace protesters waved rainbow flags and signs with anti-war slogans.

Protester Monika Lambert said she had come "to exercise my democratic rights to say that everything the G-7 decides is in the interest of the banks and capitalists."

Lambert, from the Bavarian city of Erlangen, said Germany's history has shown that it is important to speak out.

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An injured demonstrator is carried away during a protest in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germany …

"I asked my parents what they did during the Nazi period and they did nothing," she said. "I don't want to tell my children and grandchildren the same thing."

About 2,000 protesters marched to the train station from their camp on the outskirts of town for the noontime demonstration and were joined by thousands of others, including many families and children.

Bavarian Michael Wildmoser carried a sign with communist slogans.

"Too many young people are being exploited in low-paid jobs," he said. "This situation can't go on."

Police had 22,000 officers from around Germany on hand, keeping tight control on the demonstrations. Spokesman Hans-Peter Kammerer said significant numbers of extremists from Germany, Austria, Italy and Britain were among the crowd.

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Smoke hangs over demonstrators and police during a protest in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germa …

One group of about 30 protesters dressed as clowns, taunting police by getting up close and personal, dusting their boots with feather dusters, pretending to listen in on their conversations and making sexual innuendos.

A group of six clowns sat in the middle of the street, blocking the road and forcing a police van carrying reinforcements to turn back.

Protesters' spokesman Simon Ernst, who was part of the group that camped overnight outside town, said they wanted to show their anger at the leaders of Germany, France, the U.S., Italy, Britain, Canada and Japan, calling them "the henchmen of bankers and corporations."

Police had planned to keep all demonstrators away from the summit venue, the Schloss Elmau hotel in a tiny village about 8 kilometers (5 miles) from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, but a court ruled that 50 protesters would be allowed inside the security zone so that the world leaders would be able to hear them.

Ernst said only allowing 50 protesters was far too little.

"We think it shows an arrogant attitude toward freedom of assembly," he said.

The summit runs Sunday through Monday.

___

David Rising contributed to this report.

Sarajevo (AFP) - Pope Francis on Saturday bemoaned the "atmosphere of war" haunting the world as he urged the people of war-scarred Sarajevo to provide an example of how different cultures and religions can co-exist peacefully.

The 78-year-old was given a rapturous reception by a 65,000-strong crowd at the city's Olympic stadium and tens of thousands more took to the streets to greet him.

Many conflicts across the planet amount to "a kind of third world war being fought piecemeal and, in the context of global communications, we sense an atmosphere of war," the pontiff said in a mass at the stadium during a one-day visit to the Bosnian capital.

"Some wish to incite and foment this atmosphere deliberately," he added, attacking those who want to foster division for political ends or profit from war through arms dealing.

"But war means children, women and the elderly in refugee camps, it means forced displacement, destroyed houses, streets and factories: above all countless shattered lives.

"You know this well having experienced it here."

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The UN estimates that nearly 100,000 people died during the Bosnian war in the 1990s as a forensic s …

The pontiff had earlier referred to Sarajevo, with its synagogues, churches and mosques, as a "European Jerusalem", a crossroads of cultures, nations and religions which required "the building of new bridges while maintaining and restoring older ones."

In a reference to the legacy of the war, which left Sarajevo in ruins and Bosnia permanently divided along ethnic lines, he urged the country's Muslim, Serb and Croat communities to reach out to each other at every level.

"In so doing, even the deep wounds of the recent past will be set aside," Francis said in a meeting with officials of the rotating presidency.

Later, at a meeting with Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox religious figures, he said Sarajevo could reclaim its former status as a beacon of multiculturalism.

"In a world unfortunately rent by conflicts, this land can become a message: attesting that it is possible to live together side by side, in diversity but rooted in common humanity."

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Pope Francis was given a rapturous reception by the 65,000-strong crowd in Sarajevo and his one-day …

Despite a show of unity to welcome the pope, it was not hard to find reminders of how fragile Bosnia's unity is.

It was noticeable that there were far more red and white Croatian flags being waved than Bosnia's blue and yellow ones.

- Lack of trust -

The national anthem played for Francis on his arrival remains without words because the three communities have been unable to agree a common text.

Katarina Dzrek, a Bosnian Croat who was in the stadium crowd said: "Bosnia is in need of the message of peace the pope will send because there is still a lack of trust between the communities."

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Bosnian Muslim survivors of the Srebrenica 1995 massacre cry beside the coffin of a relative during …

The 1992-95 Bosnian war left nearly 100,000 people dead and resulted in half the population, some two million people, being forced to leave their homes, many of them never to return.

More than a third of Bosnia's pre-war ethnic Croat population have left the country which is now divided in two between a Bosnian Serb republic and a Croat-Muslim federation.

At the city's cathedral Francis heard testimony from Catholics who suffered during the war. Ljubica Sekerija, a nun, told him how she had been beaten and threatened with death by "foreign soldiers" if she did not convert to Islam, while Jozo Puskaric recounted his four months spent in a concentration camp. "It was 120 days that felt like 120 years for me," the priest told Francis.

Francis said interfaith dialogue was vital to overcoming the legacy of such bitter memories.

"Dialogue is a school of humanity and a builder of unity," he said at the inter-faith meeting he attended.

Around 40 percent of the population of Bosnia is of Islamic heritage, just over 30 percent are from the Serbian Orthodox tradition and around one in ten, almost uniquely Croats, describe themselves as Catholics.

Francis is the second pope to visit Sarajevo after Jean-Paul II, who braved a snowstorm to come two years after the end of the war.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras delivers a speech during a parliamentary session to brief lawmakers over the ongoing talks with the country's lenders, in Athens, Greece June 5, 2015. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

By Lefteris Papadimas and Paul Taylor

ATHENS/GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will resume talks with euro zone lenders in Brussels next week after telling parliament he rejected the creditors' "absurd" terms for a cash-for-reform deal to keep his country from default.

The unresolved Greek debt impasse, which is weighing on financial markets and could hit global economic recovery, will hang over a Group of Seven leaders' summit in Germany starting on Sunday. A German spokesman said Tsipras was not invited to the G7 talks.

Greece postponed a payment due to the International Monetary Fund on Friday until the end of June, highlighting its precarious cash position and spooking markets, but giving itself a few more days to negotiate a deal linked to some future debt relief.

In a defiant speech to parliament on Friday, the leftist prime minister balanced indignation at what he called "a very bad negotiating trick" with confidence that a deal was "closer than ever before" to keep his country in the currency bloc.

An EU diplomat said Tsipras would fly to Brussels on Tuesday before a two-day EU-Latin America summit, and that would be an opportunity for political talks on a solution, while experts from Greece and the EU/IMF lenders work on detail in parallel technical negotiations.

By focusing anger on two of the lenders' key demands - the scrapping of an income supplement for the poorest pensioners and the hiking of value-added tax on electricity - Tsipras left open possible alternatives to those measures to clinch an agreement.

EU diplomats have said mid-June is the final deadline for a deal to secure ministerial approval and parliamentary backing for disbursement before Greece's 240 billion bailout expires at the end of the month. The lenders added an incentive by raising the prospect of releasing an additional 10.9 billion euros in frozen funds originally earmarked for bank recapitalization to tide Athens over a big repayment hump in July and August.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to force a deal before she chairs an annual meeting of leaders of major industrial democracies at Schloss Elmau in Bavaria from Sunday.

She is keen to avoid it turning into another crisis summit on the euro zone that would showcase Europe's difficulties in resolving the problems of its single currency.

NO LECTURES

European officials said they did not want to be lectured on Greece by U.S. President Barack Obama, but they expected Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council, Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, to discuss the way forward to a solution on the sidelines.

An Obama administration briefing reporters ahead of the G7 said: "We're obviously encouraging all sides to continue to focus on finding a solution that’s going to allow Greece to chart a path to recovery."

Tsipras is under pressure to sign a deal this month while trying to placate hardliners in his Syriza party who oppose the terms creditors are demanding.

One far-left deputy minister suggested snap elections as a way out, by obtaining public legitimacy for difficult decisions to secure aid.

But two ministers said on Saturday they saw no case for an early poll and an opinion poll showed Greeks have little appetite for a return to the ballot box just five months after Tsipras won power on a radical leftist agenda to end austerity.

The poll by Metron Analysis for Parapolitica weekly showed only 35 percent of Greeks want the government to refuse to compromise with lenders, while 47 percent want it to reach a deal even if it means making concessions.

Some 73 percent saw no need for new elections to approve an eventual accord, compared with 22 percent who said a popular vote was necessary. The survey also showed 79 percent want to remain in the euro zone, confirming previous poll findings.

The conciliatory public mood contrasted with anger among Syriza leftists at the lenders' proposal that crossed many of the government's "red lines", demanding tax hikes, privatizing strategic state assets and refraining from any unilateral action to restore collective bargaining, as well as the pension cuts.

Tsipras called on the creditors to accept Greece's rival proposal that would reverse labor and pension reforms, calling it the only "realistic" proposal on the table.

"The Greek government cannot consent to absurd proposals," Tsipras told lawmakers. He also refused to sign any deal that does not include the debt relief he has long demanded.

Greece wants to restructure its huge debt through a mix of cheaper refinancing, extending maturities, switching some loans into perpetual or GDP-linked bonds and a principal write-off, but the plans have no support in the euro zone.

On Thursday, Athens decided to bundle some 1.6 billion euros it was scheduled to pay the IMF in four installments into a single payment at the end of June, skipping a 300 million euro payment due on Friday.

It was the first time in five years of crisis that Greece has postponed a repayment on its bailouts from euro zone governments, the European Central Bank and the IMF. The rare tactic does not constitute a default.

(Additional reporting by Gavin Jones in Athens, Andreas Rinke in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Ingrid Melander in Paris; Writing by Paul Taylor Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Beirut (AFP) - The head of Lebanon's powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah threatened on Friday that his group would displace "millions" in Israel if the Jewish state attacks Lebanon.

Hassan Nasrallah made the threat in a televised address weeks after an Israeli army official warned that Israel would "have to" target civilian areas in Lebanon in a future confrontation with Hezbollah.

"If they threaten to displace 1.5 million Lebanese, then the Islamic resistance in Lebanon (Hezbollah) threatens to displace millions of Israelis," Nasrallah hit back.

"We are not afraid of your war or of your threats," he said.

"If you assume that we are busy in Syria, then you are wrong -- because this changes nothing in how we deal with our enemy."

For more than two years, Hezbollah has been fighting in Syria on behalf of embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

Speaking to journalists on May 13, the Israeli army official said all villages in south Lebanon are a "military stronghold" where Hezbollah stockpiles rockets capable of hitting his country.

"Each (village) is a military stronghold. Next time we have a war with Hezbollah, we will have to attack each one of these targets, and we hope the population will not be there," he said.

Hezbollah fought a deadly month-long war with Israel in the summer of 2006 which killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and some 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

Nasrallah also spoke about Hezbollah's ongoing battle with Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, Al-Nusra Front, in the Qalamun region that straddles the Syrian-Lebanese border.

He said Hezbollah had managed to "liberate dozens of square kilometres" of land in the area, pushing back Al-Nusra Front and its allies.

And he vowed that Hezbollah will next turn its sights on the Islamic State group which has seized chunks of Syria and Iraq.

"The next battle is in the... parts (of Qalamun), which are controlled by Daesh," he said, using the Arabic acronym for IS.

"Daesh is on our borders," he said, branding the group as a "threat" to Lebanon's existence.

Hezbollah insists it is fighting in Syria to prevent extremist groups from entering Lebanon.

On Friday, the Syrian army said it had seized numerous villages and strategic hilltops in Qalamun with Hezbollah's help, Syria's state television reported.

The army statement said it was "tightening the noose on terrorist positions" in the area.