The warmest reception for the torch came as it passed through the Chinatown area of central London, where red lanterns and Chinese flags had been hung for the occasion. Knots of Chinese supporters there and elsewhere cried out, “One world, one dream” — the slogan adopted for the Beijing games.

A spokesman for the torch relay's passage around the world, Qu Yingpu, putting a brave face on the protests, said Chinese officials were grateful to the British police “for their efforts to keep order.”

He added, “This is not the right time, the right platform, for any people to voice their political views”.

But at many places along the route, supporters of the relay were challenged by protesters and replied with taunts of their own. “Shame on you,” a Chinese supporter shouted during one confrontation with demonstrators in Trafalgar Square. “How much are you being paid to be here?” a protester shot back. Narrowing the allegation, another demonstrator asked, “Are you from the Chinese embassy?”

One protester who managed to break through the police cordon, David Allen, said that he was angry enough that the torch was being paraded through the British capital and that his anger only increased when he saw British sporting stars being guarded in the streets of London by Chinese security men. “What really got my goat was our sporting heroes being surrounded by the Chinese security heavies guarding the torch,” he said. “It makes us complicit in the regime's repression.”

One of the protesters who sparred verbally with pro-China groups in Trafalgar Square was David Phillips, a 25-year-old American from Austin, Tex., who said he had worked for six months at the American embassy in Beijing two years ago. Now working at a travel agency in London, Mr. Phillips said he had witnessed human rights abuses in China at first hand. “There are serious human rights violations going on, and you can't ignore that,” he said. “And this is an appropriate place for us to voice our feelings.”