CANCUN, Mexico—Activists climbed a construction crane and hung a banner Friday ordering members of the World Trade Organization to leave this Mexican resort, then braved winds and rains before climbing down.
The stunt, in which three activists stripped naked and waved at delegates entering the conference site, was the latest in a series of publicity seeking events aimed at influencing or even shutting down the WTO meeting.
Police allowed the protesters to come down without arresting them.
WTO delegates are in Cancun trying to negotiate a treaty aimed at opening world markets to agricultural products, but they are deadlocked over how much to cut subsidies and tariffs.
Some protesters argue WTO officials should use the treaty to help poor nations. Others say agriculture should not be part of the talks.
The United States, Europe and Japan have been widely criticized for subsidizing their farmers and flooding the world market with cheap commodities.
To prove that point, the international aid group Oxfam staged a mock breakfast of world leaders Thursday morning on Cancun's white-sand beaches.
Activists dressed in giant fiberglass heads designed to look like U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, among others, dined on European subsidized milk and "crunchy corn dump-its.''
Oxfam said the breakfast was "to demonstrate the waste and injustice of European and American agricultural subsidies.''
"What we'd really like to see is these guys sitting down with the poorest countries to explore ways to make trade fair,'' Oxfam spokesman Adrian Lovett said.
Friday evening, four young Mexicans managed to halt all traffic in Cancun's hotel zone for about an hour.
The protesters said they were Mexicans who wanted to walk peacefully on the street near the convention site, but 200 policemen and presidential guards pushed them back and pulled fencing across the single road that runs through the hotel zone.
In downtown Cancun, activists broke into a shuttered restaurant called "The Farms'' and cooked pasta, saying they were retaking public space after the hotel zone was blocked off to them.
Earlier, near where a Korean activist committed suicide Wednesday to protest WTO policies, several Italian activists splattered in red paint designed to look like blood chanted "The WTO sows death.''
Lee Kyung-Hae became a hero to the protesters after fatally stabbing himself Wednesday during a violent clash with police.
Lee was well-known to WTO officials and envoys after a two-month, one-man protest outside the organization's Geneva headquarters earlier this year.
He also attempted suicide in the lobby of the building in 1990, when he plunged a knife into his stomach.
Protesters have held numerous vigils in his memory, and planned to commemorate his death during a major march Saturday.
Demonstrations haven't been limited to the beaches and hotels outside the talks.
On Thursday, members of accredited nonprofit organizations dumped a bag of corn in front of a news conference by U.S. trade officials.
The event prompted WTO officials to ban all nonprofit groups from news conferences.
In the Mexican port Veracruz, two Greenpeace activists chained themselves to the anchor of a ship to demand that poor countries receive fair treatment during the WTO meeting.
The demonstration prevented the offloading of cargo from the Ikan Altmira, a Singapore-registered ship transporting 40,000 tons of corn for the Minnesota-based transnational company Cargill Inc., Mexico Greenpeace said in a news release.
The organization claims a large portion of the shipment comprised genetically modified and heavily subsidized corn, which it said is a threat to Mexico's biological diversity and millions of farmers' livelihoods.
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