The torch-carriers took the flickering flame to the top of the Acropolis, where it will remain for the night before a ceremony under tight security on Sunday to pass it to the Chinese.

The torch arrived in the Greek capital flanked by police. A helicopter kept guard throughout the day on a route draped with Greek and Chinese flags and blocked to traffic.

Several dozen members of Tibetan and human rights groups along with those belonging to Falungong - a spiritual movement outlawed in China - staged a peaceful protest against Chinese repression in Tibet and the holding of the Olympics in Beijing in August.

Earlier Saturday, after an increasingly tense week as the torch travelled around Greece, police stopped 10 other activists from the Danish group TheColorOrange.net, which highlights human rights abuses in China, as they approached the Greek Olympics Committee headquarters where a press conference was under way.

The same group had been stopped four times by police on Friday, protester Michael Holtce Rasmussen said.

Greek leftist activists said they had also unfurled a banner proclaiming 'No to the Games of money and blood,' before police told them to put it away.

Greek police have been on alert since Monday when three French activists disrupted the lighting of the torch in front of international dignitaries at Ancient Olympia.

'There are various security measures protecting it (the torch),' Tassos Papachristou, a spokesman for the Greek Olympics Committee said.

'There is a permanent and large police presence around it, aided by helicopter surveillance.' The most vulnerable moment for the Greek authorities may come on Sunday when the torch is formally handed over to Chinese organisers at the famous marble stadium in Athens which welcomed the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

Media have been banned from the Acropolis on Saturday night and the 20,000 people expected at the formal handover searched and all banners, signs or anything that could be thrown will be confiscated, according to police.

'The operation will be difficult but we believe that everything will run smoothly,' spokesman Panagiotis Stathis told AFP. 'Whoever moves will be arrested, whether they are accredited or not.' Mr Stathis added the authorities aim to 'stop any protest on the Olympic flame's route both inside the Panathenaic Stadium where the ceremony will take place and in the surrounding area.'

Athens has been bracing for protesters ever since a dispute erupted over Greek television's coverage of the flame-lighting ceremony disrupted by three rights activists.

The Greek public TV channel quickly cut to other cameras and only referred to the incident hours later - with the protest also edited out on the private Antenna channel owned by Greek Olympics Committee chairman Minos Kyriakou.

Greek leftists launched a petition accusing the authorities of 'siding with China's totalitarian regime.' Then on Thursday, police prevented 15 demonstrators from staging a protest as the Olympic flame entered the northern city of Salonika. Two of them were carrying a Falungong flag.

On Friday, former German Olympic medallists called for competitors to wear protest bracelets at the Beijing Games in August.

'We can no longer as athletes simply ignore what happens before the Olympic Games when human rights are systematically violated and the freedom of the press is trampled on,' said Stefan Pfannmoller, a bronze medallist in the canoe at the 2004 Athens Games.

The torch's journey to Beijing is the longest ever, lasting 130 days and covering 137,000 kilometres - with the flame scheduled to pass over Mount Everest in Tibet in early May.

Protests in Tibet have seen conflicting death tolls, with Tibet's government in exile claiming up to 140 people have died while China puts the death toll at 20. -- AFP

Read Tibet religious official sacked, 26 arrested fr China monastery