Shanghai to lock down financial area for summit

SHANGHAI, June 8 (Reuters) A huge security operation being mounted for next week's Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit will lock down part of the city's financial district, give leave to thousands, and order laundry and flowerpots off windowsills.

Next Thursday's annual meeting of leaders from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, among the glittering office towers of Shanghai's Lujiazui district, is part of Beijing's drive to raise its profile in central Asia.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin are to attend. Afghan President Hamid Karzai as well as leaders from observer states Mongolia, Pakistan, India and Iran have been invited.

It is the first time since the group was founded in 2001 that the summit is being held in Shanghai, and police are taking no chances with security -- even though the lockdown will disrupt the operations of banks and financial service firms in the area.

Financial markets will operate normally next Wednesday and Thursday, but the city government has declared those days a special holiday period in Lujiazui, meaning employees of companies there are not required to report for work.

Companies may ask some staff to come in to work ''overtime'', but they have been given strict numerical quotas, according to a circular from the Public Security Bureau.

Streets will be closed to traffic, subway trains will not stop at the local station and police special forces will be on 24-hour patrol.

The lockdown has cosmetic as well as security goals. The circular asks residents to stop hanging clothes out of their windows to dry, a common practice in Shanghai.

It also urges them to remove flower pots from window ledges to avoid the risk of the pots falling.

China recently threatened not to air the hit film ''Mission Impossible 3'' in its cinemas unless scenes showing laundry hanging from Shanghai windows were brushed out, fearing they would tarnish the city's image as a slick financial centre. The government later relented.

REUTERS SK VC0500