007 shaken by angry ex-mayor's protest in Chile

London, Apr 03 : English actor Daniel Craig was scared out of his wits when the ex-mayor of a Chilean town drove on to the set of the new Bond film to protest.

The shooting, which was in the town of Baquedano, 995 miles north of Chile capital Santiago, was briefly interrupted by Carlos Lopez, who according to the local media, objected to its producers using his community to film scenes ostensibly set in Bolivia.

"I put my vehicle between the camera and the actor, who has nothing in common with the secret agent 007 as he fled in terror. When he saw me, James Bond ran off!" BBC quoted Lopez as saying. However, a spokeswoman for the film's producers is sure that Craig would not do such a thing.

"It sounds most unlike Daniel. I would have thought he stayed inside the car while security dealt with the situation," she said.

"It was a small incident that took no more than five minutes to clear up," she added.

The spokeswoman further said that from what she had understood, Lopez was nowhere mayor of the Sierra Gorda municipality, and that he had been suspended five months ago.

Anne Bennett, Eon's director of marketing, said Lopez nearly ran over a local policeman on April 1 as he drove through a cordon around the train station being used for the filming.

Lopez was seen pulling up his saloon car between the camera and a vehicle, in which Bond actor Daniel Craig and co-star Olga Kurylenko were seated.

He was immediately arrested for trespassing and detained briefly before being released.

The mayor in his own defense said that the producers had failed to obtain his permission to shoot in the municipality of Sierra Gorda, however Bennett denied the allegations and said that it was commonplace for scenes set in one country to be shot in another.

The new Bond movie 'Quantum of Solace' has been filming in South America for two months and is slated for release in the UK on 31 October.

ANI