Japan says no to Chinese torch guards: reports

"We should not violate the principle that the Japanese police will firmly maintain security," Kyodo news agency quoted Shinya Izumi, head of the National Public Safety Commission, as saying.

"We do not know what position the people who escorted the relay are in," Izumi was quoted as saying. "If they are for the consideration of security, it is our role."

The torch is set to arrive in Nagano, central Japan, where the Winter Games were hosted in 1998, on April 26, after passing through Buenos Aires, Mumbai, and Canberra, among other cities.

A phalanx of large and physically fit Chinese men in blue-and-white track suits has been trotting besides the torch along its ambitious global torch route and turned off the flame several times in Paris earlier this week.

Chinese state media have reported that the "flame protection squad", consisting of some 70 members of China's People's Armed Police, has been employed by the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee to safeguard the fire for 24 hours a day.

But the squad's heavy-handed approach in managing the torch relay -- which has been a magnet for chaotic demonstrations in London, Paris, and San Francisco over China's human rights record and recent government crackdown on monk-led protests in Tibet -- has made some uncomfortable.