BESIEGED HIPPIES PREPARE TO MAKE WAR - NOT LOVE

Copenhagen - Christiania, the last independent hippy colony in Europe, is
to be closed on a legal technicality, a move that seems set to provoke
street fighting in Copenhagen as drop-outs and drug dealers resist
government bulldozers.

For more than 30 years the self-governing settlement in the centre of the
Danish capital has acted as a magnet for those trying to escape the rat race.

The residents of Christiania set up their own city state in a sprawling
18th-century naval fortress once used as a barracks by the Nazi occupation
forces.

The hippies' economy was almost self-sustaining: pony-tailed craftsmen
built and sold eccentric bicycles, 24-hour bakeries turned out biologically
pure bread and carefully tended gardens supplied vegetables. Food was
traded for make-shift schooling, firewood and roof repair for books: it was
a primitive free-wheeling bartering economy in the middle of one of
Europe's most prosperous cities.

But Christiania also became the hub of the capital's trade in soft drugs -
sold freely on Pusher Street - and it was this that stirred successive
Danish governments to consider a crackdown.

This time, the authorities are serious. Government lawyers have discovered
that an earlier deal with the hippies, struck in 1989, merely gives the
residents the right to borrow the land, not to rent it.

Christiania had been recognised as a "social experiment' 'in 1987, but two
years later it was made clear that the use of the land - some 80 acres
inhabited by about 1,000 people -was a concession rather than a formal
rental contract.

That freed the way for a cleanup.

The current conservative government coalition has been growing impatient
with the hippies. Last month the police raided the enclave 146 times, even
though police are technically supposed to keep their distance.

The live-and-let-live policy, symbolized by the sign hanging over the
entrance, which declares "No uniforms allowed, no bullet proof vests," is
crumbling. There have been 459 body searches in the past three weeks and
cars driving past the colony are regularly searched for drugs.

Popular Danish opinion has been evenly divided over Christiania with many
regarding it as a harmless offbeat tourist attraction.

But the housing shortage in Copenhagen is swinging Danes behind the idea
that the large terrain, much of it green parkland, could be better used to
develop urban housing.

The flower power disciples could be comfortably rehoused and still leave
space available for others.

On top of that, the drug trade would be brought under control.

But the residents are ready to turn an eviction into a massive act of civil
disobedience. The last eviction attempt, in 1976, sucked in tens of
thousands of anarchist sympathizers from across the continent who set up
barricades and waged war with the police. The aim of the authorities in the
coming months seems to be to start digging up the streets. Bulldozers will
be sent into Pusher Street.

The street's drug traders, however, are tough, typically surrounded by
packs of fierce fighter dogs; they are capable of more than symbolic
resistance. A hoard of weapons was found recently in a back room in one of
the dilapidated cottages.

"We are prepared for street fights and civil war-like conditions,'
'Pernille Hansen, a 29-year-old Christiania resident, said.

"People have had enough of the present government and it won't take much to
spark full-scale violence."

The community is divided into 15 self-governing districts, each controlled
by so-called anarchist councils. Reports suggest that they have elaborate
plans for defence should the police move in.