MIAMI (AP) – Police in riot gear fired rubber bullets and tear gas and used batons, plastic shields, concussion grenades and stun guns in clashes Thursday with hundreds of demonstrators protesting talks aimed at creating a hemisphere-wide free-trade zone.

At least 36 demonstrators were arrested on charges including aggravated assault, unlawful assembly, resisting arrest, trespassing and burglary.

Police said two officers suffered minor injuries. At least three demonstrators were treated at a hospital for minor injuries.

The clashes took place before and after a march by 8,000 to 10,000 union members.

Officials from 34 nations are taking part in the Free Trade Area of the Americas talks in Miami this week. The goal is to reduce or eliminate trade barriers everywhere in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba.

Before the march, at least 1,000 protesters – many wearing bandanas across their faces, surgical masks and blue batting helmets – approached lines of police blocking downtown streets. Others carried gas masks and tried to pull down security fences with large hooks.

The officers used their batons mostly to push back the protesters but occasionally used them to strike the demonstrators.

After the march, demonstrators set small trash fires in the streets, pushed up against police lines and hurled water bottles at officers. Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The protesters threw up barricades of wooden boards, concrete parking blocks, trash bins and other materials.

Police Chief John Timoney said the “rough start” to the day’s protests came because police were trying to clear demonstrators who did not have permits to be in the streets.

The clashes delayed for more than an hour the march organized by the nation’s major unions, which are also opposed to the proposed trade pact.

The demonstrators say it would take thousands of American jobs to other countries, exploit cheap labor and drain natural resources.

Lance Stelzer, a Miami lawyer, said police overreacted to the protests because of rioting outside the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle and at other free-trade meetings worldwide.

“When you have that kind of police presence dressed up in storm-trooper garb and a mentality of “Let’s close off the entire city because we had rowdies in another city,’ it has a tendency to incite problems that might not otherwise exist,” Stelzer said.

Arrested demonstrator Michael McLean, 20, of Bergen County, N.J., said he was walking into an amphitheater, which was filling up with union protesters, when he tripped and was zapped with a stun gun.

“They haven’t told me what I did,” said McLean, who sat with plastic handcuffs around his wrists. “Anybody that doesn’t look like they’re in the union were targeted. I think I was.”

Most of the protesters were peaceful, carrying puppets, holding signs and chanting, “This is what a police state looks like.” More than 1,000 members of the United Steel Workers union marched peacefully down Biscayne Boulevard, chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, FTAA has got to go.”

Bob Wessell, 49, of Batesville, Ind., said his job making hospital beds may be lost because of cheaper manufacturing in China. “I am here to save American jobs and make the world a safer place to live,” he said.

AP-ES-11-20-03 1734EST