SALONIKA • A 1,000-year-old ban on women in the Greek monastic community of Mount Athos crumbled -albeit briefly- yesterday when a mixed crowd of local villagers marched into the enclave to protest against the monks' alleged encroachment on public land, a protest leader said.

Around 500 women and men from villages in the Halkidiki peninsula in northern Greece took a few steps into the territory of the self-governing community of some 20 monasteries before a police cordon stopped them, police and the organiser said.

"It was a symbolic act, we have broken the 'avaton'," said protest organiser Kyriaki Malama, referring to the 1045 AD decree that forbids women access on grounds of impurity.

"We demand that the Greek government and the European Union intervene to stop the monasteries from acting as if they are above the law."

The demonstrators belong to a local community group locked in a court dispute with five of the monasteries over ownership of some 8,300 hectares of forest and land which they say belongs to their villages.

"The monks' mission is to be a religious order, not one that does (real estate) business," Malama said.