With Chinese troops engaged in a violent confrontation with protesters in the restive region of Tibet and elsewhere across China, the visit of the Olympic torch to San Francisco next month could leave the city by the bay with a black eye rather than the worldwide publicity bonanza local officials were expecting.

The planned run through San Francisco on April 9 is the only visit the torch is to make to America before the Olympic Games open in Beijing on August 8. The relay has long been expected to draw protests from a variety of groups with grievances against China, but the fresh violence in Tibet could produce the kind of stark dissonance that would cast a pall over the torch-related festivities.

“We would find it incredibly troubling if the torch went through while the crackdown is still happening,” the Northern California director for Human Rights Watch, Elizabeth Marsh, said. “The recent events happening in Tibet have taken this debate to a whole new level,” Jacob Colker, of the International Campaign for Tibet, said. “I think San Francisco policy makers are starting to feel the heat. Is this going to get a lot worse over the next 23 days? You bet.”

Today, a committee of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take up a resolution calling for the torch to be “received with alarm and protest” because of “egregious and ongoing human rights abuses in China and occupied Tibet.”

Activists are also complaining that the city is thwarting protests on the day the torch comes through. The route for the torch is being kept secret, at least for now, making it hard to plan demonstrations. In addition, citizens who have applied for demonstration permits for that day have been told that virtually all of the major public spaces in the downtown area have been put “on hold” by the office of Mayor Gavin Newsom.

“This is a North American mayor who says he supports American values who is kowtowing to Beijing on everything,” Mr. Colker said. “It’s hilarious that he’s getting away with it.”

San Francisco officials, including those in Mr. Newsom’s office and at the parks and police departments, did not return calls seeking comment for this article. The Chinese consulate also failed to respond to an interview request.

“I have strong concerns about human rights but I can compartmentalize that and separate that from the spirit of the Olympics,” the mayor told KGO-TV.

In a statement posted on the official Web site for the torch relay, Mr. Newsom offered the now unlikely suggestion that the torch relay could encourage reconciliation. “The Olympic Torch represents the journey for excellence, and we are honored to have the opportunity to host and contribute to the Beijing Olympic Journey of Harmony,” Mr. Newsom said.

“You can’t enforce harmony at the barrel of a gun,” one pro-Tibet activist, Giovanni Vassallo, replied.

Activists concerned about China’s role in repression in Darfur and Burma, as well as Beijing’ s hostility toward a religious sect, Falun Gong, have expressed alarm about reports that San Francisco plans to confine demonstrators to so-called free-speech zones, which may or may not abut the still undisclosed torch route.

“China is exporting its censorship policies to the U.S., and San Francisco, for whatever reason, seems to be going along with it,” Allyn Brooks-LaSure of the Save Darfur Coalition said. “China should not be able to come to San Francisco and use it as a major media relations victory.”

Legal action seems likely if the so-called free-speech zones are not within view or earshot of the torch route. An official with the local office of the American Civil Liberties Union, Michael Risher, has filed requests for information on the protest restrictions. “The concern is that the city will try to keep the protests out of sight and out of mind. I don’t think the city law or the Constitution allows that,” he said.

In a related development yesterday, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, backed away from his earlier suggestion that he was open to the idea of protesting China’s Tibet crackdown with an international boycott of the opening ceremonies at the Olympics in Beijing. “It seems unrealistic,” Mr. Kouchner told a French radio network, RMC, the Associated Press reported. “There are a lot of good ideas that can’t be put into practice.”

Mr. Kouchner, a co-founder of Doctors Without Borders, said human rights issues sometimes have to take a back seat. “When you’re dealing in international relations with countries as important as China, obviously when you make economic decisions it’s sometimes at the expense of human rights,” he added, according to the AP. “That’s elementary realism.”

A top official with the Beijing Olympics said yesterday that there has been no change to plans to send the torch through Tibet, despite the recent violence.

“The Tibet leg of the torch relay will proceed as scheduled,” a vice president of the Beijing organizing committee, Jiang Xiaoyu, said, according to the AP. “We firmly believe that the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region will be able ensure the stability of Lhasa and Tibet and also be able to ensure the smooth going of the torch relay in Tibet.”