  The ALICE experiment is shown to be well suited for studies of exclusive
final states from central diffractive reactions. The gluon-rich environment of
the central system allows detailed QCD studies and searches for exotic meson
states, such as glueballs, hybrids and new charmonium-like states. It would
also provide a good testing ground for detailed studies of heavy quarkonia. Due
to its central barrel performance, ALICE can accurately measure the low-mass
central systems with good purity. The efficiency of the Forward Multiplicity
Detector (FMD) and the Forward Shower Counter (FSC) system for detecting
rapidity gaps is shown to be adequate for the proposed studies. With this
detector arrangement, valuable new data can be obtained by tagging central
diffractive processes.
