Senior Olympic officials yesterday raised the prospect for the first time of abandoning the international legs of the Beijing Games torch relay, amid a wave of protests targeting the flame overseas.
The protests continued on Monday with a dramatic stunt at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, two days before the torch’s arrival to the city. Police appeared to have been caught cold by the protest, during which demonstrators scooted up the bridge’s cables using climbing gear and unfurled two giant banners.
The torch relay for Beijing and future Games will be reviewed at a meeting of International Olympic Committee (IOC) chiefs in Beijing beginning on Thursday, Gunilla Lindberg, a vice president of the IOC, told reporters.
PHOTO: AP
“I am sure it will be discussed. I think we need to have a full review,” Lindberg told reporters when asked if she thought the IOC would scrap the overseas legs of the Beijing torch relay.
Other senior IOC officials who are in Beijing to prepare for the August Games spoke bitterly of the demonstrations that have marred China’s efforts to stage the most ambitious torch relay ever.
“All I can say is we are desperately disappointed,” IOC board member Kevan Gosper said.
“[Activists] just take their hate out on whatever the issues are at the time,” Gosper said.
Campaigners are trying to raise publicity about Beijing’s controversial rule of Tibet and a wide range of human-rights abuses in China.
On Monday, the torch relay had to be dramatically cut short in Paris due to disruptions by hundreds of protesters. Widespread protests also disrupted the previous day’s leg in London, while activists promised more of the same in Australia, India, Thailand, Japan and elsewhere.
China’s Foreign Ministry yesterday angrily denounced the protests in Europe against the torch relay as “sabotage” by Tibetan separatists.
Gosper and other IOC officials said they would discuss whether to completely abandon the concept of taking the torch around the world for future Games. Gosper said the IOC might prefer a return to a relay program that would see the torch lit in Greece and then transferred to the host country.
Meanwhile, 11 foreign journalists were scheduled to depart yesterday for western China on a tour organized by China’s Foreign Ministry.
The second tour for foreign media of areas that saw mass Tibetan protests recently will fly to Lanzhou, Gansu Province, where more than 1,000 Buddhist monks led protests.
At the end of last month, journalists were taken on a highly regimented three-day trip to Lhasa. Their tour was interrupted by 30 monks at Jokhang Temple, who shouted about the lack of freedom in Tibet and rebutted China’s claims that the Dalai Lama had fomented the riots.
In related news, US Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton urged President George W. Bush on Monday to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Clinton, in a statement, cited violent clashes in Tibet and the lack of pressure by China on the Sudanese government to stop “the genocide in Darfur.”
“I believe President Bush should not plan on attending the opening ceremonies in Beijing, absent major changes by the Chinese government,” the New York senator said.
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
Taiwanese exports to the US are to be subject to a 20 percent tariff starting on Thursday next week, according to an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump yesterday. The 20 percent levy was the same as the tariffs imposed on Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by Trump. It was higher than the tariffs imposed on Japan, South Korea and the EU (15 percent), as well as those on the Philippines (19 percent). A Taiwan official with knowledge of the matter said it is a "phased" tariff rate, and negotiations would continue. "Once negotiations conclude, Taiwan will obtain a better
RSS