By Charles Whelan
BEIJING, April 23 – China’s political rival Taiwan has agreed to host a leg of the 2008 Olympic torch relay, a top Beijing Games official said today as the city prepared to unveil the torch design and relay route.
No immediate response was available from authorities on Taiwan, whose ruling party had been reported as reluctant to join a relay that would portray the island as part of a domestic China leg.
The official also confirmed the flame would be carried to the top of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak.
“In general, both sides agreed that the torch relay can go through Taiwan. As for the details, they are under discussion,” Wang Wei, the vice-president of the Beijing Games organising committee, told reporters.
“Taiwan has agreed Taiwan will be included on the Olympic torch relay.” China’s preparations for the August 2008 Olympics have been widely praised but the torch relay has remained a question mark amid a political impasse with Taiwan and the controversial Everest plans.
Each Games is launched with the lighting of a cauldron in the host city by a torch transported by runners and other means from Greece’s Mount Olympus, the symbolic home of the Olympics.
International Olympic Committee officials, who must approve the 2008 torch route, are discussing the issue during meetings in Beijing.
The Chinese torch’s design and the Greece-Beijing route are to be unveiled on Thursday.
“You all know that (the Taiwan leg) is a very sensitive matter and needs discussion and I will not go into details. But according to the previous discussion between the two sides, a tentative decision has been made,” Wang said.
China and Taiwan split in 1949 at the end of a civil war. China considers the wealthy, democratically-ruled island a renegade province to be retaken by force if necessary.
Wang also said China is sticking to plans for a leg to Everest and through Tibet, which has been attacked for safety reasons, concerns that the logistical effort would damage the environment and objections by groups opposing China’s control of Tibet.
“Allowing China to run the Olympic torch through Tibet would mean the IOC’s mark of approval for China’s military occupation of our nation,” said a statement last week by New York-based Students for a Free Tibet.
Tibetan exiles, led by the Dalai Lama, claim that political oppression by Beijing and an influx of ethnic Chinese settlers is extinguishing the mountainous region’s traditional Buddhist culture.
Olympic host nations have recently sought to leave their mark with increasingly ambitious torch relays.
The torch was borne along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in a sealed baton by scuba divers for the 2000 Sydney Games, while the Athens 2004 relay circumnavigated the globe, taking the flame to Africa and South America.
A recent commentary in China’s official Youth Daily said the Everest plan should be revised, suggesting instead that China’s Great Wall, a symbol of the nation’s history and civilisation, be used.
