IOC boss sidesteps political questions
The Beijing Games would be a 'force for good which will have a lasting effect', IOC president Jacques Rogge said yesterday, as he swerved questions about human rights issues and boycott threats.
Rogge underlined the IOC's apolitical nature at SportAccord, the world's biggest sports convention, which opened in Beijing yesterday.
'We believe the Olympic Games will have a positive, lasting effect on Chinese society and this has been recognised by our Chinese friends and their partners,' Rogge said.
His IOC panel was grilled about China's perceived inaction on genocide in Darfur, and the detention of four US citizens demonstrating for a free Tibet and against the Beijing Olympics at base camp on Mount Everest.
It was a clear indication of how politics and sport will compete in the run-up to the games next August.
There have been calls in some quarters for an Olympic boycott over China's support of the Sudanese government that is said to be backing groups committing wide-scale killings in the Darfur region. China supplies arms to Sudan and also has huge oil investments in the country, and rights groups say its involvement is complicating efforts to stop the civil war and the atrocities.
