IOC: Olympic Torch Won't Enter Taiwan

Taiwan Olympic Committee Chairman Tsai Chen-wei, holds up a defunct agreement on the torch relay route for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games during a press conference, Friday, Sept. 21, 2007, in Taipei, Taiwan. In the conference, Tsai said the International Olympic Committee has cutoff the negotiations between China and Taiwan's Olympic committees on the disputed route, which Taiwan felt that the proposed route would imply the self-governing island was a part of Chinese territory. The self-governing island objects to any measures that appear to consider it a part of Chinese territory. (AP Photo/Wally Santana) (Wally Santana - AP)

BEIJING -- Bickering between rivals China and Taiwan forced Olympic officials to scuttle plans to include Taiwan in the torch relay for next year's Beijing Olympics, with both sides accusing each other Friday of trying to play politics with the event.

After 10 months of squabbling during which Beijing announced Taiwan's participation in the relay only to have Taipei deny it, the International Olympic Committee notified both sides Thursday that their talks had reached a dead end. It said that the Taipei leg would be dropped.

Recriminations burst into the open Friday. "China was not acting in good faith," Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian said.

The Beijing Olympic organizing committee accused Taiwan of setting a "vile precedent" by refusing to participate and injecting politics into an event that symbolizes Olympic ideals.

"Responsibility for the torch relay not going to Taipei totally lies with the Taiwan authorities for creating political hurdles, trying to politicize sports and not heeding the wishes of the people of Taiwan," Jiang Xiaoyu, vice president of the Beijing organizing committee, told reporters in Beijing.

Disagreements over the route recurred throughout the negotiations. But in the end Jiang and Chen suggested the talks foundered over Taiwan's desire to fly its national flag during the relay _ and Beijing's insistence that doing so violated long-standing IOC rules governing Taipei's participation in Olympic events.

Failure to compromise on the torch relay underscores the deep mistrust between Beijing and Taipei, which split 58 years ago amid a still unresolved civil war.

China's communist government has since sought to bolster its claims to the island by getting other countries to drop diplomatic relations and force Taipei out of the United Nations and other international organizations. In a sign of Beijing's influence, Taiwan is allowed to take part in the Olympics on condition it not use its national flag, seal or anthem at Olympic events, competing as "Chinese Taipei."

Meanwhile, the democratically governed island under an assertive President Chen has fought back, trying to fortify Taiwan's independent status and resist Beijing's claims of sovereignty.

The collapse of the torch relay talks dealt a blow to the IOC, which has tried to portray the Olympics as a way to overcome political differences between even the most intractable of foes.

Taipei's exclusion also divided public opinion in Taiwan. Shen Sung-hsu, a 44-year-old shipping company worker in Taipei, said China had been high-handed by dictating the torch route. "The host does not necessarily have the right to decide where the torch will go," he said.

Wang Feng-chen, a 34-year-old coffee shop manager in Taipei, however, blamed Chen, saying his dislike for China prevailed, "so he stopped the torch from coming."

Jiang, the Beijing Olympic committee official, said Taiwan was still invited to compete in the Aug. 8-24 games, but with Taipei ruled out, the torch would not stop elsewhere in Taiwan. It has yet to be decided, he said, whether the torch will now travel directly from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Hong Kong, with the originally planned Taipei stop in the middle removed.

Throughout the negotiations, Chen's government disliked Taipei being sandwiched between Vietnam and Chinese-controlled Hong Kong, fearing that Beijing was using it as a way to blur Taiwan's separate status. In April, Beijing announced its grandiose plans for the relay, including stops on Mount Everest as well as Taipei, only to have Taiwan immediately deny an agreement.

Jiang said the Beijing Olympic committee made it clear that Taipei was among 22 cities on the route outside the mainland in the plan that was approved by the IOC and that Taipei Olympic officials agreed to. Jiang suggested that Taiwan Olympic officials ran into interference from political leaders who overrode the agreements made with Beijing.

"The Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee had an obligation to coordinate with the relevant authorities to promise that any flags, emblems or songs not conforming with the regulations will not be used during the Olympic torch relay," Jiang said.

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AP correspondents Debby Wu in Taipei and Christopher Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.