Any attempt to sabotage Olympics doomed to fail

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-04-16 16:10

Government leaders and scholars around the world have voiced their support for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, condemning deeds of disrupting the Olympic torch relay and saying the sabotage attempts are doomed to fail.

Ukraine's former president Leonid Kravchuk said in Kiev on Tuesday that the Olympics is a great sports party for the whole world and is also an arena of friendly exchanges.

"Tibet is an inalienable part of China, and any attempt to sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games by using the Tibet issue violates the Olympic spirit and the will of people around the world," Kravchuk said.

Dao Duy Quat, vice director of Vietnam's Communist Party Central Commission on Ideology and Culture, said that any attempt to obstruct the Olympic Games violates the Olympic spirit and runs against the common aspiration of the whole world for peace and progress.

He said that Vietnam has been doing everything to ensure the Olympic torch relay in Ho Chi Minh City a success.

Latvian Parliament member Ivan Klementev, who won a gold medal in the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and also a two-time Olympic silver medalist, said in an interview with Xinhua that the Olympics is not held for politicians and government officials, but a festival for the athletes who have made preparations for four years.

The attempts by some politicians to politicize the Games and to boycott the event will never bring any positive results and the Beijing Olympics will definitely turn out as a great success, Klementev said.

Cuba strongly opposes any attempt to sabotage the Beijing Olympics, Cuba's official newspapers cited Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly of People's Power, the country's legislature, as saying.

No matter how many times a lie is repeated, the fact can not be changed that Tibet has been a part of China, Alarcon said.

Phil Goff, New Zealand trade minister, said as the 2008 Olympics is drawing near, more attention should be focused on the athletes and the international community should work together to make the event a success.

In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Susan Brownell, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, was quoted as saying that China will not only put up a good Olympics but is a worthy host in the best tradition of the Games.

U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley also criticized on Sunday the call by some countries to boycott the Beijing Olympics.



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