EU foreign ministers divided on Olympic boycott over Tibet

No one was seeking a full boycott of the summer games as they arrived for the talks at Brdo Pri Kranju, near the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, but most EU nations have openly condemned the Chinese crackdown on protests in Tibet which left some 140 dead, according to Tibetan leaders in exile.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama appealed to China Friday to enter into “meaningful dialogue” over the crisis, while asserting that he did not want to undermine the Beijing Olympics and was not seeking independence.

However the question of a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremony on August 8 remained a possibility for some European nations, while for some others a decision not to attend was not linked to Tibet.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said as he arrived for the talks that neither he nor Chancellor Angela Merkel planned to attend the Beijing Olympics opening, but implied this was not linked to Tibet.

Steinmeier suggested non-attendance would not amount to any boycott of the summer games on account of China’s crackdown on the protests.

“The sports minister (Wolfgang Schaeuble) does not plan to participate, and I don’t think the chancellor or I will,” he told reporters as he arrived at the start of two days of talks.

He added that there had been “no need to scrap anything” as there had never been any plans for them to attend the grand Olympic opening in the Chinese capital on August 8.

Several leaders of eastern European states — Czech President Vaclav Klaus, his Estonian counterpart Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk — have all said they will not be attending the games opening.

However British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in London that Britain, which will host the 2012 Olympics, would definitely not be boycotting any part of the Beijing games.

Others were more cautious. Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, arriving in Brdo, said a ceremony boycott could be “a strong signal,” without committing to such a move.

She said on Austrian radio it was “important not to limit the question of the respect of human rights in China and Tibet exclusively to the question of a political presence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.”

It is not just sporting interests which motivate European leaders, as Tibetan leaders have noted.

Governments worldwide cannot afford to upset economic powerhouse China by weighing in too much over the crisis in Tibet, the leader of the Tibetan exiled government told AFP.

“That is the real issue. The West is only supporting China as they think it is the unlimited market,” the prime minister of the India-based government-in-exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, said Wednesday, in the hill town of Dharamshala in northern India, the base of the Dalai Lama.

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