Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Monday, August 4, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Dan Baynes, Bloomberg

Sponsors
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!
▪	Save 75% for all hotels in Shanghai, Beijing and whole China. Lowest rates for Flights in China.
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.

IOC presses for ‘fullest’ Web access before Games

BEIJING -- No deal was done to censor Web sites at the Beijing Olympics and the International Olympic Committee is pressing for the fullest Internet access for journalists, IOC President Jacques Rogge said.

Another IOC official this week said his organization had reached an agreement with Beijing officials to allow them to censor some Web sites. Friday, Internet access to a number of sites previously barred, such as the BBC’s Chinese language service, became available at the main media center in Beijing.

“I’m not going to apologize for something the IOC is not responsible for,” Rogge said at a news conference in Beijing Saturday. “We are not running the Internet in China. There has been no deal whatsoever at any time.”

Beijing organizers said this week they had blocked Internet access that “propagated information” banned under Chinese law, even after pledging to give reporters unfettered access as part of their bid to secure the Games in 2001.

“The IOC asked for the fullest access and this is what the Beijing organizing committee said it would deliver,” Rogge added.

Other Web sites now available include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Kevan Gosper, head of the IOC’s press commission, had said a deal was made without his knowledge that let the Beijing organizing committee censor Web sites. Gosper said Saturday that the project of restoring full Web access was a “work in progress” and that Beijing officials would “fall into line.”

“A working group has been established with the Beijing organizing committee to start examining sites one by one,” Gosper said. “I am much more confident we are back on track.”

China’s communist government restricts Internet access among its 253 million domestic users, who constitute the world’s biggest Web market. Rogge said on July 17 that there would be no censorship at the Games.

Web sites for organizations such as Free Tibet, which campaigns for an end to China’s occupation of the Himalayan region, and Falungong, a religious movement banned in China, remained inaccessible at the main media center.

Rogge, speaking to the media for the first time since arriving in Beijing Friday, said the athletes’ village was the best he had come across in 40 years. A meeting of the IOC’s executive board had ended a day early Saturday, a reflection of the “excellent organization” of the Games, he added.

“I’ve never seen anything like this athletes’ village,” he said. “It is outstanding.”

Addressing the possibility of political protests by athletes, he said they would be allowed to express themselves freely and he wasn’t concerned about the matter.

“Athletes will have full rights to express themselves as they wish,” Rogge said. “We are simply asking them not to get into propaganda exercises.”

Rogge said all 205 Olympic nations — a record for the Summer Games — will be represented at the Games, which start Aug. 8.

Subscribe to The China Post and save 25%. Click here