China accuses Taiwan of betrayal over torch

BEIJING/TAIPEI, Apr 27 (Reuters) China accused Taiwan of a ''perfidious betrayal of trust'' today for reneging on an agreement to host a stop on next year's Beijing Olympic torch relay.

The relay schedule was unveiled by Beijing organisers (BOCOG) yesterday and included self-governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own, as the stop before Hong Kong on the 137,000-km route.

Taiwan Olympic officials called China's linking them to Hong Kong an attempt to include the island in the domestic relay route and rejected the plan.

BOCOG vice president Jiang Xiaoyu expressed surprise at Taiwan's attitude because its Olympic committee had already agreed to the route in writing.

''The Chinese nation has a fine tradition of keeping promises,'' he told a news conference. ''We do not agree with such perfidious betrayals of trust.

''We still hope the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee and its authorities ... will continue the consensus the two parties have agreed and the route that has been approved by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).'' Taiwan is referred to as ''Chinese Taipei'' in Olympic affairs, a compromise that was reached in the late 1970s to allow the return of China to the sporting movement.

China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 and has vowed to bring the island back under mainland rule, by force if necessary.

SHOULD POLITICS AND SPORT MIX? Jiang said BOCOG had discussed the relay with Taiwan sports officials since November and received a letter from them agreeing to the route on March 27.

It was only last week that BOCOG received another letter from Taiwan's Olympic chief, Tsai Chen-Wei, indicating that there was a problem.

''The current development of many issues are out of our sports community's control,'' Jiang said, quoting from the letter. ''My authorities require that the torch must go into and pass out of Taipei through a third party.'' In Taiwan, mainstream media and Taipei citizens criticised the pro-independence government of President Chen Shui-bian's rejection of the plan, saying politics should not be allowed to intrude into sport.

''By refusing the torch relay through Taiwan, the government is pleasing a small group of independence activists but depriving all sports enthusiasts and by far the greater majority of our people of their chance to watch the torch come through Taiwan,'' the China Post said in an editorial.

Many Taipei citizens said politics and sports should not mix.

''I think sport should just be sport,'' said May Chen, 38, who works for a venture capital firm in Taipei.

Political analysts in southern Taiwan, a traditional pro-independence stronghold, said locals believed Beijing was using the torch relay to promote its view that China and Taiwan are united.

''People will say you can't link sports to politics, but this isn't true,'' said George Hou, a mass communications lecturer at I-shou University in the southern port city of Kaohsiung. ''They affect each other.'' President Chen Shui-bian said on Friday Beijing should consider the torch route that Tokyo used in 1964, which means sending the flame to Taiwan from a country other than China and passing it on from Taiwan to yet another country, but not China or any of its territories.

''He just wants them to understand his view -- don't belittle Taiwan,'' said Chen's spokesman David Lee.

As a measure of China's sensitivity over Taiwan and Olympics-related criticism, its tightly controlled state media made no mention of Taipei's rejection of the torch.

China's censors also cut the signal briefly and blacked out the screen on BBC and CNN reports about the controversy, even though very few Chinese have access to foreign television.

REUTERS BJR VV1534