Torch comes to Beijing, security tightened
BEIJING (Reuters) - The Olympic torch arrived in China's capital on Tuesday after a jubilant reception in the quake-ravaged southwest, as Beijing tries to choreograph a happy ending to its troubled international tour.
Beijing's residents have been warned they will face sweeping security to prevent any more trouble -- and bad publicity -- on the last leg of the tour ahead of Friday's opening ceremony.
"This is the pride of the Chinese people," worker Xu Min said amid cheering crowds watching the flame in Chengdu, capital of quake-hit Sichuan province where 70,000 people died in May.
But far to the northwest, questions about dissent and China's human rights record refused to go away, after suspected Islamist separatists killed 16 policemen on Monday in what a senior local Communist Party official called a "terrorist attack".
Riot police flooded the streets in the old Silk Road city of Kashgar and stopped cars. Exiled dissident groups said many local Muslims had been rounded up, and some beaten. Japan protested after police also beat up two of its journalists there.
The government and Olympics chiefs shrugged off the attack, assuring 10,500 athletes from 205 countries they would be safe.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which promised the Games would be an "unforgettable moment in Olympic history", also tried to reassure visitors and athletes that the smog which often envelops the capital would not pose major health problems.
But not everyone was convinced.
Members of the U.S. cycling squad arrived at Beijing's swanky new airport terminal on Tuesday wearing black respiratory masks.
The IOC's medical chief said the masks were unnecessary, and the U.S. Olympic Committee urged the Chinese not to take offence.
"It was in no way intended to be disrespectful," spokesman Darryl Seibel said.
The last leg of the Olympic torch's mammoth 130-day tour starts at Beijing's Forbidden City on Wednesday, before being taken round landmarks like Tiananmen Square.
In a tradition introduced before the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the flame is lit from the sun's rays in ancient Olympia, Greece, then carried across the globe by thousands of runners.
LIGHTNING ROD
This time the tour became a lightning rod for protests around the world over China's rule of Tibet, a reaction which offended many ordinary Chinese.
Spain's High Court, which prosecuted former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, said on Tuesday it would investigate seven high-ranking Chinese officials over accusations that they oversaw widespread killing and torture to suppress the Tibet protests.
The court accepted the case from Tibetan rights groups.
Desperate to show its modern face to the world but under pressure over human rights, the host nation was also shaken by Monday's attack some 5,000 km (3,000 miles) west of Beijing.
Two men were arrested for carrying out the attack, police said, identifying them as Muslim ethnic Uighurs "bent on jihad".
"This is an individual incident," Chinese tourism official Du Jiang said. "We are basically a safe travel destination."
The August 8-24 Olympics will cost Beijing about $40 billion, by far the most expensive in history. Unlike past debt-ridden hosts such as Montreal in 1976 and Athens in 2004, that sum is small change for China's roaring economy.
In the most eagerly awaited competition, the men's 100 meters for the title of "Fastest Man on Earth", world champion Tyson Gay said he would be ready despite a hamstring muscle strain in July.
One of his main rivals, Jamaican world record holder Usain Bolt, said it would take something special to win the event.
"It's all about who's got the perfect race," he said.
In the latest in a string of drug scandals to hit the Games, a Russian race walker was suspended after failing tests, the seventh athlete to be thrown out of the team in the past week.
Vladimir Kanaikin, one of the favorites for the gold in the 20km, tested positive for the banned drug EPO in April, said Russian Athletics Federation president Valentin Balakhnichyov.
"It seems to be an example of systematic, planned doping," Arne Ljungqvist, head of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission, told reporters in Beijing. "It is frustrating to find that that kind of planned cheating is going on."
The sun made a welcome appearance on Tuesday afternoon as a light breeze dispersed the pollution-fuelled haze that had earlier obscured a skyline boasting numerous futuristic new Olympic venues and towers bearing testimony to China's new wealth.
Authorities have spent a fortune -- around $18 billion -- on cleaning up Beijing. Drastic measures have included taking nearly 2 million cars off the street and shutting factories. But they can do little about the cloying summer heat.
In a bid to show openness, police have been told not to interfere with foreign journalists' work or with anti-government speeches, even if they involve the banned spiritualist movement Falun Gong, or independence for Taiwan, Tibet or Xinjiang.
En route to Asia to attend the opening ceremony, U.S. President George W. Bush gave a mixed assessment of a nation many expect to rival his own for global hegemony this century.
He praised China's efforts to curb the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, but said it was "really hard to tell" whether human rights had improved of late.
(Additional reporting by Reuters Olympics bureau; Editing by Nick Macfie and Ralph Gowling)
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