Beijing - The International Olympic Committee will not put pressure on China over political issues such as the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region or the status of Tibet before the 2008 Olympics, top IOC officials said on Wednesday.
'We are not in a position that we can give instructions to governments as to how they ought to behave,' said Hein Verbruggen, chairman of the IOC's coordination commission for the 2008 Games.
'These are political crises that ought to be discussed in the United Nations,' Verbuggen told reporters in Beijing when asked about Sudan, where China has major economic interests.
'The IOC is not a politcal body,' he said. 'We only give our hope that these problems can be solved.'
IOC president Jacques Rogge said he believed the 2008 Games would be a 'force for the good' in China.
'We believe that the Olympics will have a lasting, positive effect on Chinese society,' Rogge said.
Some analysts and US officials say China is trying to improve its international reputation ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
They say China has joined the international community to put pressure on Sudan to end the ethnic conflict in Darfur that has killed hundreds of thousands of people in four years, but critics say China has still not done enough.
Several human rights groups have also accused China of cracking down on dissent, media freedom and human rights since it was awarded the Olympics in 2001.
In a report last year, London-based Amnesty International said China had failed to live up to promises made to improve its human-rights record before the 2008 Games.
'The serious human-rights abuses that continue to be reported every day across the country fly in the face of the promises the Chinese government made when it was bidding for the Olympics,' said Catherine Baber, Amnesty's deputy Asia-Pacific director.
Amnesty said it had sent its report to the International Olympic Committee.
Lhadon Tethong, director of of Students for a Free Tibet, on Wednesday told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that she also saw evidence of China 'backsliding' on issues such as religious and media freedom, human rights, and policies towards Tibetans and other minorities.
Chinese authorities detained four US-based Tibetan independence activists on Wednesday after they staged a brief protest against plans to take the Olympic torch over Mount Everest in the run-up to the 2008 games, she said.
'The Chinese government hopes to use the 2008 Olympic Games to conceal the brutality of its occupation of Tibet and win the international community's acceptance as a modern power on the world stage,' Lhadon Tethong said.
'We have absolutely no faith that the IOC will do the right thing when it comes to leverage with the Chinese government,' she said.
In response to reports of the protest at Everest Base Camp, Verbruggen defended the decision to award the games to China and said the IOC would maintain its position of not getting involved in political issues.
'We don't want to be involved in any political issues,' Verbruggen said.
'We certainly will have more of that (protests), we know,' he said.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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