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WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush said Thursday
he had not changed his plans to attend the Beijing Olympics, despite
a growing row over China’s support for Sudan amid the Darfur
crisis.
In an interview with the BBC,
Bush said he had no reason to use the Olympics as a way to highlight
such issues because he did it “all the time” in private with the
Chinese leadership.
“I’m going to the Olympics. I
view the Olympics as a sporting event,” Bush told the BBC in an
interview aired Thursday.
In what was a public relations
disaster for the Games, Hollywood filmmaker Steven Spielberg
announced Tuesday that he was cutting ties with the Olympics and
quitting as its artistic advisor.
Spielberg accused China of not
doing enough to press its ally Sudan to end the devastating violence
in Darfur.
At the same time, a series of
Nobel Prize laureates, Olympic athletes and lawmakers from around
the world penned an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao also
urging Beijing to use its pressure on Khartoum.
Bush told BBC World America that
what Spielberg did was “up to him.”
“I have a little different
platform than Steven Spielberg, so I get to talk to President Hu
Jintao. And I do remind him that he can do more to relieve the
suffering in Darfur.”
“I am not going to go and use
the Olympics as an opportunity to express my opinions to the Chinese
people in a public way because I do it all the time with the
president.”
--AFP
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