Sarkozy sluit boycot van Olympische opening niet uit (en)
French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday (25 March) did not rule out boycotting the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on 8 August in Beijing following China's crackdown on Tibet.
Violence erupted in Tibet's capital, Lhasa, on 14 March after several days of anti-government protests led by Tibetan monks. The clashes have caused the death of more than 100 people so far according to human rights groups, and have prompted international protests and demonstrations.
Asked by journalists whether he was considering a boycott of the Olympic Games' opening ceremony in retaliation for the Chinese crackdown, Mr Sarkozy said he was not "closing the door to any possibility."
"Our Chinese friends must understand the worldwide concern that there is about the question of Tibet, and I will adapt my response to the evolutions in the situation that will come, I hope, as rapidly as possible," he said in Tarbes, southwest France.
The French head of state, who has been under increasing domestic pressure to harden France's stance towards China, is the first world leader to have brandished the threat of a boycott.
However, politicians from states that have so far ruled out boycotting the Games or the opening ceremony - such as the US, the UK or Germany - have also condemned the violence in China.
Ruprecht Polenz, chairman of the German Parliament's foreign affairs committee, on Tuesday echoed Mr Sarkozy's position.
He told Germany's South West radio that if China remained as "militant" as at present, he could not imagine German politicians "attending the opening or closing ceremonies."
Meanwhile, during the official Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece on Monday (24 March) protests were held in several cities worldwide, while the ceremony itself was disrupted by pro-Tibet demonstrators showing the Olympic rings transformed into handcuffs.
For its part, the EU has also condemned the use of violence and expressed strong concern about the situation in the region, but has stopped short of calling for a boycott.
"We condemn violence. But on the question of boycotting the games, nobody (_) believes that a boycott is the right answer," EU sports commissioner Jan Figel said last week.
On Tuesday, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso also rejected the idea of a boycott and said that he did not see the Games as a political event, reported AP.
By contrast, the president of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Poettering said that a boycott should be considered as an option.
"We should not exclude the possibility of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. We want a successful Games, but not at the price of the cultural genocide of the Tibetans," he told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag on 23 March.
During a plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels today (26 March), MEPs together with EU foreign affairs commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and Slovenia's State Secretary for European Affairs Janez Lenarcic, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, will hold a debate on the situation in Tibet.