Bush isn't boycotting Olympics

CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush suggested Friday that he is unlikely to bow to demands to skip the opening ceremonies of the Summer Games in Beijing, saying he will attend the Olympics while continuing to raise concerns with President Hu Jintao about China's crackdown in Tibet.

In a television interview at his ranch, Bush said he plans to attend the Games to support U.S. athletes, but he did not directly answer whether he will stay away from the opening ceremonies as some other Western leaders are doing.

"Are you still insisting on going to those opening ceremonies?" asked ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz.

"My plans haven't changed," Bush responded. "But what I find interesting about this, just so you know, is that this isn't a new issue for me. Every time I meet with the Chinese president, and I've met a lot with him, I bring up religious freedom and human rights."

Bush emphasized that he was the first U.S. president to meet with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, and added later: "It says I'm supporting our athletes, is what it says. And I don't view the Olympics as a political event. I view it as a sporting event."

The Chinese leadership had hoped that hosting the Summer Games would provide a public relations bonanza for the communist country but has instead had to cope with escalating protests over its policies on Tibet and Darfur and other human-rights issues. Its Foreign Ministry has urged countries not to bring "irrelevant political factors" into the Games.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive GOP nominee, said Thursday that Bush should consider skipping the opening ceremonies unless China drastically changes its policies, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., took a similar position. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Bush should immediately decide not to attend.

Two major U.S. allies, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have announced that they will not attend the opening ceremonies in August. Brown's office said later that he had never planned to go to the start of the Games but will participate in the closing ceremonies.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also has told China's government that he may not attend the Games.

Boycotts and protests have a mixed history at the Olympics. The most prominent were in 1980, when the United States led a Western boycott of the Moscow Olympics, and in 1984, when the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc nations refused to attend the Los Angeles Games.