China attacks U.S. critics of Olympics

Beijing urged America to stop its "Cold War thinking" in a statement that followed the arrest by the US of four Chinese men suspected of spying on American military and space programmes. It accused US critics of "ulterior motives".

Calls for a boycott of the Games were triggered when Hollywood director Steven Spielberg announced he was quitting as an adviser to the Games over China's refusal to punish Sudan for mass killings in Darfur.

But in its first response to fresh criticism of its policies on the genocide in Darfur, Beijing broke its silence to declare the Olympics would go ahead as planned and be a "great success". Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao was inundated with questions about the boycott at a news conference today.

He said: "It is understandable if some people do not understand the Chinese government policy on Darfur but I am afraid that some people may have ulterior motives, and this we cannot accept."

The Chinese embassy in Washington also said that it was "irresponsible and unfair" to link the Olympics to foreign policy issues while a state newspaper went further and said that it was a "clumsy trick" to link sport to politics.

China, which has lucrative oil contracts with Sudan, has blocked UN attempts to stop the murders of women and children in the east African region.

Some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in more than four years of conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur, according to estimates by international experts.

But Jin Canrong, an international relations expert at the People's University of China in Beijing, said: "Whoever uses this humanitarian issue to criticise China and put pressure on China gains something of a halo. The West has seized on China's tremendous emphasis on the Olympic Games to criticise China."

And Beijing's Olympic organising committee said the government was making "unremitting efforts" to resolve the Darfur crisis.

"Linking the Darfur issue to the Olympic Games will not help to resolve this issue and is not in line with the Olympic spirit that separates sports from politics," the committee said in a statement.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said: "As the Darfur issue is neither an internal issue of China, nor is it caused by China, it is completely unfair for certain organisations and individuals to link the two as one," the embassy said.

A string of Nobel Laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, today published a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, calling on him to stop the tragedy of Darfur.

Olympics minister Tessa Jowell stepped into the row for the first time, declaring that it was "a great pity". She said that while there were "wholly unacceptable" aspects to Chinese foreign policy, the world had known for the last seven years that Beijing would host the Olympics.

She said: "Most progressive governments accept that there are wholly unacceptable aspects of Chinese policy but that did not stop the International Olympics Committee (IOC) awarding them the Games.

"A call for a boycott doesn't serve any purpose and it would be a great pity. This doesn't mean, however, we should be distracted from the urgency of Darfur."

In a separate embarassment to the Chinese, the British Olympic Association has decided to allow athletes to wear anti-pollution masks.

The US has decided not to "offend" its hosts by allowing such masks, but the BOA says it was to give a "competitive advantage" to British medal hopefuls. Beijing is often choked by smog and certain events may have to be postponed if levels become too high.