WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush chafed Wednesday at mounting calls for him to skip the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to protest the crackdown in Tibet, but carefully kept his options open.
"Nobody needs to tell old George Bush that he needs to bring religious freedom to the doorstep of the Chinese, because I've done that now for -- I'm on my eighth year doing it," he told EWTN television, a Catholic network.
"I've talked about freedom of religion every time I visited with them. I've talked about Darfur. I've talked about Burma. I've talked about the Dalai Lama. I don't need the Olympics to express my position."
The interview was conducted Tuesday and was to be broadcast on Friday, but the network provided a transcript on Wednesday, as Bush faced growing pressure to skip the August 8 gala event from human rights groups and Democrats.
Also Wednesday, hundreds of baton-wielding police herded the Olympic torch through San Francisco, as organizers played cat-and-mouse with thousands of demonstrators to avoid the chaos of earlier European legs. The closing ceremony was canceled.
Bush, meeting with Singapore Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, also urged China to engage the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, in a "dialogue" on Tibet, amid worldwide criticism of Beijing's approach to the deadly crisis there.
"If they ever were to reach out to the Dalai Lama, they'd find him to be a really fine man, a peaceful man, a man who is anti-violence, a man who is not for independence but for the cultural identity of the Tibetans," he said.
Goh agreed, saying: "The way forward will be for the Chinese leaders to talk to some representatives of the Dalai Lama. Better still if they can, to talk directly to the Dalai Lama. I think that's the only way for them to contain this problem."
Later, Democratic White House hopeful Hillary Clinton and fellow Democratic Senators Robert Menendez and Robert Byrd formally urged Bush in a letter to skip the ceremony.
"Few actions can speak louder than if the President of the United States were to condemn the Chinese human rights record with the entire world watching. Refusing to attend the opening ceremonies would accomplish exactly that," they wrote.
Speaking at the Irish-American Forum in New York City Wednesday, Clinton also commended British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for not attending the opening ceremonies -- although his office insisted he had never intended to go.
She said it was an "important decision" and called on her Democratic White House rival Barack Obama and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain to join with her in urging a boycott by Bush.
The top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said after meeting with Bush at the White House that she hoped Beijing would talk to the Dalai Lama; stop the crackdown in Tibet and allow independent media entry there; and end support for Sudan's government amid violence in Darfur.
"If people want to go to a party to give credibility to the Chinese government and face to them, I think these other considerations should be considered," she said.
The US president has carefully insisted he is going "to the Olympics" -- no mention of the opening ceremony -- even as the White House insists that the event is too far off to say where Bush will be.
At the same time, Bush told EWTN that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is "not attending the Games, period. She's not going to -- I don't think she's going to Beijing at all, at least that's what she told me."
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had said Friday that neither he nor Merkel planned to attend the opening ceremony, but said nothing about the Games overall, and implied the move was not linked to Tibet.
The violence in Tibet on March 14 came after days of peaceful protests in Lhasa against 57 years of Chinese rule and quickly spilled over into other parts of China inhabited by Tibetans.
Exiled Tibetan leaders say 150 people have died in the Chinese crackdown on the demonstrations. China insists it has acted with restraint and killed no one, while blaming Tibetan "rioters" for the deaths of 20 people.
The unrest, the worst to hit the Himalayan region in decades, has come at an awkward time for Beijing as it prepares to host the Summer Olympics, attracting the attention of the entire world.
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