Pakistan ups Olympic torch security after route change
ISLAMABAD (AFP) — Pakistan geared up on Tuesday for the arrival of the Olympic torch, after announcing that its leg of the troubled worldwide relay had been slashed due to security threats.
The torch, which arrives early Wednesday from Oman on the first stop in its Asian leg of the tour, was supposed to travel through the boulevards of the capital Islamabad before reaching a stadium for a ceremony.
But the relay will now be confined to the city's heavily guarded Jinnah Stadium, amid security concerns sparked by a wave of suicide bombings in which more than 1,000 people have died in the past year.
"The entire event was re-scheduled due to security threats. We had to re-schedule the programme to ensure full security to the torch relay and its participants," Pakistan Olympic Association chairman Arif Hassan told AFP.
"Keeping in view the law and order situation which was experienced in the past one year and the blasts and explosions, we had selected three possible routes," Hassan said.
"But at the last minute we dropped the other two routes and selected this route inside Jinnah Stadium to ensure that we do not face any security threat," he added.
A bomb at an Italian restaurant in Islamabad on March 15 killed a Turkish woman and wounded four US FBI agents. But there has been a lull in attacks since a new government took power on March 31.
The ceremony will be attended by President Pervez Musharraf, who on Monday condemned pro-Tibetan protests that have marred the Beijing Olympic torch relay, and vowed to maintain security when the flame arrived.
"We have taken all measures to ensure its security," Musharraf, who is in China, told students following a speech at a Beijing university.
"There is no one in Pakistan, not one man, who would like to do anything against the interests of China."
Pakistan and China are close political, military and commercial allies.
Hassan said the public would not be allowed to see the relay but at least 8,000 specially selected guests had been invited to the ceremony at the stadium, which would also be shown live on television.
He said that there would be two sessions of the ceremony involving 65 runners from China and Pakistan.
The flame is arriving in Pakistan after protests over Tibet and human rights marred the European and US legs of its world tour.
It was paraded through the Omani capital without incident and amid cheers on Monday on the sole Middle East stage of its journey to Beijing for this August's Games.
The stages in London and Paris were overshadowed by demonstrations against Beijing's repression of protests in Tibet, and the third stage in San Francisco was drastically curtailed and seen by relatively few people.
The legs in Buenos Aires and Dar es Salaam passed off with little incident.
However police in the Indian capital New Delhi, the torch's next stop after Pakistan, detained more than a dozen pro-Tibet demonstrators Tuesday in an area that will be sealed off for the relay.
