| |
MEDEU, Kazakhstan : Kazakhstan's president took a jog with the Olympic flame on Wednesday as a world tour for the torch gathered steam ahead of the Beijing summer games.
A smiling President Nursultan Nazarbayev showed off the flame in the Medeu ski resort, a major winter sports centre in the Soviet era, located just south of the Central Asian republic's business capital Almaty.
"I congratulate everyone on this superb day for this historic event, the first time the Olympic torch passes through our country," said Nazarbayev, who was dressed in white running clothes and wearing a necktie for the occasion at an ice skating rink.
Protests over China's crackdown in the mountainous Tibet province were not expected, given the Kazakh authorities' close control of public dissent.
After jogging a short distance, Nazarbayev passed the torch to local hero Bakhityar Artayev, a boxing champion at the Athens Olympics in 2004 who is hoping to defend his title in Beijing.
The flame was later to be taken to Almaty before continuing on a 137,000- kilometre journey through 19 countries.
"The fact that Almaty is the first stage after Beijing shows the friendly relationship we have with our powerful neighbour," said Nazarbayev, whose country is becoming a growing oil power.
Kazakhstan, which borders China and supplies about 10 million tonnes of oil a year to its booming economy, spent 2.5 million dollars for the flame ceremony in Almaty, where 4,500 police were to stand guard.
The torch event was a welcome publicity coup for Kazakhstan, a sparsely populated country best known abroad as the target of comic insults in the spoof documentary "Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan."
Eighty well-known Kazakhs, including sports stars, celebrities and politicians such as Defence Minister Danial Akhmetov, were to share the honour of running with the torch.
Nazarbayev used the event in Medeu to express hope that the resort could one day host the Winter Olympics.
Pro-Tibet activists and other groups are planning demonstrations at key locations along the flame's worldwide route, including London on Sunday, Paris on Monday and San Francisco on Wednesday, the sole stop in the United States.
Other potential trouble spots include New Delhi on April 17. The Chinese government has already approached India about security arrangements.
Protests in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 10 to mark a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule escalated into widespread rioting in the city, which then spread to neighbouring Chinese provinces populated by Tibetans. - AFP/de
|
