BEIJING - China's grandiose plans for the torch relay, the high-profile prelude to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, have been engulfed in conflict by an old political rival _ Taiwan.
Within hours of Beijing's announcement Thursday of what would be the longest torch relay in Olympic history _ an 85,000-mile, 130-day route that would cross five continents and scale Mount Everest _ Taiwan rejected its inclusion.
"It is something that the government and people cannot accept," Tsai Chen-wei, the head of Taiwan's Olympic Committee, said in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.
The episode underscores the deep mistrust between Beijing and Taipei, antagonists in an unresolved civil war, and how entwined the Olympics become with politics.
The torch also is supposed to pass through another political hotspot, the Himalayan region of Tibet that China has controlled for 57 years, often with heavy handed rule. Four American activists were detained by Chinese authorities Wednesday on Mount Everest after they unfurled a banner calling for Tibet's independence.
"It is unacceptable that the IOC has allowed China to cynically exploit Olympic imagery of universalism and peace to press its claims over Tibet," said Matt Whitticase of Free Tibet Campaign, a member of the International Tibet Support Network.
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