EDINBURGH (AFP) - Athletics chief Lamine Diack on Saturday played down a potential boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games, saying it was not the job of athletes to pressure individual governments.
The Chinese authorities have come increasingly under the international spotlight over their handling of recent protests in the Himalayan region of Tibet.
China says rioters killed 18 innocent civilians and two police officers. But exiled Tibetan leaders have put the death toll from a Chinese crackdown at about 140 Tibetans and say another 1,000 people have been injured.
"No one is speaking of boycotting the Olympics," International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) president Diack said here ahead of Sunday's world cross-country championships.
Athletics, along with swimming, is one of the main draw cards of the Olympic Games, drawing huge crowds and massive television viewing figures across the globe.
But Diack said changing the China government's domestic policies was not in the remit of the IAAF.
"It's not for us to put pressure on the Chinese government," said the Senegalese national. "It's not for us to try to change Chinese government policy."
He added, however, that "athletes can have a role to play with their opinion".
Defending men's world cross-country champion Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea, who sprinted home to the title in Mombasa, Kenya, last year after Ethiopia's multi-medallist Kenenisa Bekele broke down in the searing heat, said his thoughts were definitely not on an eventual boycott of the Beijing Games.
"I'm preparing for the Olympics. It's not far off now," said Tadese.
"What's happening there is not the direct concern of athletes but governments. We're ready to go. The issue is political."
Ethiopia's defending women's champion Tirunesh Dibaba echoed Tadese's views.
"I am a sportswoman," she said. "I am preparing for the Olympics and am focusing on participating in Beijing."
Meeting in the Slovenia town of Brdo Pri Kranju on Friday, EU foreign ministers were split on the idea of boycotting the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony over Tibet, but keen for China to open talks with the Dalai Lama.
None of the ministers suggested a full-scale boycott of the August 8-24 summer Games despite public pressure for some kind of response to China's crackdown on Tibetan protesters.
Several eastern European leaders - including Czech President Vaclav Klaus, his Estonian counterpart Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk - have said they will not attend the Games opening.
However at the EU ministerial talks Portugal, Spain and Sweden backed Britain's choice not to stage a boycott, with several other countries yet to make a decision.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview in Friday's Washington Times, said a boycott would insult the Chinese people and be ineffective, adding that the US-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics was "feckless".
