Organizers for the 2008 Beijing Olympics announced Thursday what will be the longest torch relay in the history of the Games, tracing a route that covers five continents and makes politically sensitive stops in Taiwan and Tibet.

At a ceremony attended by senior members of China's ruling Communist Party and the International Olympic Committee, organizers said the route will cover 137,000 kilometres, last 130 days and reach Mount Everest.

Beijing formally announced the route for the 2008 Olympic torch relay on Thursday, saying the flame will be carried to Tibet and to the island of Taiwan.
(TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images)

"It will be a relay that will cover the longest distance and be most inclusive and involve the most people in Olympic history," said Liu Qi, head of Beijing's Olympic organizing committee.

The relay is the latest grand plan associated with an Olympics that organizers and IOC officials have said should set a new standard for the Games. But it also takes the Games into politically tricky terrain.

Stops in Taiwan and Tibet, where Mount Everest towers, have generated controversy ever since Beijing telegraphed its intentions to include them on the route years ago.

Taiwan has resisted Beijing's overtures — and threats — to unify after splitting amid civil war; China's often harsh 57-year rule over Tibet has been widely criticized.

Four American activists were detained by Chinese authorities Wednesday on Mount Everest after they unfurled a banner calling for Tibet's independence.

Beijing is hoping that the torch relay will bolster its claims over both territories.

Political compromise

In a compromise, the torch will pass from Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City to Taipei, Taiwan's capital, and then to Chinese-controlled Hong Kong. The route allows Taiwan to say it is part of the international leg, while allowing China to blur the distinction between the domestic and international parts.

The disputes underscore the political agendas at work at many Olympics and, especially in Beijing, whose Communist government hopes the event will raise its stature at home and abroad.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said politics should be kept out of the Games, and that Beijing had the support of the country and of people around the world.

"Most of China's citizens are looking forward and making preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Most people in the world are looking forward to a successful Olympic Games that can promote the friendship of people around the world," he told a news conference.

The relay, which is supposed to embody the Olympic values of friendship through sports, is a popular public-relations tool and the only contact most people have with the Olympics.

Relay begins in Greece

As with all Olympics, next year's torch relay will begin in Greece and wind across the globe before it is used to ignite the cauldron at the opening ceremony on Aug. 8, 2008, in Beijing's 91,000-seat Olympic Stadium.

Other stops announced Thursday include: Paris; San Francisco; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Pyongyang, the capital of politically isolated and belligerent North Korea.

"The Beijing 2008 torch relay will, as its theme says, be a journey of harmony, bringing friendship and respect to people of different nationalities, races and creeds," IOC president Jacques Rogge told the ceremony.

The relay's signature moment is expected to be its ascent to the summit of Everest, which straddles Chinese-ruled Tibet and Nepal.

The International Olympic Committee, which shies away from controversy, was drawn into torch-relay politics after the three Americans and a Tibetan-American were detained on Everest. They waved a banner reading: "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008." Another one in English and Chinese read: "Free Tibet."

"We are certainly going to have more of this [protests]," Hein Verbruggen, head of the IOC body that co-ordinates with Beijing organizers, told reporters in Beijing. "We know that."

"We don't want to be, as the IOC, involved in any political issues."