Czech, Polish Leaders Skip Olympics to Protest Tibet (Update1) By Marek Miler and Katya Andrusz
March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declined invitations to the Olympic Games in Beijing following clashes between Tibetan protesters and Chinese security forces.
``Those who sometime in the 1990s voted for the Olympics to go to China should not now be pretending they're surprised that China is what it is,'' Klaus said on his Web site. Tusk will skip the opening ceremony, Agnieszka Liszka, his spokeswoman, said by phone, confirming a report in Poland's Dziennik newspaper.
Poland will also try to convince other European Union countries that the bloc should speak out more strongly on the issue of Tibet, Dziennik reported, citing Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Ryszard Schnepf as saying.
In the Czech Republic, which like Poland overthrew communism in 1989, politicians including former President Vaclav Havel, who helped bring down the former system as a dissident playwright, have called for the EU to press for greater human rights in countries including Cuba and Belarus.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said this week he wouldn't rule out a boycott of the opening ceremony, and appealed ``to the Chinese leaders' sense of responsibility'' to stop the crackdown in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
Ministers, Mayor
Czech Education Minister Ondrej Liska, Environment Minister Martin Bursik and Prague Mayor Pavel Bem also turned down the Czech Olympic Committee's invitation to the games, newspaper Hospodarske Noviny reported. It is still not known whether Prime Mi ...
