BEIJING -- Media censorship, chronic air pollution, doping -- IOC president Jacques Rogge and top Olympic officials meeting this weekend have a lot to discuss in their final review before the Beijing Games.
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The next month is supposed to showcase China as an open, rising power. Yet the International Olympic Committee and Chinese organizers have been criticized for failing to deliver on pledges of unblocked Internet access, TV reporting freedoms and clean air.
Potential terrorist threats have been given as the reason for a stark security buildup that has smothered tourism in the face of 500,000 troops, local police, commandos and volunteers.
The latest tempest came Thursday when Kevan Gosper, the press commission head of the IOC, said he was surprised to learn that websites for Amnesty International along with others dealing with Tibet, the 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square and the spiritual group Falun Gong would be blocked to reporters at the Olympics Main Press Center in Beijing.
For months, Gosper, Rogge and others had been saying that the Chinese had agreed to unblock the web during the games; it is routinely limited for Chinese citizens at other times. But Beijing organizing committee spokesman Sun Wiede said this week that journalists would have what he called "sufficient access" to the Internet.
"I have to accept that I appear to be the fall guy and may be the fall guy," Gosper said in an interview with AP Television News.
"I suspect an agreement has been reached, or an understanding has been reached," he said. "It may well have been done by the executive board, done in another place by very senior people in the IOC. It may have taken into consideration new circumstances in this year leading up to the games where there has been quite a lot of trauma around China, and within China" including riots in Tibet, protests during the torch relay and a deadly earthquake in southwestern China.
"This certainly isn't what we guaranteed the international media and it's certainly contrary to normal circumstances of reporting on Olympic Games."
IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies linked some of the problems to misunderstandings, but said late Thursday the IOC had met with the Chinese organizers and they will fix the problem.
"Having understood yesterday that there were difficulties with access to some sites, which obviously goes against our desire to always have media having access they need, we understand that the organizers tomorrow will confirm how they have remedied the situation," she said.
"It's important to stress that there has not at any stage been a deal where the IOC has entered into an agreement with China to censor the internet. There has been no deal with China to censor the internet," Davies added.
She said there had been some early signs things were changing, with the BBC's Chinese website and others now accessible.
Rogge arrived Thursday in Beijing, but declined to speak with reporters at the airport. He's likely to face sustained questioning from colleagues and reporters, having said repeatedly that foreign media would be able to work freely in China.
