By RIA Novosti
Beijing : The Olympic torch has been relit in Beijing and will now travel around the world before returning to the Chinese capital for the start of the Games in 130 days’ time.
The torch was relit on Monday in a ceremony on Tiananmen Square that saw that attendance of President Hu Jintao. There was also a high security presence as Chinese authorities looked to avoid a repeat of the protests over Tibet that hit the lighting ceremony in Greece last week.
The Beijing ceremony was a carefully managed affair with some 5,000 people present. Students and workers sang the Olympic song “One World, One Dream,” and China’s Olympics organizing chief, Liu Qi, told the crowd that the flame embodied “hopes and dreams, light and joy and friendship and peace.”
The torch will now leave China for Almaty in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, its first stop in a tour of the world that will see it cross five continents before August 8. It is due in St. Petersburg on April 5.
Pro-Tibetan protestors have pledged to meet the flame with demonstrations throughout its 137,000-kilometer (85,100-mile) journey. Rights groups are also expected to use the occasion to raise the issue of human rights in China, as well as the country’s arms trade with Sudan.
The relighting ceremony comes less than a week after the European Parliament’s president spoke of the possibility of a boycott of the Games over China’s heavy-handed response to recent protests in China.
“We must not exclude the possibility of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. We want them [the Games] to be a success, but not at the expense of the cultural genocide of Tibetans,” Hans-Gert Pottering said in an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag on Tuesday.
The Olympic flame is due in Tibet on June 19-21.