Brown Decision Not to Attend Beijing Games Opener 'not a Boycott'

Downing Street yesterday confirmed that Gordon Brown will not be attending the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, but will instead attend the closing ceremony as host of the 2012 Olympics.

Number 10 said his decision not to attend the opening event did not represent a British boycott in protest at human rights abuses in China as the Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, would be attending on behalf of the government.

Downing Street insisted it had always been clear that Brown would not attend the opening ceremony, and it was not a response to demands by Free Tibet campaigners or calls to boycott the opening games made by the French President Nicholas Sarkozy and the Democratic US presidential campaigner Hillary Clinton. Brown's plans had been made clear at a lobby journalists' briefing on March 19, a spokesman said, and he angrily rejected suggestions of a change of mind.

However, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said Brown was suffering from "strained semantics" and it was "a belated U-turn" as Brown had never said in public that he would be absent.

The Downing Street confirmation was "part of a pattern, when he only does the right thing late in the day when he is forced to do so by public opinion," he said.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, indicated last month that she would stay away from Beijing, although Germany's foreign minister denied this was a political protest.

The Chinese government had hoped to use the games to highlight its economic development, but it is increasingly providing an opportunity for critics to attack China's policies in Tibet.