Beijing wins Olympics for China

Beijing won the 2008 Olympic Games for the world's most populous nation on Friday in an historic vote by the International Olympic Committee.

Despite worldwide concern at China's record on human rights, the IOC decided to award the summer Olympics to the country with one-fifth of the world's population.

Beijing, which lost the 2000 Games to Sydney by just two votes, defeated Toronto, Paris, Istanbul and Osaka. Osaka was eliminated in the first round with Beijing winning outright in the second round.

The decision was announced by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, who is stepping down after 21 years at the helm of the world's leading sports organisation.

China has been criticised for jailing religious leaders and exactly one week ago the human rights group Amnesty International released figures showing 1,781 people had been executed in the past three months.

Tibetan demonstrators have staged a series of protests in Moscow this week .

POLISHED PERFORMANCE

A confident, polished performance on Friday before the final presentation to the IOC underlined the professionalism of the Beijing bid.

On Thursday, bid organisers dealt unflinchingly with a series of questions about human rights at a news conference and promised full media freedom in 2008.

"I think we will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China," Wang Wei, secretary-general of the Beijing bid committee, told a news conference.

"We have made our guarantees in our bid document so all the world's media will be welcome to come to China."

IOC vice-president Dick Pound, a candidate to take over from outgoing Samaranch when the IOC votes on Monday, welcomed the decision.

Pound said members had been a little uneasy in 1993 because of the Tiananmen Square massacre four years earlier. The Chinese have since dropped a controversial plan to hold beach volleyball in the square.

"We got right up to the edge of the diving board in 1993 and I think people thought we were just a little too close to Tiananmen Square at that point," Pound said.

"Now it is eight years later. The human rights problems remain an issue but it is more of a challenge and an opportunity for the Olympic movement to make a contribution to some of its own goals -- which is to put sport at the service of mankind everywhere and maybe bring about some change."