BERLIN, March 20: The UN sports representative set to visit China later this month to discuss civil unrest in Tibet said on Thursday he is against a boycott of Beijing’s Olympic Games.

“A boycott achieves nothing at all, except that many thousands of highly qualified athletes who have trained for it miss out and it devalues one of the biggest sports events in the world,” Willi Lemke told German radio.

“The boycott in Moscow (in 1980) was a mistake and to repeat that could be the worst answer to the situation.”

The German politician, who on Tuesday was appointed the UN’s new Special Representative for Sports and Development, will visit China “as soon as possible” to evaluate the situation related to the unrest in Tibet.

A week of protests against China’s 57-year rule of the region erupted into rioting in Lhasa last Friday. Demonstrations have since spilled over into nearby Chinese provinces with ethnic Tibetan populations.

China said rioters killed 13 innocent civilians in Lhasa while denying that it used deadly force to end the protests. Exiled Tibetan leaders have said about 100 people were believed to have been killed in the Chinese crackdown.

Lemke said human rights and the recent unrest is the “main problem” which will occupy him in the forthcoming months. He said his job in China is to “very carefully evaluate what is happening in the country and what that signifies for the Olympic Games during the competition.

“My task is to advise the UN Secretary General of the situation in China. We will use all possibility of diplomacy.”—AFP