Nearly 90 per cent of Chinese respondents to an online survey said they oppose French President Nicolas Sarkozy's attendance at the Beijing Olympics, results showed on Wednesday. The poll, conducted by Internet portal sina.com, was in response to Sarkozy's threat to boycott Games opening ceremonies. Eighty-eight per cent of respondents to the poll said they opposed Sarkozy's attendance at the August 8-24 Olympics, with 88 per cent also saying they viewed his stance toward China as ‘extremely unfriendly’. The poll had attracted 99,461 respondents by midday on Wednesday. Sarkozy on Tuesday linked his attendance at the opening ceremony to progress in a second round of talks between China and the Dalai Lama over the situation in Tibet. "If they continue to progress and if the Dalai Lama and the Chinese president recognise this progress, then all obstacles to my participation will have been lifted," he said. Sarkozy said he would give his answer ‘early next week, in Japan’ during a Group of Eight summit. China and the Dalai Lama's representatives held an informal round of talks on May 4 after deadly anti-China riots broke out on March 14 in the Tibetan capital Lhasa. Another round of talks is now under way in Beijing. Beijing offered in April to reopen a dialogue on Tibet, a move seen as a response to global protests over the crackdown on unrest in Tibet that has angered and embarrassed the communist leadership ahead of the Olympics. China has accused the Dalai Lama of fomenting the unrest to sabotage the Olympics, a charge he has denied. The resulting crackdown triggered international criticism of Beijing's policies in Tibet, as well as protests in Paris and other Western cities that disrupted April's international Olympic torch relay.
