The Olympic torch that will light the Beijing 2008 Games will be carried by a relay team to the top of Everest, China announced yesterday. But the torch’s planned route has already sparked a diplomatic row with Taiwan.

In a gala ceremony at the Millennium Monument in Beijing, broadcast live, officials said that the flame would follow a 130-day, 137,000 kilometre (85,000mile) journey to all five continents represented by the Olympic rings. Communist Party and International Olympic Committee officials pulled away a red silk cloth to reveal China’s torch – a cylinder embossed with a traditional cloud design in red and white.

The dozens of cities that it will visit include Taipei – capital of Taiwan, which Beijing’s rulers have regarded as a renegade province ever since the Nationalists fled there after losing the civil war in 1949.

The chairman of Taiwan’s Olympic Committee declared that the route was little more than a political manoeuvre that was intended to undermine the island.

Speaking less than two hours after IOC officials said that the torch would go from Vietnam to Taiwan and then to the Chinese territory of Hong Kong, Tsai Chenwei said: “This route is a domestic route that constitutes an attempt to downgrade our sovereignty. It is something that the Government and people cannot accept.”

Officials of Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party wanted the relay to reflect the island’s separatenss from China and had said a route that linked Taiwan and Hong Kong would be unacceptable because this would bolster Beijing’s wish to make the island appear a part of mainland China.

For most Chinese the most exciting part of the journey will be an attempt to carry the flame to the summit of Everest. A lantern carrying a second flame will be set aside for this.

The Everest attempt has also caused controversy. On Wednesday, Chinese authorities detained three Americans and a Tibetan-American when they called for independence of the Buddhist Himalayan region and protested against the Beijing Olympics. They held up a banner at a base camp on the Tibetan side of the mountain, which straddles the border with Nepal, that read: “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008.”

The Beijing organisers have long had Everest in their sights. A team of climbers is already in training to carry the flame up the mountain and a test climb is planned.

China will need to design a torch that can remain alight in such a low-oxygen, high-altitude environment and plans to select an expert Chinese climber for the challenge.

The Beijing organising committee said: “The torchbearer team will then attempt to take the flame to the highest peak on a day in May that presents the best climatic condition for the ascent.”

The relay will visit five continents, arriving in London on April 6. It will wind through every one of China’s 31 provinces, including some of the best-preserved ancient villages and towns famed as bases from which the Communist Party began the revolution that brought it to power in 1949. The theme of the relay, which will take in large parts of the Silk Road trading route that once linked China with Europe is “the journey of harmony”. The motto will be: “Light and passion, share the dream”.

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