China Thwarts Olympic 'Terror Plot'

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From 'The Press Association': Chinese police have broken up a terror plot targeting the Beijing Olympics, and in a separate case, a flight crew foiled an apparent attempt to crash a Chinese jetliner, officials have said. Wang Lequan, the top Communist Party official in the far western region of Xinjiang, said materials seized in a January 27 raid in the regional capital, Urumqi, suggested the plotters planned "specifically to sabotage the staging of the Beijing Olympics...
Their goal was very clear," Mr Wang told reporters in Beijing. Mr Wang cited no other evidence or sources of the information and earlier reports on the raid had made no mention of Olympic targets.

Speaking at the same meeting, Xinjiang's governor said a flight crew prevented an apparent attempt to crash a China Southern flight from Urumqi to Beijing on Friday. Nur Bekri did not specifically label the incident a terrorist act, saying it remained under investigation. No passengers were injured and police were investigating, he said.

The incidents may give greater force to China's arguments that extreme measures are necessary to ensure social stability and the safety of the August Olympics, already the focus of negative publicity from the regime's critics. While deadly violence is less common in China than in many countries - Beijing bans virtually all private gun ownership - officials were quick to assert that a deadly hostage drama involving 10 Australian travel agents last week was not an embarrassment in the run-up to the Olympics. The hostage-taker was shot and killed by a police sniper after a stand-off lasting almost three-hours in the northern tourist hub, Xi'an. The hostage-taker's motive was not known. (See 'Victory Against Terror' article HERE).

Chinese forces have for years been battling a low-intensity separatist movement among Xinjiang's Uighurs, a Turkic-Muslim people who are culturally and ethnically distinct from China's Han majority. Iron-fisted Chinese rule has largely suppressed the violence, however, and no major bombing or shooting incidents have been reported in almost a decade. China has ratcheted up anti-terror preparations ahead of the Games, with the nation's top police official last year labelling terrorism the biggest threat facing the event. Although terrorism experts say the threat is not high given China's tight social controls, they warn that Beijing's counter-terrorism capabilities are weak, especially in intelligence-gathering and analysis.