Organisers of the Beijing Olympics yesterday unveiled an ambitious route for a torch relay that would cross five continents and all of China in 130 days ahead of the Games' opening next August.
But a plan to send the torch to Taiwan was immediately rejected by Taipei.
At a ceremony at the Millennium Monument, Liu Qi , president of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, said the torch would be carried around the world in a 'journey of harmony' that would include Taiwan and Mount Everest in Tibet.
'It will be a relay that covers the longest distance, is most inclusive and involves the most people in modern Olympic history,' he said.
The route - unveiled by Politburo Standing Committee member Luo Gan and International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge after the IOC's executive board approved it yesterday - would see the torch travel 137,000km in 130 days, 97 of them in China.
The flame will be lit in Athens, host of the 2004 Games, and the relay will start in Almaty, Kazakhstan.