BEIJING (AFP) — World leaders wishing to deliver a snub to China over its crackdown in Tibet will hurt only their own athletes if they use the Beijing Games to make their point, according to Olympic officials here.

US President George W. Bush and other leaders have come under pressure from activists to boycott at least the opening ceremony of the August extravaganza to protest at issues including Tibet and China's human rights record.
China has built up the Olympics as a prestige ""coming-out"" party onto the world stage and would likely take a dim view of any leader who said they were not going to attend because of political differences.
But major world figures have not, as a rule, attended every Olympics -- in the 2004 Games in Athens, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was one of the few at the opening ceremony, to which Bush sent his father.
Moreover, International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials and the Beijing Olympic organizing committee point out, it is not the host country that sends out the invitations.
Invitations to heads of state or government to attend come from their own National Olympic Committees.
So while a possible decision by French President Nicolas Sarkozy or others to skip the opening ceremony may disappoint China, it would effectively be a snub of athletes from their own country, Olympic officials said.
""This is how it has worked in the past and this is how it will work at the Beijing Games,"" said Zhu Jing, a media and communications department official at the Beijing organizing committee.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UN chief Ban Ki-moon are among those who have said they will not be present when China opens the Games on August 8.
However, they have insisted those plans were in place before the unrest in Tibet, with Sarkozy the only one linking attendance to whether Beijing opens dialogue with the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.