Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president Suresh Kalmadi said India would like the relay to continue and was against any move either to curtail the current relay or altogether scrap the international legs of the relay for future Olympic Games.

“Our stand has been that the relay should go on,” Kalmadi told The Indian Express from Beijing. He is in the Chinese capital to attend the IOC meetings.

“Every country has its set of problems. Everywhere you have groups of people who do not agree with the policies of a country. But that cannot be a rationale to scrap the Olympic torch relay. The Olympic movement is much bigger,” Kalmadi said.

While Kalmadi articulated India’s position, statements from high-ranking IOC officials, including its president Jacques Rogge, clearly indicated that scrapping the current relay was a real possibility.

To a question whether the continuation of the relay was certain, Rogge was quoted by news agencies as saying: “I’m not saying whether it is certain or not. There will be a discussion of the executive board on the torch relay but I attach on that absolutely no speculation whatever.”

Rogge said the matter would come up for discussion during the Executive Board meeting in Beijing on Friday.

IOC vice-president Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden said a full review of the relay was needed. “I am sure it will be discussed (at the Beijing meetings),” she was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Lord Sebastian Coe, chairman of the 2012 London Olympic Committee, described the Chinese ‘flame attendants’, who marshalled the Olympic torch around London on Sunday, as “thugs”.

Also an Olympic medallist, Lord Coe was quoted as telling his assistant that they tried to “push me out of the way three times. They are horrible. They did not speak English... I think they were thugs.”

The Olympic torch had a difficult journey through London and Paris with hundreds coming out to demonstrate against alleged human rights abuses by China and its policies in Tibet.

The last leg of the relay in the French capital had to be cancelled after demonstrators tried to grab the torch. The torch reached San Francisco today amidst tight security and apprehensions of more protests.

China has blamed the Dalai ‘clique’, a term it uses for the followers of the Dalai Lama, for the protests.

However, the office of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala today distanced itself from the protests saying it did not command any control over them.

“We can have no influence over the protestors. We can only make an appeal to keep the protests peaceful and non-violent,” said an official of the Tibetan government in exile.

“His Holiness the Dalai Lama has made repeated appeals to observe restraint. He has also acknowledged the right of China to hold the Olympic Games,” the official said.

The demonstrations are spoiling China’s efforts to highlight its emergence as a major world power through the most extensive Olympic torch relay ever undertaken. The relay is scheduled to cover more than 130,000 km in 21 countries and even go to the top of Mount Everest.

Started in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, the torch runs were earlier restricted to a route from Olympia in Greece, where the Games originated, to the host city. The concept of an international relay began with the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Following embarrassing protests during the current relay, going back to the earlier format was also being considered by IOC.

“I am a firm believer that we had the right template in the first place, that the torch simply should go from Olympia, Greece, to the host country,” Richard Kevan Gosper, chairman of IOC’s press committee, was quoted as saying.