Britain's Prince Charles has refused to attend the Olympic Games in Beijing [Images] this summer, The Telegraph, London [Images], has reported.

The paper said the Prince of Wales made his decision known to campaigners for a free Tibet, who had been calling on him to show solidarity with those who believe the Games risk obscuring China's human rights record.

The paper quoting a letter by Clive Alderton, the Prince's deputy private secretary, to the Free Tibet campaign says that the Prince has long taken a close interest in Tibet and had met the Dalai Lama [Images] on several occasions.

While the letter says that the Prince will not be attending the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics [Images] in 2008, members of the Price's staff have separately told The Telegraph that he will not be attending the Games at any stage during the summer.

The Free Tibet Campaign welcomed the decision and the paper said it would use this to launch a campaign to persuade other prominent figures not to attend in protest at Chinese policies.

The Telegraph says the Prince of Wales has long had a frosty relationship with the Chinese, culminating in the leak of diaries written at the time of the Hong Kong handover in 1997 in which he referred to senior officials participating as "appalling old waxworks".

He is an admirer of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans' spiritual leader who has been in exile since an uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Royal sources told the paper that the decision not to go to the Games did not mean that the Prince had lost interest in China. His charities are already involved in collaboration with China on urban regeneration projects, which will continue.