The climbers will attempt to take the high-altitude torch - not the one carried through Hong Kong on Friday - to the world's highest summit as early as this weekend, weather permitting.

An official organising the trek up the 8,848-metre Himalayan peak said the mountaineers could take advantage of a first window of opportunity open through on Monday, if meteorologists give them the green light.

May is usually the most favourable month for an Everest summit bid, before the monsoon season begins in June.

'Of course there are difficulties, but we are confident that we can succeed in our mission,' Mr A Wang, an ethnic Tibetan member of the climbing team who has scaled the peak six times, told Chinese television.

Beijing's clampdown on Tibet, and its overall human rights record, has been the subject of numerous protests which have followed the torch relay around the world and incensed China's Communist rulers.

China has deployed huge security teams, and climbing expeditions from both the Tibetan and Nepalese approaches have been banned in order to prevent any disturbances to efforts to take the Olympic flame to the summit.

Last week, Nepal deported a US mountaineer after a pro-Tibet banner was found in his backpack.

China clamped down on Tibet after anti-Chinese protests erupted in violence in the regional capital Lhasa on March 14, later spreading into neighbouring provinces with large Tibetan populations.

Foreign journalists and tourists have been expelled from the region.

China hopes that the Everest relay leg - expected to be televised nationwide - will promote unity between Tibetans and the Han, the country's ethnic majority who Beijing says were targeted by 'rioters' in Lhasa.

State media have emphasised that the climbing team is made up of Tibetans and Han Chinese, and China's CCTV network gave prominent coverage to the story of a Han technician with altitude sickness who was helped by Tibetan rescuers.

Some in the mountaineering community say the Everest torch run is yet another sign of China's burgeoning power.

'The Chinese want everything to be bigger, better, stronger - they are looking for everything to be the best, so of course the Olympic flame must go to the summit of Everest,' said French climber Serge Koenig.

But Italy's Reinhold Messner, the first to scale Everest without supplemental oxygen, called the torch relay leg a 'farce'. 'Why should the torch be taken up there?' he told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper in Germany.

'They will have to use tricks to keep the flame burning, because there is too little oxygen and too much wind up there.' -- AFP