BUSAN (South Korea), Sept 29: Dancers twirled and fireworks roared, torches from 44 diverse lands converged and rival South and North Korean teams marched together as Asia kicked off its biggest festival of sport on Saturday.

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung declared the 14th Asian Games open at 1000 GMT in front of a roaring crowd of 60,000 in a gleaming new stadium in his country’s second city of Busan.

Under the slogan “New Vision, New Asia”, the two-week Games will feature 9,900 athletes from 44 countries and territories competing for 419 gold medals in 38 sports.

Sports include most of the Olympic events from archery to swimming to yachting. But spectators will also be treated to ancient weird and wonderful sports not widely known outside Asia, such as kabbadi, sepak takraw and the martial art of wushu.

The Olympic Council of Asia covers a region of 3.8 billion people, from Lebanon in the west to Japan in the east, and from Kazakhstan in the north to the world’s newest country, East Timor, in the south.

Jostling for glory in the quadrennial Games will be giants such as India and China, tiny city-state Singapore, vast but thinly populated Mongolia and the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

The Palestinian territory’s delegation carried a picture of beleaguered leader Yasser Arafat in the opening ceremony.

In some cases, the sporting competitions are peaceful versions of stubborn political rivalries.

Taiwan competes as “Chinese Taipei” because it is barred from using its official name due to pressure from China, which spares no effort to internationally isolate the island it claims as a breakaway province.

Hoping to use sport to overcome a Cold War legacy, host South Korea is calling the Busan Games the “Unification Asiad” because reclusive North Korea is attending its first sporting event in the South after boycotting all previous competitions.

“Among the many participants in the Asian Games are a group of young people, the athletes from North and South Korea, who hold hands in the dream of the reunification of this peninsula,” said Jung Soon-taek, president of the Busan organising committee.

The Korean athletes marched into Busan stadium behind a special “reunification flag” depicting a powder blue outline of the Korean peninsula on a white background. The flag was carried by South Korean handball player Hwangbo Sung-il and North Korean female soccer goalkeeper Ri Chong-hui.

North Korea has sent a delegation of 312 athletes and staff to Busan, and ferried in a squad of 360 cheerleaders. Organisers have made an exception to South Korea’s ban on the North’s flag to enable the communist banner to be flown at venues.

The North Koreans’ appearance comes amid an unprecedented series of economic exchanges and goodwill projects between the rival states which are still technically in a state of war because their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty.

Afghanistan has returned to the international sporting arena for the first time since 1994 — another small step on the long road to normality after 23 years of war and isolation.

Like East Timor, Afghanistan does not expect to win any medals at the Games, but is grateful to be taking part.

Team competition at Busan and surrounding cities will largely be a contest for second place behind the Chinese, who have dominated the Asiad for the past 20 years and could win more than 150 golds — more than one of every three on offer.

If the past quarter century is any guide, South Korea and Japan will battle for second place in the medals table. The two industrial neighbours have jockeyed with each other ever since Asian powerhouse China joined the Games in 1974.

In the obscure sports, India will be chasing a fourth straight Asian Games gold medal in the ancient sport of kabbadi, Thailand are set to defend a proud record in sepak takraw and Vietnam have sent no fewer than four world wushu champions.

Kabbadi is a 4,000-year-old sport that, to the untrained eye, looks like a rough version of playground tag between two 12-member teams.

Sepak takraw, played in Southeast Asia since the 11th century, looks like an acrobatic, high-speed version of volleyball, but with players hitting a coconut-sized wicker ball with their feet. - Based on Buddhist training methods, wushu — or kung fu — is performed in hand-to-hand and non-combat forms. Routines are performed solo or in groups, either barehanded or with traditional Chinese weapons.—Reuters