FBI offers to help China with security at next year's Olympic Games.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday offered to help China with security at next year's Olympic Games.

Hundreds of thousands of athletes, celebrities and state officials, as well as journalists and tourists, are expected to descend on the country next August for the Games.

"There are tremendous issues of security as to who is entering the country, what backgrounds they may have and whether they intend violence at the Olympic Games for any variety of reasons," Thomas Fuentes, the assistant director of the FBI's Office of International Operations, told reporters.

"This is a massive challenge for the authorities here in China to deal with. We're offering every possible assistance to them in terms of information sharing or other technical assistance."

Fuentes was speaking in Beijing where he was attending a regular dialogue with Chinese counterparts to coordinate on law enforcement issues ranging from cybercrime to human smuggling.

China has made much of relying on its own security forces for next year's Olympics and believes it can deliver a secure Games for a fraction of the $1.8 billion that Athens paid in 2004.

Liu Shaowu, head of the security department at the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG), said in April organizers had taken advice from the security chiefs of the last two Summer Games on how to keep the 2008 Olympics safe.