BEIJING — China yesterday denied injecting politics into the Beijing Olympics despite a rare rebuke from the International Olympic Committee over remarks by a Chinese official about Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

The IOC said it sent a letter this week to Beijing organizers expressing regret over a speech Saturday by Tibet’s Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, at a ceremony marking the Olympic torch’s passage through Lhasa.

“The IOC regrets that political statements were made during the closing ceremony of the Torch Relay in Tibet,” the two-sentence IOC statement said.

“We have written to BOCOG to remind them of the need to separate sport and politics and to ask for their support in making sure that such situations do not arise again,” it said.

A spokesman for the BOCOG, which refers to the Beijing organizing committee, said he had no immediate information or comment on the letter.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, also said he had no knowledge of the IOC letter, but insisted that Mr. Zhang’s remarks were intended only to foster a “stable and harmonious environment for the Olympics,” and did not constitute politicization.

“China’s solid position is against the politicizing of the Olympics,” Mr. Liu said at a regularly scheduled news conference.

The IOC’s comment was surprising given the organization’s general aversion to criticizing Olympic hosts and previous reproaches to activists seeking to use the Beijing Games to spotlight China’s human rights record, policies toward Tibet, and Beijing’s support for Sudan’s authoritarian regime.