Peru will host the Pan-American Weightlifting Championship, which will offer places for the 2008 Olympic Games, the president of the Peruvian Weightlifting Federation told Xinhua on Thursday.

The president, Jose Quinones, said the competition will run from March 18 to 23 of 2008 and that 200 competitors have already signed up. The event will take place in the Miguel Grau stadium, home to Peruvian soccer team Sport Body, in Callao city, 14km from the nation's capital, Lima.

The competition's top five men and top four women, as measured by points, will win a place in the 2008 Games, to be held in Chinese capital Beijing.

Weightlifting was an Olympic sport in the first Games in 1896 in Athens, but was off the lists from 1908 until 1920, when the Games was held in Belgian city Antwerp.

(Xinhua News Agency December 28, 2007)