BEIJING, China (AP) -- Beijing hopes the smelly reputation of its public restrooms will be, well, flushed down the toilet soon.

City officials will use the 2004 World Toilet Summit, starting November 17, to showcase efforts to transform the capital's lavatories from foul to fragrant, from crude to cultured.

"Toilets represent the level of development of a country, a region," Yu Debin, deputy director of Beijing's Municipal Bureau of Tourism, said Friday at a news conference. "They also represent a region's spiritual and material civilization."

The issue is especially pressing as Chinese leaders try to clean up their capital before the 2008 Olympics.

The three-day summit is expected to attract 150 academics, sanitation experts, toilet designers and environmentalists from 19 countries as far-flung as the United States, Finland, Germany, Japan and Nepal.

Organizers say topics will include the latest toilet technologies, management strategies and self-sustaining commodes.

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