Smog of politics over Los Angeles Olympics

Press, 23 April 1984, Page 14

Smog of politics over Los Angeles Olympics

From ‘The Economist,’ London

The chill between Russia and America, which has already halted the arms talks, now threatens the Olympics. The political and psychological' atmosphere, as Mr Brent Scowcroft, the chairman of President Reagan’s commission on strategic forces, remarked this month, is as bad as it has been for many years. The Russians may boycott the Games to be held in Los Angeles, just as, for different reasons, the Americans boycotted the Moscow games in 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Formal Soviet accusations this month about “gross violations” of the Olympic charter by the United States carried the implied threat of a Soviet boycott. If Russia were to stay away, a dozen of its communist allies, including the, athletic East Germans, would presumably do the same. Their action could puncture the financial buoyancy of this Olympic Games, the first to be paid for, thanks to business sponsorship, without any government help. The final balance depends on a $225 million fee negotiated with A.B.C.

television, which would no doubt want to cut this sum drastically if the athletic punch went out of the Games.

It is hard to find much merit in complaints made by Soviet Olympic leaders, who have called for an emergency session of the International Olympic committee to look into alleged anti-Soviet bias in preparations for the Games.

Their concern about the “uncontrollable commercialisation” of the Games is indeed shared by some Americans, who worry about bending noble Hellenic scruples before the pressures of adveritising; but the free-enterprise Games are being put together on a shoestring compared with Moscow’s in 1980. The main burden of the Soviet charges involves security. Striking directly at the Reagan administration — with which President Chernenko shows no signs of wishing to establish direct contact — the Russians contend that a movement called Ban the Soviets has official American backing. This right-wing fringe group promises to stage anti-Soviet demonstrations at the Games and

to encourage and help Soviet participants to defect. To this Mr Peter Ueberroth, the organiser of the Games, can only reply that people are not banned from demonstrating in America. The charge that American officials overstepped the Olympic, mark by requiring Soviet participants to apply for entry visas, turned out to be a musunderstanding. The United States did want a list of Soviet athletes who had been issued with Olympic identity cards for entry, but no visas are required. The visa row showed that the Kremlin was still smarting over America’s recent denial of a visa to a Soviet Olympic attache who the State Department said was a K.G.B. agent. The insistent barrage of Soviet criticism of the American-held games has created an unpleasant atmosphere which is sure to hang smog-like over Los Angeles even if the Russians, putting gold medals before political points, compete. The solution in future may perhaps be to bar the superpowers from staging the Games. Copyright — The Economist.