Olympics: France's Ploy

"I think for a country to go to Moscow to participate in the Summer Olympic Games ... is abhorrent to the moral principles on which democracy is founded," Jimmy Carter declared last month, as he struggled to organize an Olympic boycott in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It takes a considerable amount of pressure, however, for any nation to persuade its Olympic athletes and officials to pass up the biggest event in sport. The French government, which cherishes a self-proclaimed role as a mediator between Washington and Moscow, declined to put heavy pressure on its Olympic committee. Last week came the predictable result: the committee voted 22 to 0 to send a team because, as its president, Claude Collard, said, "We don't want athletes to be used in politics." U.S. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie said irately that the decision "could undermine all of the strong, agonizing effort we have been making."

Within 48 hours, though, the West German Olympic Committee, after four hours of heated nationally televised debate, voted 59 to 40 to keep German athletes out of Moscow. Committee Chairman Willi Daume grumbled that "a nonpolitical group has been forced to make a political decision," and he was right. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had made it clear in dozens of public statements how the Bonn government wanted the vote to turn out. Moreover, polls showed that about 80% of West Germans backed the boycott, while polls in France showed 70% opposed.

Carter hailed the German decision as "courageous," and U.S. officials hope it will sway the committees of several European nations. Austria, Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, all are voting this week. Saturday is the deadline for a final go, no-go decision. Bonn's move might lead to reversal of go decisions by some others. Maybe even France. President Valery Giscard d'Estaing is said to have promised Schmidt that the French would not go to Moscow if the Germans stayed away. Giscard, indeed, could even be trying to play a complex double game: winning Soviet favor by allowing a vote to participate in the Olympics, then reluctantly pressuring the committee to reverse that decision to demonstrate that France is after all faithful to its Western allies.

Worldwide, the success of the boycott remains in doubt. The State Department counts 37 countries that will spurn the Olympics, but many are relatively small African and Asian nations. Surprisingly, Britain has decided to compete. The British Olympic Committee, defying its own government, voted in March to participate and insisted last week that it will not change. When the Games open in Moscow on July 19, they will be considerably less than a true Olympics, but apparently a lot more than a mere Communist-bloc Spartakiad.

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