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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Olympic Committee and the State Department are criticizing Gov. Bill Richardson's proposal that the United States threaten to pull its team out of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing if China does not pressure Sudan to end the violence in its province of Darfur.
"We completely disagree with the point of view expressed by Governor Richardson," Olympic Committee spokesman Darryl Seibel told The Tribune. "The Olympic Movement is about sport and the unique benefits of participation in sport, not politics."
Richardson proposed the boycott during Sunday night's debate among Democratic presidential contenders in New Hampshire. After Sen. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat, called for using NATO troops to enforce a no-fly zone over Sudan, Richardson said he would not use force to end the conflict but would send more U.N. peacekeepers and strengthen economic sanctions.
"Third, we need to lean on China, which has enormous leverage over Darfur. And if the Chinese don't want to do this, we say to them, maybe we won't go to the Olympics," Richardson said. "And lastly, what we need is a country, a foreign policy that cares about Africa, that cares that 300,000 human beings have died, have been massacred, that over 2 million have lost their homes."
China is the largest customer for Sudanese oil and a major investor and arms dealer in the east African nation. China abstained from the U.N. resolution calling for a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Monday that a boycott of the Olympics "is not something we have supported."
"We are working with the Chinese government to see that they bring all the possible leverage to bear on the Sudanese government that they possibly can," McCormack said.
Some African nations boycotted the 1976 Olympics in Montreal to protest a visit by a New Zealand rugby team to South Africa, but it was President Jimmy Carter who brought the Olympics into international diplomacy in a big way when he kept the U.S. team from attending the Moscow games in 1980 to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union and several Eastern European nations in turn boycotted the 1984 games in Los Angeles.
Seibel said nothing has been accomplished by the boycotts of the past "other than to unfairly penalize athletes who have spent decades pursuing their Olympic or Paralympic dream."
The Paralympics will be held in Beijing in September 2008, the month after the summer games.
Richardson's proposal reflects a growing movement by humanitarian groups to use the prestige of the Olympics as leverage on China.
The Save Darfur Coalition, which sponsored a trip by Richardson to Sudan three months ago that resulted in a temporary cease-fire, has not specifically called for a boycott of the games, but it recently paid for ads charging that China has paid more attention to the Olympics than Darfur.
Coalition spokesman Allyn Brooks-LaSure said the group is pleased to see that Darfur "continues to receive a significant amount of attention and debate during the overall presidential campaigning."
Actress Mia Farrow, a goodwill ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund, has started a campaign to pressure corporate sponsors of the Olympics, referring to the 2008 games as the "Genocide Olympics."
Experts on the China-Sudanese relationship say Richardson's comments could bring more pressure on China.
"It was bold on his part and courageous," said Roberta Cohen, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute who has written extensively on Darfur.
She said a boycott of the Olympics might work but only if other nations joined in because it would "bring strong shame on China" to live up to its obligations to enforce U.N. resolutions.
"I don't feel unilateral U.S. action would be very effective," Cohen said.
Richardson's statement probably doesn't hurt the effort to bring pressure on China, which in recent weeks has gotten tougher in its public statements about Sudan, said Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"They want to be good citizens. They don't want to sacrifice the Olympics to this mess in Sudan," Morrison said.
But he cautioned: "There is the possibility that even with enormous Chinese pressure that the Khartoum government may balk. What do you do then? Do you still punish China?"
