WASHINGTON, (D.W.) —
A factfinding mission just return-
ing from the Soviet Union re-
jected President Carter’s Olym-
pic boycott yesterday and urged
the U.S. to send a team to the
22nd Olympiad in Moscow.

The 20 delegates, including
several U.S. and Canadian gold
medal winners, arrived at Dulles
Airport Sunday after a week of
meetings with top Soviet sports
officials. Speaking at an airport
news conference, they praised
Moscow’s preparations for the
Summer Games and warned that
it is the U.S. that will be isolated
by the boycott, not the USSR.

“T personally think that the
U.S. should go to the Moscow
games,’’ declared Phillip Shin-
nick, organizer of the tour and the
director of Sports Studies at
Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Shinnick, an. advisor to the
Athletes Council of the U.S.
Olympic Committee (USOC) and
800-metre record holder in the
race in 1963, was amember of the
1964 Olympic team. He said the
boycott .will not have the effect
that president Carter wants. “‘It is
the athletes who won’t be there
who are going to be punished,”
he said.

U.S. Olympics
delegation hits
Carter boycott

Shinnick said 16 of the 20 per-
sons in the delegation concluded
that the U.S. should participate in
the Moscow games. A reporter at
the news conference asked why
the athletes, coaches and sports
writers were not supporting
Carter’s boycott in light of the
Soe troop presence in

Shinnick pointed out that the
U.S. was waging war in Vietnam
during several of the summer and
winter Olympic Games in past
years. If every international con-
flict was. used as a petext for a
boycott, said he, there would be
no Olympics.

Linda Huey, physical activities
director of the Santa Monica
Young Women’s Christian
Association said the U.S. Olym-
pic committee itself could face
“sanctions” by the International
Olympic Committee if it caves in
to Carter’s boycott threat.

Dana Slater, a marathon run-
ner from New York City said,

_“‘Asan athlete, I would like to see

the Olympic games go on. The
Olympics is something special.
There is a unique feeling at the
opening and closing ceremonies.
and during the awards. I would be
very disappointed not to ever

- mounting.

have that chance to participate.”’
Tracy Sundlum, a television.
sports analyst announcer and a
coach of the champion U.S.
Men’s National 5,000 meter road
racing team in 1979 said the
boycott is ‘“‘wasted energy an
wasted motion.”’
He added, ‘*There’s a genuine
feeling from the people that they
would like to participate.”’
Asked his reaction to Carter’s
Afghanistan policy, Sundlum
replied, ‘The last thing we did in
the Soviet Union was to go to a
war memorial in Leningrad
where 900,000 people are buried.
It left everyone of us pretty well
moved. They lost 22 million of
their citizens in the last war.

Moscow’s huge Olympic village, the biggest in the history of the Games ‘and (inset) Winter Olym- | —
pics medalist Eric Heiden who petitioned Carter against the boycott: the pressure on the U.S. is |

They’ve had war on their land
twice in this century. Maybe they
overreacted, but the sovereignty
of their borders is something they
have strong feelings about and
Afghanistan is on their southern
border.”

Some of the delegates had to
rush to make connecting flights
and were unable to attend the
news conference. Among them
was Samuel J. Skinner,
moderator of ‘‘Black
Renaissance,”’ a TV talk show in
the San Francisco Bay area. Skin-
ner is an Afro-American sports
writer who has covered Olympic
Games in Mexico City, Montreal,
and Munich. Waiting at a ticket
counter he said. ‘‘We met with all

ad

The games will go on. I

every athlete should have the OP- i
portunity to go and participatem 4

the greatest games in the world.

He added, “It is wrong to US}

sporting events to solve politicial
conflicts. It can’t be done.”

He pointed out that the closing

ceremonies of the Moscow games| —
will be the passing of the Olympic
flag to the country that is to host}
the next Olympic games in 1984.}
“They are supposed to be in LoS} —
Angeles,” Skinner said. “If the}

U.S. is not there to accept the

flag, then there won’t be any Los a

Angeles games.’ z,
‘ — Tim Wheeler] —

Afghanistan ‘a pretext’ for U.S. cold war policy ;

“U.S. president Carter was not
responding to the events in
Afghanistan when he launched the
new cold. war offensive —
Afghanistan merely provided the
pretext to step up a policy already
calculated to undermine detente
and increase military spending.”’
Tribune editor Sean Griffin told
about 55 people at the Bethune
Marxist classroom Sunday. _—

‘“‘And perhaps the most

dangerous part of that policy is the
campaign being waged by the U.S.
to force the American people into
accepting the possibility of a new
Vietnam,”’ he warned.

The comments were part of
Griffin’s lecture on the recent
events in Afghanistan, the third in
the Bethune Marxist series at Van-
couver’s Britannia Centre. It had
earlier been presented at Douglas
College in Surrey.

He traced the current situation
back to the April, 1978 revolution
led by the People’s Democratic
Party of Afghanistan which had in-
itiated sweeping land reform,
a cancellation of peasant debts and
had begun a massive literacy cam-
paign and introduced equal rights
for women.

Under the new government of

PDP leader Noor Mohammed

Taraki, the first legal trade unions
in the country’s history were
established and the first woman
named to a government ministry,

he said.
‘But from its first days,’’ he em-

phasized, ‘‘the democratic revolu-
tion faced organized military in-

tervention — on a massive scale.

“‘New reports from several mon-
ths ago demonstrate the scope of
that intervention, showing that
‘Afghan rebels’ were trained and

armed in bases in Pakistan and
then sent across the frontier into
Afghanistan.”’

He cited reports which appeared
throughout 1979.in such
newspapers as the New York
Times, Maclean’s magazine, the
Washington Post and even the
Christian Science Monitor which
reported Aug. 9, 1979 that, in using
border camps as a base for the
Afghan rebels, Pakistan ‘“‘has
received the backing of China and
the United States.”

Maclean’s magazine reported
Apr. 30, 1979, that Chinese army
officers and instructors were in
Pakistan and ‘‘are there to help
train and equip rightwing Afghan
Mosleum guerillas for their ‘holy
war’ against the Moscow-backed
Kabul regime of Noor Mohammed
Taraki.”’

Most significant, Griffin said,
were reports from the U.S.
magazine Counterspy which
presented documentary evidence to
show that the U.S. Central In-
telligence Agency had been work-
ing covertly in Afghanistan for at
least a year before the Soviet army
contingent moved _ into
Afghanistan on Dec. 27, 1979.

Carter’s national security ad-
visor Zbigniew . Brzezinski has
claimed that the CIA has only
become involved as a response to

the Soviet intervention. ‘‘In fact,

the evidence shows that this is an

utter lie,’ Griffin said.

The U.S. was irivolved from the

very beginning although the in-
tervention was stepped up follow-
ing the overthrow of the Shah of

Iran in February, 1979, he said.

“The U.S. already had as its pur-
pose the replacement of Taraki’s
government with a pro-U.S.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 21, 1980—Page 10

regime,”’ he said. “But with the fall
of the Shah, the campaign took on
new objectives: Now it wanted to
find a new anti-Soviet base in the

region and to establish a base in the °

oil-rich Persian Gulf which is key to
multinational oil interests.”’

He told the lecture audience that
the massive intervention campaign,
coupled with the ‘‘increasingly
repressive’’ policies of Hafizullah
Amin — who had murdered
Taraki and assumed leadership

-himself in September, 1979 —

created a crisis in December, 1979.

That crisis, in turn, prompted
the Revolutionary Council of
Afghanistan to make the request to
the Soviet Union for military
assistance to defend the country.

“That request was made to the
USSR on Dec. 26, 1979 when
Amin was still prime minister,’’ he
said, pointing out that U.S. state
department spokesman Hodding
Carter himself admitted on Dec. 26
that the Afghan government
‘clearly wants and apparently
needs Soviet troops.”

At the same time, Griffin noted,
the central committee of the PDP
and the revolutionary council, hav-

ing secretly met several weeks.

earlier with Babrak Karmal, made
the decision to remove Amin.

“That decision was carried out
on Dec. 27,” he said. ‘‘Amin was
tried and executed and Karmal was
named prime minister and chair-
man of the revolutionary council.”

He added that the Karmal
government reiterated the request
for Soviet assistance and then
began a program intended to reaf-
firm the democratic aims of the
April revolution, including the
release of several thousand political
prisoners.

“‘But it wasn’t the Soviet troops
or the establishment of the Karmal
government that have given us the
new Carter cold war,”’ he said.

‘“‘They were just a pretext for the
U.S. to launch its new offensive.”
He emphasized that the U.S. had
already begun, as early as May,
1978, when it forced NATO

ministers to accept substantial in-

creases in military spending, to
carry out a policy calculated to
undermine detente and return to
cold war positions.

That was followed, he said, by
the Carter administation’s decision

-to go ahead with the MX first-

strike missile system, to stall on the
ratification of SALT II and finally
to take the provocative step of forc-
ing Western Europe to accept the
Pershing II missiles which are aim-
ed at major Soviet cities.

_Andamajor part of it was the at-
tempt by Carter to turn his
presidential election campaign into
a “‘patriotic’’ campaign on foreign
policy, he added.

' “Ruling circles in the U.S. see
their positions of influence

diminishing and see the liberation

movement growing. Now they
want to thrust the world back to
cold war, to force the country into
accepting more spending for war
— and to force Americans into ac-
cepting the idea that the U.S. has
the ‘right’ to intervene anywhere its
interests are threatened.”’

But even though the U.S. has
marshalled immense forces in its
offensive, Griffin noted, it is
already showing signs of faltering,
as seen in the dwindling support for
the Olympic boycott campaign and
the reluctance of western Europe to
commit itself to the anti-Soviet

campaign.

. Inthis country, the defeat of the., L.

bra ea A ee AT

Tories who campaigned of
Carter’s bandwagon, was also ai
indication of the changes that have
taken in the world since the cold
war days of the 1950’s and ’60’s, he
said.

“The U.S. had hoped to make
Afghanistan the lever for turning
the. world against socialism and

liberation,” he said. “But it may De
that it will turn into a new crisis for

USS. imperialism.”

EVENTS

’

ing day of the 1980)
Tribune financial
. drive.

@ MAY 17 — the first
ever Tribune Press
Festival,
Hall and grounds.

Banquet,
Cultural Centre.

@ APRIL 1 — Open-

Ukrainian |

@ JUNE 21 — the]
Tribune Victory |
Italian |

- the top Soviet Olympic officials. |
The Olympic facilities are ready. |

2
~
>

~

19

IMPORTANT}