Old animosities in the new world order

AT 9.0 pm on July 26th, hostilities will break out between China and Taiwan. But the UN Security Council will not convene a special session, nor will US aircraft carriers steam immediately to the region.

This battle will be fought out by 20 women on the softball diamond of the 8,509-seat Golden Park stadium in Columbus, Georgia.

The match is one of several Olympic fixtures in which international conflicts and tensions threaten to spill onto the playing field. This was not among the plans of modern Olympics founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who dreamed of a sporting festival which would transcend politics and national rivalries and bring together the most bitter of enemies.

But ever since Jesse Owens poked a finger in Hitler's eye at the 1936 Games by taking four gold medals, politics have been as much a part of the Olympics as the famous five-ringed flag and the torch relay.

For four decades the political subtext of the Games was simple and conspicuous: while the two superpowers engaged in a game of nuclear chicken, they went to war once every four years under the banner of international solidarity.

Until 1980, the Americans and the Soviets were content to vie for sporting dominance. But in that year President Carter upped the political stakes by keeping the US team at home during the Moscow Games, in protest at the invasion of Afghanistan. Four years later the Soviets returned the compliment, and it seemed the Olympics had been reduced to the level of tit-for-tat cynicism more familiar from the ritual expulsions of alleged spies.

In Atlanta, however, the Olympic movement hopes to celebrate its 100th birthday with the least political Games of modern times. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is especially proud that all 197 nations and territories invited will attend, the first time in the post-second World War era that every country in the world has been represented.

The organisers hope Atlanta `96 will be remembered more for its inclusiveness than its punishing temperatures: Cambodia are back for the first time since 1972, they point out; South Africa are competing under their new flag (rather than the IOC flag, as in 1992), supported by the whole nation; Palestine will make their Olympic debut, and even the pariah states of Libya, Iran, Iraq and North Korea are expected to show up, even if no one is quite sure when.

But if the collapse of communism and the demise of apartheid ended the days of Olympic boycotts and superpower medal warfare, other wrinkles in the new world order have ensured that the Atlanta Games have no shortage of potential political flashpoints.

What will happen when South Korean athletes come up against Olympians from their beleaguered northern neighbour? How will the entrenched animosities between many of the former Soviet republics and their sometime Russian masters play themselves out on the track and field" Will the fragile Middle East peace hold between Israeli athletes and their Arab enemies, or, for that matter, between former Gulf War foes?

"Politics will certainly find its way into the Games, but not as obviously as it did in the 1960s or 1970s or 1980s," said Dr Dan Papp, professor of international affairs at Georgia Tech, the Atlanta university which plays host to the Olympic village.

By far the greatest potential for politically inflamed clashes lies in contests between teams or individual athletes from the former Yugoslav republics. A likely match between the Croatian and Yugoslav (effectively Serbian) basketball team, both medal contenders, is considered the Games most likely flashpoint. "The Croats would love to beat the crap out of them," Papp said.

The Croats and the Serbs could also meet at water polo, though few expect a replay of the infamous "blood-in-the-pool" episode of 1956 when a Hungarian team exacted a measure of revenge on the Soviets for invading their country.

When Croatia and Yugoslavia met for the first time in an international water polo competition in the United States earlier this year, the team captains exchanged flags and spoke emotionally about taking the first steps toward reconciliation.

But few imagine the tension born of years of brutal civil war can be so easily shrugged off. Croatian athletes in particular, have been among the most belligerent critics of their former Serb compatriots. Goran lvanisevic, the Croatian tennis star who collected the country's first Olympic medal in Barcelona, once said that instead of a tennis racket, he would rather have "a machine-gun to shoot Chetniks".

The Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman, has done his best to blur the boundaries between politics and sport. At the Barcelona Games, he promised publicly he would retake the Serb-held town of Knin if the Croatian basketball team reached the Olympic final.

The basketballers delivered and last summer, true to his word, Tudjman sent his army to reclaim the town. Then he celebrated the victory with two of the country's basketball stars, Dino Radja and Stoyko Vrankovic.

Croatian team spokesman Ante Drpig says his country's Olympians are resigned to the fact they will probably face at least one showdown with the Serbs in Atlanta. "Sure it's going to be an emotional match for us, but this is life. We are neighbours and the war is stopped and we must play against Serbian athletes."

Because Bosnia will not compete in any team sports, clashes with its former enemies are likely to be more low key, though individual athletes admit to having little enthusiasm for rubbing sporting shoulders with Serbs. "I have to play them and that's all," said Tarik Hodzic, a Bosnian table-tennis player. "We speak, but I don't want to speak to them about politics. When we speak it's just to say `Hi, how are you'."

Despite the recent crisis over aggressive Chinese military exercises off the island nation it considers a renegade province, Taiwanese officials insist it is unlikely Olympic clashes between the two countries - likely in table tennis as well as softball will turn ugly.

"The tension is over," said Randy Wong, the attache for the Taiwanese team. "It's been a long history of rivalry, but I don't see it being particularly significant during the Olympics.

Ensuring both countries' attendance in Atlanta has, however, required considerable political manoeuvring. The run-up to the Games was punctuated by rumours of a Chinese pull-out over its suspicion that the Taiwanese delegation would be accorded the status of an independent nation. Under a long-standing agreement brokered by the IOC, Taiwan will compete in Atlanta under an Olympic flag as Chinese Taipei. "We certainly are not happy using that name, but that's the arrangement," Wong said.

Some delicate Olympic diplomacy was also required to secure the attendance of North Korea, which this week became the last country to accept its invitation" (some time after the official deadline for entries). Contests between the communist athletes and their capitalist neighbours to the south are likely to be few and far between, because the two countries are strong in different sports. But Pyongyang will hope for a repeat of its 1992 wrestling triumph when Li Hak Son defeated the American star Zeke Jones to take a gold medal.

Some of the fiercest clashes are likely to be between Russians and athletes from the former Soviets republics, who will be competing in the Olympics for the first time as independent nations.

With the old Soviet villains gone, the closest thing to a sporting enemy for the United States will be the strong Cuban team, seeking to emulate their spectacular fifth place showing in Barcelona. The showpiece confrontation between the two nations will be on the baseball diamond, though they are certain to be pitted against each other on the basketball court (women's) and in the boxing ring.

The mere presence of a Palestinian team, albeit only three athletes strong, could prove inflammatory to some Israeli athletes, for whom the memory of 11 Israeli Olympians murdered by Palestinian terrorists in Munich in 1972 is still a little too fresh.

While Olympic organisers insist they do not take political sensitivities into account in preparing the draw for team events, it is clear that they go to lengths to avoid tension in the Olympic village.

The Bosnians, for instance, share a dormitory with the Germans, a discreet distance from the teams of the other former Yugoslav republics. The Taiwanese are far from the Chinese contingent. The precise geography of the village is kept secret to thwart potential terrorists but, says one European attache: "I can tell you that some countries have expressed desires to be closer to some countries and further from others."

The idealistic view is that the Olympics can help to bring feuding countries together rather than simply mirror their animosities. Already there have been some inspiring images, not least an Israeli judiko training with an Egyptian rival in a small Georgia town.

But many wounds may be just too raw to be healed by Baron de Coubertin's noble intentions. "It's not about reconciliation yet," says Croatia's Drpig. "I think two or three years must pass before that is possible. It's just too fast."