|
|
 |
 |   |
|
INTERNATIONAL NEWS EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Congress tussles over Beijing's bid
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Patty Murray is urging her colleagues to keep Congress out of Olympics politics. The Washington Democrat introduced a resolution in the Senate that would serve as an antidote to another resolution calling for the 2008 Olympics to go somewhere other than Beijing, unless China dramatically improves its human rights record. That measure, written by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., passed the House International Relations Committee by a vote of 27-8 in March. No date has been set for consideration by the House. Lantos has said China's "abominable human rights record violates the spirit of the games." Murray recalled the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow, and the Soviet Union's subsequent boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles as "painful and costly results of politicizing the Olympics." "We believe the Olympic Games are best left to the athletes," Murray said Thursday. Neither resolution would be binding on the Bush administration or the four American members of the International Olympic Committee. Beijing is competing with Toronto; Paris; Osaka, Japan; and Istanbul, Turkey, for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The IOC will select the host July 13.
| |||||||||||||||||||
