Reuters - Georgia may pull out of Beijing Games

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Georgia may pull out of Beijing Games

Saturday, Aug 09, 2008 4:11PM UTC

By Karolos Grohmann

BEIJING (Reuters) - Georgia's 35-strong Olympic team may pull out of the Games because of the Russian offensive in their country, their National Olympic Committee told Reuters on Saturday.

"We don't know what will happen but we're talking about it now. It will be the decision of the president of the country (Mikheil Saakashvili)," spokesman Giorgi Tchanishvili said.

Georgia called for a ceasefire on Saturday after Russian bombers widened an offensive to force back Georgian troops seeking control over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Russia put the death toll at 2,000, and 30,000 refugees from South Ossetia had fled to Russia over the past 36 hours. Moscow said two of its warplanes had been shot down, 13 of its soldiers killed and 70 wounded.

The Georgian Olympic team urged the international community to help end the violence.

"This deliberate strategy of aggression has grown into a full-scale military intervention involving all regions of Georgia," the athletes said in a statement.

"Georgia calls upon the international community to make it clear (to Russia) that intrusion into and bombing of the territory of a sovereign state is unacceptable in the 21st century and that such acts cannot and will not be tolerated."

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The Olympics has suffered boycotts in the past, but it would be highly unusual for a team to pull out during the Games.

Among the most high profile withdrawals was one by several African nations a day after the start of the 1976 Montreal Olympics in protest over a New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa, at the time of the apartheid regime.

Earlier on Saturday the International Olympic Committee said the escalating conflict was a sad reality with the Games essentially being a symbol of peace.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had also issued an appeal calling on all warring nations to honor a traditional truce during the Games which opened on Friday.

"We can only bring the ideal of how sport can bring people together. It is a very complex issue and it is not for the IOC to give a perspective on what has been happening," IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said.

"It is not what the world wants to see. It is contrary to what the Olympic ideal stands for. The sad reality is that there are a number of countries (at the Olympics) that are in conflict," she said.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who is in Beijing for the opening of the Games, said Russian attacks on Georgia marked a "dangerous escalation" of the crisis and urged Moscow to halt the bombing immediately.

(Editing by Keith Weir)

(For more stories visit our multimedia website "2008 Summer Olympics" at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china)