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PLO Will Not Participate in Olympics

March 22, 1984
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The Palestine Liberation Organization will not be participating in the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, according to Olympic Organizing officials in Los Angeles.

Answering questions at a news conference last week, Peter Ueberroth, president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, told reporters “there would not be a PLO team at the 1984 Olympic games.”

The PLO has never participated in the Olympic Games and it remained unclear whether the PLO had issued a formal application to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to participate in the games. Only IOC members can participate.

It was understood that one factor weighing against the PLO fielding a team at the Olympics is the PLO’s lack of a “territorial” base. Undoubtedly, another would be the PLO’s involvement in the massacre of II Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich.

Palestinian and Arab groups in the U.S. did not know whether the PLO had issued a formal application for entry into the IOC. A PLO team would also raise the issue of the current travel restrictions placed on PLO representatives in the United States.

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