Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France said Tuesday that the European Union should consider punishing China's crackdown in Tibet with a boycott of the opening ceremony of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing. His comments followed an appeal by the press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders to governments across the world to shun the highly symbolic ceremony during which the Olympic flame is lighted.European leaders have been conspicuously quiet since protesters and the Chinese police first clashed in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, a week ago.
| The usual invertebrate posturing ... |
Senior European officials, including Kouchner, have ruled out an outright boycott of the Olympics, arguing that not even the Dalai Lama had demanded one. But in the latest sign that the Games remain the most powerful lever Western powers have, the foreign minister called the idea of a more symbolic partial boycott "interesting."
| Because the EU is all about symbolism ... |
A day earlier, Mark Malloch Brown, the British minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, who is also opposed to a complete boycott, told the BBC that the Olympics were "China's coming-out party and they should take great care that nothing will wreck that."
| They're not the ones who would wreck it -- we would be. Question is whether we should. |