BEIJING — Bashir Mohammed Atarabulsi has a chip on his shoulder.
The Chinese government is hoping it will help bring the 2000 Olympic Games to Beijing over the vociferous objections of members of the U.S. Congress and international human rights organizations.
In 1984, Atarabulsi was the leader of the six-man Libyan national team sent to the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. It was a tiny squad of one weightlifter and five equestrians, but Atarabulsi was fiercely proud of it.
"My beautiful team," he recalled wistfully during a brief interview recently in Beijing, which he was visiting in his capacity as Libya's representative on the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Atarabulsi's bitterness is against the United States: In 1984, U.S. officials barred two Libyan journalists from the country on the grounds that they were "known international terrorists." In reaction, Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadafi ordered the team withdrawn from competition, ruining Atarabulsi's dreams of Olympic glory for the People's Bureau of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, otherwise known as Libya.
But revenge comes to the patient. Atarabulsi is one of the 90 IOC members who will meet in Monte Carlo on Thursday to choose the site for the 2000 Summer Games. There are five candidate cities, including front-runners Beijing and Sydney, Australia.
Atarabulsi refused to discuss his vote. However, China is one of the few international allies that Libya, a pariah state, has left. Given his experience in Los Angeles, the Libyan is unlikely to go out of his way to please the U.S. Congress.
In the egalitarian world of Olympic politics, the preferences of IOC members from Luxembourg and Mongolia, Panama and Swaziland carry just as much weight as those of each of the seven great industrial powers. Libya's vote counts the same as that of the United States.
This fact was not lost on Chinese officials last week when they hosted and feted Atarabulsi and his wife for six days, installing them in a $290-a-night suite at the gleaming China World Hotel and providing them with a Mercedes-Benz stretch limo with "Beijing 2000" license plates and motorcycle escort.
In the final days before the Olympic Committee decision, China has pulled out all the stops in its campaign to win the Games for Beijing.
