Washington: Noting that the situation now is quite different from that of 1980 when the US boycotted the Moscow Olympics, former President Jimmy Carter today said America should participate in the upcoming Beijing sporting event.

Asked whether the US should boycott the Olympics this year to protest China's crackdown on Tibet and its complicity with the genocide in Darfur, Carter said, "No, I don't think so at all".

"That was a totally different experience in 1980, when the Soviet Union had brutally invaded and killed thousands and thousands of people in Afghanistan then. They were threatening to go further south and take over other countries. Fifty-four nations in the world decided to boycott the Olympics," he told ABC news channel.

"Two-thirds of the US Olympic Committee, a relatively independent group, decided not to go. The Congress voted overwhelmingly not to go. And that was a completely different situation," he added. "But I hope that all the countries will go ahead and participate in the Olympics in Beijing," Carter said.

Source : PTI