Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic and Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajcak will attend Winter Olympics in Sochi, reported by local news agency TASR on Sunday.

Ivan Gasparovic points out that a boycott Winter Olympics Games would harm the athletes and visitors. "The evidence of that is the Olympics in Moscow (1980) and Los Angeles (1984)," Gasparovic stated and added that the basic ideal of the whole event is of peace, not boycott.

Following the president's decision, Slovak Foreign and European Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajcak consider boyscotting to be nonsense, as the Olympics should not mix politics and sports. At the same time Lajcak has called for respect for human rights, as a key pillar of democracy.

"But I don't agree that my attitudes to the level of their respect in other countries should be associated with demonstrative political gestures of participation or non-participation in the Olympics," wrote Lajcak in his blog.

According to the report, Lajcak will travel to Russia for the opening ceremony on February 7. The President will arrive at Sochi on February 13 to support the Slovak representers personally and will attend several competitions. Endi

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