The boycott of South African sport played a key role in bringing about the end of apartheid

The boycott of South African sport played a key role in bringing about the end of apartheid. But even in this age of professional sport, when the original ideals of peaceful fair play are sometimes obscured by the heat of competition, sporting boycotts should be used sparingly.Ireland is at peace with Yugoslavia It bears no responsibility for Nato's bombing. Nato has made it clear that its quarrel is not with the civilian population of Yugoslavia. There have been civilian casualties caused by Nato's attacks, but it is not the Alliance's strategy to bomb the Yugoslav people into surrender. The atrocities in Kosovo are not being committed by the Yugoslav people as such, but by the Milosevic regime. His army - which is haemorrhaging its conscript soldiers - should not be identified with the Yugoslav people.Ireland's desire to make a stand against ethnic terror is laudable, but preventing this particular football match from being played is not the way to do it..

FOR PERHAPS the first time since he became Tory leader William Hague is showing some tentative signs of setting the electoral agenda. His decision to call for the scrapping of the National Changeover Plan to prepare for the euro carries considerable risks, not least because he is sorely trying the patience of the party's pro-European grandees who queued up to applaud the plan when it was unveiled in February But he may be more calculating than he usually looks The prize at the end of the campaign could just be worth it. The Tory leader is playing Grandmother's footsteps with those same grandees. It is true that he was dismissive of the changeover plan when it was first launched, and that the Tories did not take up their seat on the all-party committee devised to oversee it. In theory he has not really changed policy; he has doggedly refused to take the one step that would certainly provoke his pro-European critics into open denunciation and rule out for ever entry by a Tory government into a single currency.

But, before the European election campaign began, there was supposed to be a truce in which the euro would not be made the central issue of the campaign. In return, the big beasts of Tory pro-Europeanism, Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Lord Howe, would not disrupt the campaign by saying what they thought of his policy. To say that he is now straining that truce to the limits is, if anything, to understate the case.In this strategy he has been partially helped by a Government anxious to keep the European content of the elections to a minimum. Today, the five-yearly European election campaign begins its last week. Today and tomorrow, the British Government will be among those agreeing in principle to press ahead with long-term plans, of which Tony Blair has been a principal architect, and which the war in Kosovo has if anything accelerated, to give the European Union a role in defence for the first time since the Treaty of Rome was agreed. Of course the initiative which will be debated in Cologne today has been overshadowed by a war which, even on the most pessimistic forecast, could not end in time to be remotely affected by it It will probably take a decade or more to be realised.

But it offers the first prospect of limited excursions by the military powers of Europe that does not depend on the fluctuating willingness of the United States to act in cases in which its own interests are not threatened. In the European defence initiative, in other words, the Government has a story to be quietly proud of. The Labour Party has not exactly - so far - highlighted its achievement in the current campaign.But if this is true of defence, it has been much truer of the euro. Yesterday the Prime Minister robustly rebutted Mr Hague's call on Tuesday for the changeover plan to be scrapped, pointing out that it amounted to saying that even if Britain were to decide to go into a single currency, it would not be ready to do so when it does so decide; and that if Hague is serious about renegotiating the terms of British EU membership, then the logic of his position leads to withdrawal.