The Soviet Union, which led a boycott...

The Soviet Union, which led a boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics, will send a team to the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, one of its key officials said Friday. It was the first time that a Soviet official had said that the nation would participate.

Leonid Zamyatin, the top spokesman of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, told Kazumi Fukase, managing editor of Japan’s Kyodo News Service, that Moscow has already informed the International Olympic Committee that there will be a Soviet team at the Games, Kyodo said in a dispatch from Moscow.

But in Lausanne, Switzerland, spokeswoman Michele Verdier said that the IOC had received no official word on the matter from the Soviet Union or any other country, since invitations will not be sent until nine months before the Games.

Soviet sports officials said late last year that a decision on participation would not be made until much closer to time of the Games--a month or so before they start.