BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS: DAY 3 : Volleyball Officials Say They Enforce the Rules : Protest: They say their decision to award a victory to Japan over the U.S. had nothing to do with Japanese influence in the sport.

Last Thursday night, in an old and wealthy part of this city, at a hotel fittingly named the Ritz, the International Volleyball Federation held its “Gala Dinner,” marking the end of its 23rd World Congress.

Presiding over this gathering of about 250, most of them convention delegates, was Ruben Acosta Hernandez of Mexico, a short and distinguished-looking man who, just that day, had been reelected president of the FIVB. In his remarks, Acosta pointed out proudly that his federation recently had become the largest in the world, with 201 member countries.

And then he got to the awards portion of the evening, presenting three of the main ones to Japanese men for their contributions to volleyball in the areas of sponsorship, tournament management and “general friendship and cooperation” with FIVB.

Clearly, the Japanese love volleyball, do very well in it on an international level and, by Acosta’s own admission--as well as his actions at the dinner--pay a large share of the bills.

So it was not surprising here Monday, when Sunday night’s controversial United States victory over Japan was reversed by a 20-member board of control, headed by Acosta, that U.S. volleyball officials were screaming foul.

One of those officials, refusing to be quoted by name, said: “Everybody knows that NEC (a Japanese computer firm) runs the sport. This decision was one of those that was very politically correct for (FIVB) to do because of all the money Japan pours into the sport.”

Acosta reacted angrily to that.

“That idea is absolutely wrong. It is a fake,” he said Monday night. “There was no personal consideration in this decision, none at all. It was not at all subjective. There were no names of any countries talked about like that at all. We made a fair and clear study of the situation, and our only purpose was to apply the rules.”

Acosta did not deny that Japanese interests are strong in volleyball, and although he could not put an exact percentage on the financial load carried by Japan in relation to the rest of the world, he said it might be “50% or 60% of the total.”

“I have contracts with American companies, and I don’t expect that this will hurt those,” he said. “I’m negotiating TV contracts with American TV, and I don’t expect to lose those, either.

“This was a decision based on a study of the rules of the game and how they applied to this case. We didn’t take anything other that into consideration.”

Acosta said that the three Japanese members on the board were dismissed from the meeting considering the reversal, and that the remaining 20 were from 20 different countries.

Acosta said that the meeting took five hours “because we had been warned in advance that some people thought we would be compelled to be gracious to Japanese companies.

“But I must assure you that in this five-hour meeting, nobody talked about sponsorship,” he said. “We talked no money, only sports and rules.”