The five cities bidding to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games should heed the advice of Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), when he meets with the candidate cities Friday morning. He wants them to stop “bickering”.
Tensions between the cities have been mounting and last week Madrid sent an official letter of protest to the IOC ethics commission complaining about Paris using embassies to promote its bid.
Rogge told BBC Five Live, “I’m not happy about the atmosphere and I’d call on the five to behave with respect for each other, fair play and to have a more constructive attitude”.
He said he will ask all the five cities without exception “to focus on their own strengths, to focus on their own message, on their proposal, on their bid”.
The five bid leaders are likely to outline their frustrations at the ambiguities and vagueness of the bidding rules, at the meeting.
Visits to bid cities by IOC members have been banned since the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, but other rules are less clear, such as how diplomats can be used in promoting bids. Rogge suggested that there was much room for improvement in the ethics commission regulations.
Meanwhile, Rogge defended the integrity of IOC members following allegations of corruption surrounding Bulgarian IOC member Ivan Slavkov. He said “we’ve had problems in the past in the Salt Lake City period and now (with Slavkov) we have a very unhappy and unsatisfying remnant of the past”.
He added, “but I believe in the honesty of my colleagues, the soundness of the rules we have established, the strength of our ethics commission and the transparency of the International Olympic Committee”.
Rogge also said in the interview that he would keep a close eye on China’s human rights record in the build-up to the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games. He said, “the whole world will look at China and that will definitely have an influence. I’m optimistic for that, but of course we can only judge by Games time”.
