|
The chief of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) evaluation
commission said in Beijing on Saturday February 24 that they will
only take into account the technical matters instead of politics
in their inspection tour of the candidate cities for the 2008 Olympic
Games.
"The evaluation commission's goal is to study the quality
of bids on a technical basis not political issues," Hein Verbruggen,
chairman of the evaluation commission, told reporters at a press
conference at the end of their four-day inspection of Beijing, one
of the bidding cities for 2008 Games.
"I think the IOC executive board was pretty explicit in its
instructions to us," he said.
Before the evaluation tour started, IOC President Juan Antonio
Samaranch had explained the inspectors' mission in a letter to Verbruggen.
Samaranch wrote in the letter that the IOC Executive Board considers
the role of the Evaluation Commission is to assess the ability of
each candidate city under the best possible conditions for all participants
-- primarily the athletes.
"IOC is an institution that I think must maintain the unity
within the Olympic Movement, therefore we cannot take positions
on political matters," said Verbruggen.
"In the end, the IOC is an organization of 122 individual
members. Each will make their own decision based on their feelings
of the matters," he said.
Beijing, along with Paris, Toronto, Istanbul and Osaka, is bidding
for the 2008 Games and the IOC will make their final decision in
July at Moscow.
(People's Daily 02/25/01)
|
