Olympic Games: Greece promise to speed up work

GREECE PLEDGED yesterday to speed up the completion of key 2004Olympic venues to please an International Olympic Committee team thatis in Athens to inspect preparations for the troubled Games.

"The timetable for completion can be, instead of May 2004, inJanuary 2004," the Public Works Minister, Costas Laliotis, said.Laliotis added that work on five major venues was going better thanexpected but that legal and procedural standards needed to be upheld.

It was not clear whether the new date for completing thefacilities for sailing, canoeing, rowing, beach volley, baseball,softball, hockey and badminton would satisfy the IOC, which had askedfor them to be ready by the end of 2003. Jacques Rogge, president ofthe IOC coordinating committee in charge of the Athens Games, said inAugust that Laliotis' initial target dates were "not good enough".

Greece has about 75 per cent of the sports venues ready but hasfallen behind in building the rest. IOC officials have praised Greecefor redoubling efforts after years of bureaucratic delays andinternal bickering that have raised the possibility of moving theGames, possibly to Korea.

Franklin Servan-Schreiber, the IOC communications director and thevoice of the organisation during the Olympic movement's recent crisisand reforms, resigned yesterday. The IOC said in a statement thatServan-Schreiber had left to pursue his interests in the internet.

China is contemplating making Tiananmen Square - best known to theoutside world for the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in 1989- part of its 2008 Olympic bid as the venue for beach volleyball. Theplan is thought to be in response to a promise from rival aspirantParis to stage the beach volleyball competitions in front of theEiffel Tower.