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International Olympic Committee Report Paints Picture of Shambles of Summer Games in Athens

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Train tracks without trains. Construction stalled on new venues. A desperate search for almost 3,000 hotel rooms.

These were some of the problems laid out Monday in a report to the International Olympic Committee that painted Athens' preparations for the 2004 Summer Games as a shambles.

Denis Oswald, the head of the panel overseeing preparations in the Greek capital for the committee, said a recent visit left him convinced the games would be OK only if work continued at full speed.

"We have a pretty hard task," Oswald told the IOC's general assembly. "We have to work very hard and exert constant pressure."

The IOC has warned Athens repeatedly that it was well behind schedule. Last month, Oswald said he was pleased with organizers' progress but distressed over government efforts in transportation and accommodations.

The report showed why.

While it now appears that a new rail line will be completed in time for the Games, Oswald said, it might be too late to order rail cars.

The old Athens international airport was supposed to be closed a month ago, but construction there on a slew of Olympic venues can't begin because flights keep coming and going, and there are planes on the runways, he said.

And while organizers have locked up more than 15,000 hotel rooms, they still need about 2,800 more in a city were modern accommodations are scarce.

But the chief of the Athens organizing committee, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, was more optimistic.

"Today, we are more confident than we were before," she told the delegates. "We have achieved a good cruising speed and are accelerating. But we are aware that time is short."

Also Monday, the IOC shelved its first formal confict-of-interest rules, which had been adopted just two days earlier.

The IOC is still recovering from the Salt Lake City corruption scandal, but it spent 45 minutes arguing that the new conflict-of-interest rules would create headaches with investigations and paperwork, and needed more study before they took effect.

The rules would have required IOC members and staff to file a list of potential conflicts of interest. Some members also represent sports federations and national Olympic committees.

"My reaction is that it goes much farther than members would want to go," Britain's Craig Reedie said.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2002