15 May 2004	Saturday	24 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

ZURICH, May 14: With Nelson Mandela, two other Nobel peace prize winners and a president, South Africa tried to capture the hearts and minds of world football's governing body on Friday in a last push to win the right to host football's 2010 World Cup.

"I can confirm that we are ready, able, willing and capable, as well as passionate, about hosting the 2010 World Cup," the country's post-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela told FIFA's Executive Committee in a final presentation before its vote on Saturday.

Mandela's former jailer, South Africa's last white president Frederik de Klerk, and another Nobel laureate, Bishop Desmond Tutu joined President Thabo Mbeki to back their second attempt to become first African country to host football's top event.

More than twelve years since the fall of all-white rule, Mandela and Mbeki thanked FIFA for an international ban on South Africa imposed after the bloody repression of the Soweto riots in 1976.

"It is the 28th year since FIFA took its stand against the racially divided football and helped to inspire the final struggle against apartheid," Mandela said.

Football offered "the only joyful release" during his imprisonment on Robben Island, Mandela added in a rare soulful moment of a polished but lacklustre presentation by the South African bid.

FIFA's inspection report on the five African nations bidding to host football's lucrative top event highlighted a "reliable" and "stable" bid from South Africa, and the potential for an "excellent" World Cup there.

The 13 stadium, 467 million dollar bid was rated top in the FIFA inspection report of the five candidates released last month in financial and technical terms. But the report questioned security because of South Africa's high crime rate.

"We have carefully studied the report. We commit ourselves to meet all the concerns raised by the group," Mbeki promised.

Morocco also made great play on its geographical proximity to Europe Friday and the prospect of high ticket sales, while South Africa is relatively isolated at the southern tip of the continent.

In the last FIFA selection process for the 2006 finals, South Africa lost out to Germany by a single vote.

"The 2006 evaluation said South Africa is ready to host the World Cup and the 2010 concluded that South Africa can deliver an excellent World Cup,"

South African FA chief Danny Joordan told the 24 FIFA officials. "This will put a smile on every African face," he added. But the head of the German 2006 organising committee, Franz Beckenbauer, cautioned against reading too much into Friday's presentations.

"It's not important, it's just a presentation. If you become too aggressive and push too much, you can lose a little. But you can't win anything," he told South African television here.

And Alan Rothenberg, widely credited with bringing the premier footballing tournament to the US in 1994, and the bid adviser for rival Morocco also played down Mandela's impact.

"Members of the executive committee will obviously recognise the great figure that Mandela is and that he has been to South Africa and to the world, and his accomplishments are heroic," he told journalists. "But I think they will also say that when all is said and done that has very little to do with putting on a World Cup in 2010," Rothenberg added.- AFP