August 15, 2008	Friday	Sha'aban 12, 1429

BEIJING, Aug 14: The Pakistan Olympic Association (POA) is concentrating on next year’s SAF Games which will be held in Bangladesh and 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, apart from the Commonwealth Games in India.

This was stated by POA President Lt Gen Syed Arif Hasan at the Olympic Green Hockey Stadium after watching the Pakistan-Canada match on Wednesday.

He said the country was facing great challenges in improving the standard of games.

The POA chief added they were fully aware of the decline of sports and a joint effort was being made through sports federations for improving the overall standard.

He said he foresaw bright future for martial arts, like taekwondo and wushu, as a Pakistani girl won a gold medal in an international event in Iran participated by around 20 countries.

Gen Hasan fully supported the idea of performance-related incentives and said the POA and the Pakistan Sports Board had experimented with that at the SAF Games in Colombo.

He added they wanted sports like martial arts, hockey, squash and snooker, in which Pakistan had achieved medals, to flourish. But, a great effort was required to improve the standard of athletics and swimming which get a bulk of medals at the international level.

Apart from Islamabad, lack of sporting infrastructure of international standard in major cities was bring their sports down, he said.

He described the shooting event in which an Indian won gold medal as an extraordinary achievement and a major boost for the game in India.—APP