ATHENS, March 7: Relations between Athens 2004 organisers and the International Olympic Committee appeared strained on Friday after remarks by an Australian IOC official about Greece’s slow preparations.

The IOC said it planned to step up monitoring of Athens’s efforts to make up time but it had no intention of putting its own IOC staff into key positions to ensure deadlines were met.

Earlier in the week IOC vice president Kevan Gosper was reported by Australia’s Herald-Sun newspaper as saying the Olympic body was considering installing its own staff in senior positions on the Athens organising committee because construction work was lagging so far behind.

“Athens runs the risk of being the distressful meat in the sandwich between two great Games (Sydney and Beijing),” Gosper told the newspaper.

Incensed by Gosper’s remarks, Athens chief organiser (ATHOC) Gianna Angelopoulos called IOC president Jacques Rogge and said the comments were “unacceptable”, an ATHOC source said.

“They are offending the prestige of the country and the preparations,” the source quoted Angelopoulos as telling Rogge.

Angelopoulos, appointed to the post three years ago after the IOC warned Athens could lose the games because of delays, told Rogge no one had the right to judge the success or failure of the Athens Olympics at this stage.

“We welcome criticism but no one can say in advance how the games will turn out,” Angelopoulos said.

The source said Gosper, who four years ago embarrassed the IOC by appointing his daughter as the first torch bearer for the Sydney torch relay instead of a young Greek-Australian girl, had since contacted ATHOC officials and said his remarks were misrepresented.

On Friday an IOC spokeswoman said they would not be putting their own staff into key Athens positions, although visits by IOC staff would be stepped up.

“That is not what was agreed or decided,” the spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said of Gosper’s comments.

“Full-time (IOC) staff within ATHOC is not an option... there was no decision made on this. It is not in the plans to do this at all but there will be an increase in small delegations going over to Athens to monitor progress.”

The IOC is concerned several venues and roads may not be completed in time and a number of test events scheduled in the run up to the Games will not be staged at their Olympic venues.

Last month the IOC handed Athens a blunt reprimand about their organisation of the 2004 Games.

“It is a serious situation,” Rogge said during a meeting with Angelopoulos at the Olympic body’s headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. “It is getting really urgent.”

The warning was the second time the Greeks had been reprimanded in three years.—Reuters