| Subject: East Timor ruled out for Olympics,
'doesn’t meet standards'
Associated Press East Timor ruled out for Olympics IOC says newly independent nation doesn’t meet standards LAUSANNE, Switzerland, April 19 — East Timor was ruled ineligible for the Sydney Olympics on Wednesday because it fails to meet IOC standards. The United Nations is administering the former Indonesian province during its transition to independence. “THE SITUATION AT this stage is quite clear,” IOC director general Francois Carrard said. “The IOC recognizes National Olympic Committees from independent countries, states, recognized as such by the international community. And the situation at this date is that it does not recognize East Timor.” The IOC also said the devastated country does not yet fulfill the basic criteria to have a recognized national Olympic committee. IOC regulations require a country to be a fully independent state with at least five sports federations operating in its territory. Indonesian troops and their militia allies decimated much of the territory last year after a U.N.-sponsored independence referendum. Most of its sports facilities were burned down or turned into refugee camps. Jose Ramos-Morta, the Nobel peace laureate and East Timor’s unofficial foreign minister, said the country had hoped to appear on the world stage as an independent nation for the first time. He said East Timor wanted only to participate in the opening and closing ceremonies, to fly the flag of the U.N. Transitional Authority and its own flag and play its own national anthem. April Menu Note: For those who would like to fax "the powers that be" - CallCenter V3.5.8, is a Native 32-bit Voice Telephony software application integrated with fax and data communications... and it's free of charge! Download from http://www.v3inc.com/ |