Greek PM urges organisers to hurry

Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis on Tuesday urged his ministers and the organisers of the troubled Athens 2004 Olympics to step up preparations less than a month before an International Olympic Committee inspection visit to record progress.

Government ministers and the Games' organising committee (ATHOC) have clashed in the past few years over responsibilities for several of the games' key venues prompting the IOC last month to hand Athens a blunt warning to stop bickering and speed up progress.

"The Prime Minister at the end of this meeting... said that ATHOC and the games' monitoring committee (comprising government and ATHOC officials) must move forward and constantly monitor progress," government spokesman Telemachos Hytiris told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

"We must move ahead quickly," Simitis was quoted as saying.

The IOC will be in Athens on April 7 for a three-day inspection visit. Late last month IOC chief Jacques Rogge warned Athens there was a slippage in deadlines and told organisers to pick up the pace, the second such reprimand in three years.

"It is a serious situation," Rogge said. "It is getting really urgent."

The IOC had also warned organisers three years ago that it would take the games away if they did not stop dragging their feet.

CONSTRUCTION SITE

Since then both organisers and the government have turned the capital into a huge construction site with dozens of venues and Olympics-related buildings popping up like mushrooms, much to the satisfaction of the IOC.

But the games chief organiser Gianna Angelopoulos, handpicked by the Greek Prime Minister after the IOC's first warning, has repeatedly clashed with Simitis' ministers over budgets and control of preparations.

"We all must push forward as fast as possible and there has to be a coordinated effort," the government's top Olympics official Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Tuesday.

Hytiris said while other problems still need to be ironed out, organisers were satisfied with the number of applications from games' volunteers.

"Organisers have already received 62,000 applications for volunteer workers during the games," he said. "They will eventually reach 100,000."

The success of the Sydney 2000 Olympics was largely credited to the thousands of smiling volunteers.

"Out of those, organisers will hold 75,000 interviews before picking the 60,000 volunteers needed for the games," Hytiris said.